EU policy on NGO’s is flawed for a number of reasons that are set out here.

1. Bias against wealth creation

Despite the legal instruments put in place by EU institutions to ensure the active participation of EU citizens, including Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and organized groups of citizens, there many barriers preventing their active involvement. This is due mainly to the complexity of procedure involved in taking action. The impression is that only well established CSOs based in Brussels have the capacity to use the instruments put in place by the EU institutions. In addition, there are no instruments to ensure the active participation of marginalised groups.

In advocacy work, you often want all the support you can get. You can think of possible support as arranged in concentric circles. The innermost circle contains you and your closest, most committed allies- your core group. The next circle out contains your natural allies- those individuals and organizations that share your beliefs and values, and stand to benefit or see their values confirmed by the success of your advocacy effort.

The latin word explanare is at the root of explanatory and it’s literal meaning is ‘to make level or to flatten’. The Fouloy’s Explanatory Lobbying Dictionary seeks to clarify and to explain the lobbying terminology. It provides all the details one needs to understand the lobbying field. It contains the definitions of the words used by lobbyists including elaborate entries on the technical terms, the meaning and usage of the words.

The Global Communications Alliance (GCA) is a network founded by 10 communications agencies from across the world. It includes more than 180 expert communication consultants in 15 countries covering four continents.

The partners have differing specialties, ranging from marketing and events to public relations and lobbying, and they work across a huge variety of sectors. It’s a grouping of trusted partners and friends that benefits partner agencies, their clients and individual consultants.

GCA benefits

The EU is giving voice to certain excluded groups and addressing important imbalances in the European advocacy landscape, but this function may not necessarily be unbiased. The EU only supports CSOs engaging in advocacy activities within the limits of the competences conferred by the treaties.

Measuring political influence is a hard problem. And depending on how you set about measuring it, you can come to very different conclusions. Brussels is a really crowded place. Every year, hundreds different organizations pay somebody to lobby on their behalf. But if you’ve ever tried to push your way through a wall of people in a crowd, you’ll know it’s hard to get anywhere when countless others are blocking the way. It is the same way with Brussels  lobbying. In a political environment where demands and requests and entreaties are everywhere, it’s really hard to stand out.

Brexit would be a game-changer for the EU. It would be an illusion to think that, the day after such a vote, the EU could continue conducting business as usual among the 28 Member States minus the UK.

One of the most effective things lobbyists can do to promote their  work is to cultivate relationships with journalists. Here are some tips for strengthening relationships with individual reporters and expanding and prioritizing your media database.

News Is a Two-Way Street:

The challenges of liaising with the media are in knowing what the media want, and in helping them to present images, ideas and information accurately and fairly. The news media can't be controlled - they have the ultimate control over whether the news angle you put to them is of interest to them, and in turn, to their audience.