If you want to be taken seriously in lobbying in Brussels, you need to come to the table with a solution.
The solution should be:
- Workable
- Credible
- Supported by real evidence
- Written down on paper
- Available /shared in advanced
- Be backed by respected peers, and
- Have accompanying legislative text
Why would you not do this
If you don’t, you are likely only doing it for three reasons.
First, you are just against the policy or proposal, but just can’t say so.
Second, you are playing to the home crowd of allies and supporters. You are not really interested in persuading the key decision makers and influencers. You prefer to play to your own fringe. You know you’ll never influence events, but are just happy standing on the side lines, shouting into the wind.
Third, you have no viable alternative to what’s on the table. You’ve know the issue in front of you was going to happen for some time, but preferred to delude yourself that it was never going to happen.
If you are against, what can you do
If you are against a proposal, spare the double speak, and say it. There is nothing wrong with that. If you are against a proposal, it helps if you have been on the record from the start that this is your position. You’ll have participated in all the public/targeted consultations. You’ll have put on the record what there was a better solution to deliver a public policy option. If you do this, you’ll be taken seriously.
If you are against a proposal that’s been tabled, you have your work cut against you. But, proposals from the Commission get blocked and sometime later, withdrawn.
If you face this, you have your work cut out. You are going to have to present a powerful case against the proposal. You are going to have to show that the intellectual foundations for the proposals are built on sand. It helps to have the expert to the experts on the issue do a demolition job review to warm up the debate.
Waking up late in the day
All too common, you come across cases of interests sitting things out, and when a proposal is about to agreed to by the Council and European Parliament, wake up, and act. This group need to bring in very respected independent experts to show that their late intervention is not due to recovery from amnesia but through more believable reasons. Waking up late in the day is more common that you’d think, and some of the reasons I have heard are about as credible as “my dog ate my homework”, from someone who does not have a dog.
Aaron, thank you for this great piece of advice. Diplomats from third countries often fall into the trap of thinking in bilateral terms. However, they simply need to look at the legislative machine from the optics of lobbying or public affairs. As you rightly said, they need to bring a solution to the table and understand the fact that no matter how hard they shout out it means very little in certain policy areas.