European advocacy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

European interest representation describes the possibility and the task of interest representatives to influence the political decision-making process in Europe. You have various instruments at your disposal: Public relations work and public affairs are used to influence the responsible bodies of the EU . With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty , new stakeholder mechanisms opened up. In particular, Article 11 TEU on citizen participation anchors cooperation between the institutions and civil society in primary law for the first time . The aim is to maintain a regular, open and transparent dialogue in order to ensure the coherence and transparency of the European Union . The involvement of interest representatives in the political decision-making process goes beyond representative democracy and is part of a new European “ participatory democracy ”.

Basics

definition

In a communication dated March 21, 2007, the European Commission published a definition of representation of interests at European level (this follows the understanding from the Green Paper of May 3, 2006): Representation of interests includes “all activities involved in policy-making and the decision-making process the European institutions and bodies should be influenced ”.

Advocacy or lobbying is either part of the work in institutions or the task of organizations for which advocacy is their ' raison d'Être '. The most important actors in European interest representation are national, European or international associations from all areas of economic and social life, private companies, law firms, consultants for public affairs (political advice) as well as non-governmental organizations and think tanks (think tanks).

Two different schemes of European interest representation are noticeable:

  • Actions by stakeholders alongside the EU institutions in Brussels
  • Actions at national level with associations and companies on European issues

Characteristic of the European level

The European decision-making process is increasingly becoming an outcome between legislation by the European institutions and informal actions by stakeholders.

The European interest representation has different characteristics than at the national level:

  • A transnational lobby group
  • A direct impact of advocacy on the work of the EU institutions
  • An always recognized activity: influencing policy-making and decision-making
  • Runs within the framework of the European transparency initiative
  • Involvement of interest groups at a very early stage: the Commission conducts extensive consultations at an early stage on every legislative procedure and invites associations to present their position. Before a draft directive is even drawn up, there is usually a so-called green paper or white paper , on the basis of which extensive consultations take place.

Legal basis: Article 11 of the Treaty on European Union

After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, lobbying was given a legal framework with Article 11 of the EU Treaty . In detail, Article 11 regulates participatory democracy in the following elements: a horizontal civil society dialogue (Article 11 (1) TEU) and a vertical civil society dialogue (Article 11 (2) TEU), the already existing consultation practices of the Commission (Article 11 (3) TEU) and the new European Citizens' Initiative (Article 11 (4) TEU).

Implementation of Art. 11 TEU in the EU bodies

Advocacy is a legal provision that binds the EU institutions. The European Commission published the procedure for the implementation of Article 11 of the EU Treaty Paragraph 4 ( European Citizens' Initiative ) in a Green Paper and initiated it in November 2009. This was followed by a draft of the Commission for a regulation on the specific design, which was adopted by the European Parliament on December 15, 2010 with 628 votes in favor, 15 against and 24 abstentions. The approval of the Council of the European Union followed on February 14, 2011. The European Citizens' Initiative is valid from April 1, 2012.

The other paragraphs of Article 11 have not yet been implemented. This applies above all to Article 11 of the EU Treaty (2). In March 2010, various European institutions asked the European Commission to set up a structured civil dialogue at European level . The “Various Interests” group of the European Economic and Social Committee and numerous civil society organizations and networks have put forward proposals for structured ways and open channels through which civil society organizations can make their voice heard, going beyond purely formal consultation procedures. The European Movement International , which in September 2010 called for consultation processes on the implementation of Article 11, Paragraph 2, goes even further .

Other initiatives

Alongside these steps and in anticipation of the Treaty provision, the European Parliament established the Agora as an instrument for vertical civil dialogue. Before that, Parliament had written a report on the prospects for the expansion of civil dialogue after the Lisbon Treaty, which was the first step in the implementation of the European Citizens' Initiative . However, the participatory principles are not implemented equally by all EU institutions.

Developments and strategies of influence

European transparency initiative

As part of the European Transparency Initiative, which was introduced by EU Commissioner Siim Kallas in 2005 , the European Commission will open the register of interest representatives of the European Union on June 23, 2008. Three years later, on June 23, 2011, the joint transparency register of the European Parliament and the European Commission will be introduced. Registration is voluntary, but is a prerequisite for accreditation and access to the buildings of the European Parliament. The common transparency register aims to create greater transparency in the system of European interest representation by allowing the public to see which interest representatives are trying to influence European policy making. Organizations as well as individuals have the option of registering in the transparency register and entering one of the six broad categories. The categories range from consulting firms and law firms, through trade and professional associations to non-governmental organizations or organizations that represent local, regional and municipal authorities or other public institutions. In addition, the following information must be provided during registration, which is then published in the transparency register on the website of the European Union: The head office, the goals, tasks and interests, membership and clientele and an estimate of the financial resources, received EU Means included. By registering, you agree to the uniform code of conduct for lobbyists.

  • Transparency offensive 2014

In his inaugural address in 2014, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker presented new guidelines on lobbying in Europe in the political guidelines. An implementation of these guidelines took place on November 25, 2014 with the decision of the European Commission that all EU commissioners, their cabinet employees and the general directorates of the individual departments of the Commission must make public which interest representatives they are meeting with from December 1. This involves meeting with stakeholders and individuals on issues related to policy making and implementation. Meetings with members of other EU organizations and party members are not included in this decision. The date, place, name of the interest group and the occasion of the meeting are documented in the directory, which is accessible to every citizen on the Internet. Following the decision, Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermanns spoke out in favor of adopting this rule for Members of the European Parliament and the European Council.

European Parliament

On January 31, 2019, the EU Parliament passed binding rules on the transparency of lobbying. In an amendment to its Rules of Procedure, Parliament stipulated that MEPs involved in drafting and negotiating laws must publish their meetings with lobbyists online.

Double representation of interests: national and European level

The connection between the local and the European level is not only developed by state organs today: local and national organizations secure the connection up to the European level.

Company advocacy strategies

Large companies and corporations have extensive means and strategies at their disposal at European level, which often only they can afford due to their considerable financial resources. The so-called “multi-voice method” has developed into a strategy that is now frequently used, in which companies not only pursue one way of representing their interests, but also use several “channels”. The following options are available to (large) companies to influence the EU institutions on their behalf:

  • with its own in-house lobbyists
  • through specialized law firms
  • through public relations and public affairs agencies
  • by means of issue coalitons
  • through membership in regional / national / European associations
  • through the inclusion of the media to disseminate relevant opinions
  • through contact with European citizens

As in-house Lobbyists are referred to the company's own representatives, who often represented by its own representative office in Brussels, the interests of the company. These representatives have the advantage of having a very strong bond with their company, which is why they can identify well with their interests and then want to enforce them more intensively. Due to the cost of an office in the EU, this type of representation is usually reserved for larger and well-staffed companies. In addition, the contacts to the respective EU organs to be influenced must be established and v. a. are maintained, which represents a large amount of work and resources for a company. However, the more, the longer and the more important the existing contacts with as many representatives of the EU decision-making bodies as possible, the more successful lobbying using in-house lobbyists can be. These must then with regard to the European Commission v. a. Start in the legislative initiative phase or even the agenda setting phase in order to influence the draft law as early as possible. If the European Parliament is to be contacted and influenced, on the other hand, the decision-making phase must start, i.e. when influencing the MPs, to vote in a certain way and, if necessary, to induce other MPs to also vote in a certain way.

Through specialized law firms and PR / PA agencies , companies can “buy in” external consultants who then support their customers with legal advice and political communication. Often these external service providers are only employed on a project basis for some time, B. a law has been passed and the cooperation has ended. External consulting firms are hired by large companies to set up their own lobby staff, but medium-sized companies are also employed on a permanent basis to exert influence on the EU bodies. This strategy is advantageous for the less resource-intensive companies, as they do not have to laboriously build contacts and information networks themselves, but can fall back on the contact lists of these service providers.

Within so-called issue coalitions , companies can join forces with other companies, NGOs and associations if they want to represent and implement common positions. After the implementation or failure of the joint project, the members of the coalition often go their separate ways again. Large companies benefit from the fact that they can remain anonymous if they want to and that they can demonstrate a transparent approach and cooperation to them by working with associations and NGOs. In addition, because of their representation v. a. felt by the Commission to be particularly noteworthy.

As before, large and small companies can still be represented in the EU by regional, national and European associations . Even if some political scientists have predicted their loss of importance, they still enjoy an important position in the interests of the EU. Due to the sometimes very heterogeneous interests that associations represent at the EU today, large companies mainly use associations as an additional channel. This development has intensified since the Single European Act in the mid-1980s, when large companies no longer felt they were represented strong enough and so increasingly turned to their own lobbying.

Finally, some companies are increasingly using the further development of the European media landscape and the public to assert their points of view. Here company representatives seek contact with the media and European citizens in order to present their positions. The media then rely on the company's assessment of a specific EU policy being disseminated in the media. By influencing corporate interests, European voters should in turn establish contacts with their members of parliament and use them for / against a certain policy. However, these methods are legally and morally very controversial and difficult to prove.

Representation of the interests of civil society actors

Civil society actors are also trying to influence the European legislative process through lobbying. Its aim is to represent the interests of European citizens and to provide a counterweight to the profit-oriented corporate lobbyists. However, it is difficult to classify which associations and organizations belong to European civil society. In the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee on the subject of "The role and contribution of organized European civil society to European integration", the European Union defines organized civil society as "the entirety of all organizational structures whose members serve the general interest through a democratic process of discourse and understanding and which also act as mediators between public authority and the citizens. ”Furthermore, the European Commission expressly assigns European civil society a right of participation in Article 11 (2) of the EU Treaty , but there are far fewer lobbyists than the private sector Organizations that represent the interests of civil society.

At the European level, lobbying by non-profit organizations is characterized by three characteristics:

  1. It is often initiated by political institutions looking for potential partners who could be involved in the government process.
  2. Even if many of the concerns of civil society representatives are directed against planned or already passed laws, lobbyists at the European level work less with high-profile protests than they would at the national level. Because in order to get information from the EU institutions, the organizations have to act more cooperatively.
  3. Organized European civil society can mostly mobilize with national or global issues, whereas European issues are often not taken up to the same extent by the public.

Organized civil society as a contribution to democratic legitimation

The investigation of the influence of civil society actors in the EU is usually linked to the question of legitimation. In contrast to profit-oriented lobby groups, interference by organized civil society in the EU legislative process is often seen as a legitimation factor. As a representative of the combined interests of European citizenship, civil society should ensure more direct democratic legitimation of EU legislation. This is what the Commission wrote in the White Paper on European Governance : “Politics can no longer be decided only at summits. The legitimacy of the EU today is a question of citizen participation. "

Research is still divided on how successfully this claim is implemented in practice. Structural disadvantages vis-à-vis lobbyists from the economy, fewer resources and mostly more diffuse interests seem to prevent lasting influence. Against the background of democratic legitimation, the question is also asked whether civil society organizations are sufficiently democratic internally to be able to democratically legitimize influence at all. However, there are also some authors who suspect an increasing influence of European civil society on European legislation. However, mostly under the premise that the participation of civil society in the EU is an elite project, which is "a thematically-centered public [...] whose debates are more or less directly related to EU decision-making processes. "

So far there is no clear answer as to whether European civil society really contributes to increased legitimation. As long as the concept and definition of civil society are so different and imprecise, this will hardly be possible.

See also

literature

  • Alexander Classen: Representation of interests in the European Union. On the legitimacy of political influence. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-05410-6
  • Rainer Eising, Beate Kohler-Koch (Hrsg.): Interest politics in Europe . Nomos, Baden-Baden 2005, ISBN 3-8329-0779-3 .
  • Justin Greenwood: Interest Representation in the European Union. 2nd Edition. Basingstoke 2007.
  • Bernd Hüttemann : European governance and German interests . Democracy, lobbyism and Art. 11 TEU, first conclusions from "EBD Exklusiv", November 16, 2010 in Berlin. In: EU-in-BRIEF . No. 1 , 2011, ISSN  2191-8252 ( europaeische-bewegung.de [PDF]).
  • Klemens Joos : Convincing political stakeholders. Wiley-VCH Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-527-50859-4 .
  • Klemens Joos: Representation of the interests of German companies at the institutions of the European Union. Dissertation at the business administration faculty of the LMU Munich . BWV - Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-87061-773-X .
  • Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann: Representation of interests in the European Parliament . In: Jörg Rieksmeier (Ed.): Practice book: Political mediation of interests . Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-15547-0 , pp. 234-238 .
  • Tomasz Kurianowicz: No retreat to the national level: A discussion about European citizen participation . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 29, 2011, p. Nature and Science, N 4 ( online [accessed July 25, 2011]).
  • Thomas Leif / Rudolf Speth (ed.): The fifth power. Lobbyism in Germany. Federal Agency for Civic Education. Bonn 2006. ISBN 3-89331-639-6 .
  • Irina Michalowitz: Lobbying in the EU. Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-8385-2898-4 .
  • Rinus van Schendelen : The Art of EU Lobbying . Successful public affairs management in the labyrinth of Brussels. Lexxion, Der Juristische Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86965-194-1 .
  • Matthias Schlotmann: Representation of interests at the European Commission. Using the example of the legislative process in the field of environmental policy. Peter Lang GmbH European publishing house of the sciences. Frankfurt am Main 2006. ISBN 3-631-55100-2 .
  • Roland Sturm , Heinrich Pehle : The new German system of government . The Europeanization of institutions, decision-making processes and political fields in the Federal Republic of Germany. Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14632-7 .
  • Jörg Teuber. Interest groups and lobbying in the European Union. Peter Lang GmbH European publishing house of the sciences. Frankfurt am Main 2001. ISBN 3-631-37318-X .
  • Werner Weidenfeld (Hrsg.): German European policy - options for effective representation of interests. Europa Union Verlag, Bonn 1998
    • with Wolfgang Wessels (Ed.): Yearbook of European Integration 2010. Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ European Transparency Initiative.
  2. ^ Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann: Representation of interests in the European Parliament . In: Jörg Rieksmeier (Ed.): Practice book: Political mediation of interests . Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-15547-0 , pp. 234-238 . , here p. 237.
  3. ↑ THE EUROPEAN CITIZENS 'INITIATIVE.
  4. ↑ Press release of the Council of February 14, 2011 (PDF; 105 kB)
  5. ↑ EESC press release of 24 March 2010
  6. ↑ European Movement International: The Treaty of Lisbon and its Article 11 ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 57 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.europaeische-bewegung.de
  7. ↑ AGORA - video on demand.
  8. ^ Report on the prospects for the expansion of civil dialogue after the Lisbon Treaty.
  9. ↑ Cf. Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann on Art. 11, in: European Year of Volunteering Civic engagement as social cement. EurActiv.de , April 15, 2011, accessed April 15, 2011 .
  10. ↑ Joint Transparency Register Secretariat - Key Events, accessed on April 15, 2013 (PDF; 123 kB).
  11. ↑ Annual report on the Transparency Register 2012, accessed on April 15, 2013 (PDF; 1.1 MB).
  12. ^ Speech by Jean-Claude Juncker at the opening session of the European Parliament in 2014 .
  13. ↑ The EU's secret lobbyist charts .
  14. ↑ Excerpt from the publicly accessible working calendar of the President of the European Commission
  15. ↑ EU Commission on the question of transparency .
  16. ↑ EU Parliament to end secret lobby sessions
  17. ↑ Text adopted by the EU Parliament on the transparency of lobbying
  18. ^ A b c Florian Busch-Janser: State and lobbyism. Legitimation and instruments of corporate influence . 4th unchanged edition. polisphere library, Berlin / Brussels 2012, ISBN 978-3-938456-00-2 , p. 97-104 .
  19. ^ Jörg Teuber: Interest groups and lobbying in the EU . Peter Lang GmbH European Science Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 2001.
  20. ^ Ulrich Willems, Annette Zimmer: Lobbying: Structures. Actors. Strategies . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-90598-3 ( gbv.de [accessed on August 24, 2016]).
  21. ^ Opinion of the Economic and Social Committee on the subject of “The role and contribution of organized civil society to the work of European integration” , accessed on 24 August 2016
  22. ↑ Treaty on European Union (consolidated version) , accessed on August 24, 2016
  23. ^ Heike Klüver: Lobbying in the European Union. Interest groups, lobbying coalitions, and policy change . Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-965744-5 , pp. 140 .
  24. ^ Michèle Knodt: European civil society. Concepts, actors, strategies. In: Barbara Finke (ed.): Civil society and democracy . tape 18 . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, November 2015, p. 62-63 .
  25. ↑ Communication from the Commission of July 25, 2001 “European Governance - A White Paper”. COM (2001) 428 final , accessed on 25 August 2016 . In: Official Journal. C 287 of October 12, 2001.
  26. ↑ IRINA MICHALOWITZ: Analyzing Structured Paths of Lobbying Behavior: Why Discussing the Involvement of 'Civil Society' Does not Solve the EU's Democratic Deficit . In: Journal of European Integration . tape 26 , no. 2 , June 1, 2004, ISSN  0703-6337 , p. 145-173 , doi : 10.1080 / 0703633042000222367 .
  27. ↑ Hartmut Kaelble , Martin Kirsch, Alexander Schmidt-Gernig: Transnational publics and identities in the 20th century. Campus, Frankfurt 2002, p. 135-158 .