What if you knew what was going to happen next on every piece of EU law – ordinary or secondary legislation?
It would allow you to be prepared ahead of time with the right actions and persuasive case.
Sure, it would take the drama out of your work. But reducing unnecessary stress is no bad thing.
It is like having an accurate road map of the journey, that knows the specific territory you are driving on. It may not be a 100% up to date GPS that knows every spontenous road work or traffic jam, but it shows you how to get to where you want to be, quickly and safetly.
A Summer Exercise
I had a gut feeling that every piece of EU ordinary legislative proposal, delegated act, implementing act, RPS measure, and some of the other obscure procedure, goes through through more or less the same steps each and every time.
Sure, the people, politics, psychodrama drama, are different. But, the mechanical steps the proposal goes through, are the same. Law makers don’t like cutting corners.
I think it is 99% reliable. There are outliers when Berlin or Paris wake up late and defend their national interests who have been asleep at the wheel.
So, in a fit of mid summer angst, I replicated an ordinary legislative file, delegated act, implementing act, and RPS measure into a monster checklist model for each process.
The model is more or less accurate. Every step happens when it is meant to. The only challenge is that the process involves a lot more toing and throing inside and between the EP and Council. I have around 120 steps for one OLP file. And, that is the stripped down version.
I looked at some other files and checked if things followed in the same way and they did.
Why It Won’t Take Off
The problem is that in an lobbying industry full of people with the attention span of a gnat, asking people to prepare for a marathon of 3-4 years, and agree to focused action, involving up to 150 decision-makers and influencers, and have the budget to do so, is difficult. To be honest, looking at the steps involved is enough to make me nearly want to crawl under my table and cry in a fetal position for a few days.
Most lobbyists will reject this approach. After all, every file is unique, representing different animal spirits. Their client’s issue is so special that it deserves to be a Koenig crafted in a workshop in Munich. Their issue is so special that it cannot be tainted by processes like standardisation, specialisation, and the division of labour that made the industrial revolution flourish.
The Upsides
The only real benefit of using a model that reflects reality is that what you do, what to bring to the table, and to whom, can be predicted with unnerving accuracy.
And, when done well, your chances of getting the outcome you wanted, hyper increase.
Would you want to follow such a path, or leave your political fate in the hands of the spirit people, who conjure up some unique approach after a revelation in Place Luxembourg on Thursday evening at 2 am.
Of course, this is of no use, if your case is weak, you have no evidence or solutions, and your idea of advocacy is another internal meeting. So, if you don’t want to speak to people that you have not known as good friends for 20 years, this is not going to help you.