Good Practice

Once a Commission proposal is published, you need to focus on getting the Council and European Parliament to back your preferred position. You have a limited window of opportunity to influence decisions of Ministers and MEPs. Once they have reached agreement on an issue it is hard for them them to walk back on even … Read more

A common line in Brussels in public consultation responses is to just to say “no”. When to just say  “no” It is an interesting approach that should be used in three circumstances. First, if you want to sit out the policy preparation and drafting, feel free to say ‘no’.  It will bar you from having … Read more

My guestimate is that the single largest amount of time any organisation in Brussels spends is on preparing position papers. If all this time is well spent is a question you’ll know the answer to. If it is spent with a view to influencing public policy and political decisions, it is time well spent. Recently, … Read more

I find putting pen to paper the best way to see if understand an issue. This means I take a lot of notes to help better refine my thinking. Some of these notes I refine further into posts. Over the last year, I’ve returned to some familiar themes around EU lobbying. I only have a … Read more