From time to time, I have been asked how to get an idea taken up and put into an EU law.
I got round to putting the practicalities of doing so into a few chapters of a book published in a few days time (link).
After having done it a few times, my standard line is “10 years, a lot of money, patience and luck”.
Success Leaves Clues
Few corporates and NGOs understand how to do this, although NGOs are a little better. The late Simon Brysceson talks about how Johnson Matthey worked with clean air campaigners (link).
The campaign against lead in petrol was created by Johnson Matthey. They make autocatalysts and they don’t work with leaded petrol. They linked up clean air campaigners to get rid of lead in petrol. It took 15 years to get what they wanted. The campaign worked, Johnson Matthey made a lot of money, and cleaned up a lot of leaded-air.
A core to getting a law put forward and adopted is for the commercial world and NGOs work together.
In the ban on lead in petrol, as Simon Bryceson said “it would not have happened if that conjunction had not happened”.
What you need to do
1. The problem is that are very people who understand how politics, the EU, NGOs and corporates think and work. If you can’t bring that deep understanding to the table, the chance of getting your idea taken up and put into a law plummets.
2. You need to understand how the EU develops and adopts proposals. If you are blind on that, you’re relying on animal spirits to intervene.
3. You need patience. You are going to have to play the long game. Hoping to get an idea that’s in your head and into law in two years is delusional. If you want to see how often the policy window opens read this – https://www.aaronmcloughlin.com/if-you-want-to-influence-eu-public-policy-play-the-long-game/
4. It helps to run experiments in the Member States. The game is not just Brussels based. In introducing the discards ban, working with Denmark, a disards ban trial was tested years before. It worked and it helped get the new Commissioner (despite deep internal opposition from within DG MARE) to table the proposal.
5. It’s nearly certain that you don’t have the people in your company or NGO who can do this. Most corporates and NGOs don’t have experienced enough people who can bring this confluence of events together.
6. If you try to get a law proposed and adopted, and most only speak about doing it, instead of focused action, the chances of success are small. Anyone who gives you ’sure thing’ odds are looking at a mark. Even on the most attractive, no-brainer issues, I never give more than 50/50 odds of success. There are too many unknowns in play.
7. It helps to have a shadow impact assessment, draft directive, and independent academic evidence to support your case, and it is ready to go.
8. The science is not that important. It’s a footnote and is done to satisfy mainly the science focus of NGOs and corporations. I’ve never experienced the same interest from officials and politicians in policy and law-making.
9. You need political support with the right officials and politicians in some member states and in Brussels. You need to bring together a disparate alliance of people at the right time.
10. And, you need to appreciate that’s is going to be an ungodly alliance who are unifying for just one day on your issue. If you can’t stand sitting in the same room as someone you think is the devil incarnate, it is not going to happen.
The confluence of evidence, money, patience, allies, timing, political supporters, events, and luck is hard to pull off. If you don’t have people guiding you who know how politicians, NGOs and industry think and work, and how to get laws adopted and past, your chances plummet to near zero. For those reasons alone, when people raise the idea of getting their idea into law, I urge supreme caution.