The hard things about dealing with scientific and regulatory files

Once a year, I give a talk about the windows of opportunity to influence a Commission proposal. Every year, I look back at ashen faces. There are few bites at the cherry, and many lobbyists don’t know about key windows of opportunity.

I have a similar talk (plus process charts and case studies) on influencing the proposal once it comes out the door. Once again, the windows of opportunity when you can make a real difference are limited.

While there may be many steps in the journey to adopting or passing a law, there are few moments when you can make a difference. If you don’t know the details of the journey you will embark on, the chances of getting to the end without undue delay are unlikely.

I’ve done the same for the areas of secondary legislation I work on – mainly chemicals. Here, the challenge is even greater.

Decisions on chemicals make their way to the Official Journal through secondary legislation (delegated acts, implementing acts, and RPS measures). The same observations apply to other areas I’ve worked in.

When you work on a chemical measure, you are likely dealing with 5 stages:

Stage 1: Technical/Scientific – deliberations by the Agency-Scientific Committee

Stage 2: Preparation of proposal – by the Commission taking the Opinion/Recommendation and transcribing it into law

Stage 3Adoption of the proposal – Implementing act / RPS Measure by Committee, Delegated Act by Expert Group

Stage 4: Scrutiny by EP/Council

Stage 5: Legal oversight

Occasional chemical issues are dealt with in ordinary legislation. But, in the main—98% of the time—decisions are made through secondary legislation.

The same is likely true for any other scientific or technical field. Updates that incorporate scientific and technical changes are made by secondary legislation.

Each of these stages involves many steps. For ordinary legislation, it is around 80 steps, for delegated, implementing and RPS measures around 50. If you factor in the agency stage, another 40 steps.

Your map needs to reflect the reality—when, where, whom, and with what—that you have the chance to influence decisions.

If your map does not reflect reality, you are operating in a fog or a fairy tale.

The core challenge involves many disciplines who struggle to communicate outside their closed circle.

Many scientific and technical experts speak a language that may as well be Latin. Many lobbyists deploy double-Dutch. They seem surprised that people outside their realm do not understand them. Some think insulting people is a means of persuasion.

Over 27 years, I’ve worked with less than a handful of scientific experts who can explain the issue at hand clearly and accurately to a non-experts—whether they are desk officers, senior officials, or politicians. That three of those worked for the same company,  and many retired,  may be cause for concern.

So you are looking for the rare beast that is a scientific expert who can communicate with experts and non-experts alike, who is at ease with officials, politicians, and regulators, who knows the questions they will want to know, and who can provide the answer at just the right level. They are mythical beasts. They exist. I’ve met them.

The only way forward is to assemble teams who have successfully walked the path of the process you are going along. That combination of skill sets is not easy to find. You need a toolbox that does not naturally assemble in the same place. What you need to present your case successfully, for example, to RAC and SEAC, is not the same as what will get you through the next steps of the journey.

I know less than a handful of people who can do stages 1-4. Most would not want to do 1. I know a similar number who can do stage 5. Some of them work for the Commission.

A key lesson learned, whether for scientific, regulatory or policy proposals, is you need to have on hand a rich body of evidence to support your case, covering all the questions, stated and unstated, that will obviously and likely come up during the scientific, technical, and political process. Without this sitting in your filing cabinet, it will be hard to prepare the evidence in time when an initiative starts. You’ll need to work with professionally respected and trusted scientific and technical experts. These are the ones who will tell you the right answer, which can be very different from the answer you want to hear.

The challenge is that few senior officials or politicians are prepared to second-guess, let alone overturn, scientific or technical advice. Too many careers are ruined by scandals caused by ignoring scientific advice from agencies.

So, the real challenge of dealing with the regulatory procedures dealing with technical/scientific issues comes down:

1. Few have successfully taken a file through the process and lived to tell the tale. Many claim to have.

2. Only a few mystical creatures have the skill set to go through most stages. No one can do all 5.

3. Few experts have a successful track record of engaging with Agencies/Scientific Committee.

4. There are stand-alone experts for each specific stage. They find it hard to operate outside that zone. They often speak a language only people who spend their lives in that zone understand.

A few have solved the challenge and assembled the skill sets and experience that you need to obtain success. Speaking with them, they seem to do the following: