Lobbyists and Bureaucrats in Brussels by Laurens Sylvain

Author:Laurens, Sylvain
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351972505
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Even when talking to representatives from very large companies (such as here the representative of an American company “with a turnover of 9 billion dollars” – Amway in this case), the association’s staff with their fragile contracts and sometimes uncertain status can draw on a single resource that is composite but rooted in the same relationship to the EU institutions and the Eurocracy. Like the European jurists described by Antoine Vauchez, if we see the legal knowledge of lobbyists as only “a purely technical competence, we often ignore the fact that it is inseparable from a social competence that is not only about the law, but also about social relationships and the non-legal practices that they enable” (Vauchez 2007: 63).

As happened in the above scene, a staff member immersed in the European Quarter and working very closely with EU institutions every day can exploit her knowledge of the path of a draft law (“the consumer rights directive is in informal trilogue”), the current positions of each institution and the member states (“the Council has strong positions”, “the member states are no longer much in favour”), the precise points of the draft regulation on which a position must be adopted (“the requirements”), what can currently be said given the positions of the other actors (“certainly not 100 euros”) and the positions of the other business associations (“support from the other business associations is declining”). She can now state with authority what it would or would not be reasonable for the whole of the European association for direct sales to push for. She can confine the company managers to the language of behind the scenes (some members trying here to promote a more macho register among themselves) and can more or less silence any objections. The general secretary in this particular configuration of an association that is a member of an umbrella organisation need only add a few authoritative arguments (“we are small”, she “represents 12 per cent of European GDP”).

All this jargon is not here only for external use (seeking to improve lobbying to institutions). Manipulated internally in this way, this knowledge of the Eurocracy creates an almost immediate effect of political censure for the members who, lacking familiarity with the arcana of the institutions, have no choice but to be silent or reveal their ignorance (like the member who received a lesson on the qualified majority). Whatever the size of a multinational company represented in an association, in internal meetings of this kind (and when the time ultimately comes to draw up a position that the Commission can hear) its influence depends on the volume of institutional knowledge that its representative can use against the association’s staff. Company representatives may be asked to provide technical expertise based on their specialist knowledge of a particular issue, but in practice the resources of knowledge of the Eurocracy function as capital with meaningful returns in the micro-field of struggles that the association represents.

The knowledge of EU institutions brandished by association staff is not a neutral, stable form of expertise.

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