PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY OF BRUSSELS-BASED REGIONAL REPRESENTATIONS

Regional representations have become a conspicuous presence in Brussels, well acknowledged as partners of the European policy community. Offices from EU Member States (and sometimes from non-Member States) have become a significant category of players in the Brussels-based supranational policy community. Brussels has acquired the status of international capital for regional and local lobbying.

Cross-regional and/or network-based funding opportunities that require sustained interaction with EU institutions as well as with other regional partners continue to attract the office's attention. Finding partners and mediating in the establishment of networks, which are actions that can lead to some form of EU financial support, is still a consideration today to maintain a Brussels office for the regions. Access to EU funds continue to be relevant, but the offices have both reoriented and broadened their raison d'être in Brussels beyond mere funding concerns. Initially regional offices were drawn to Brussels for a number of different reasons: a search for funding opportunities, possibility to lobby for regional interests, but also the growing pressure to be present in Brussels to expand or preserve regional powers in the home country.

Main Functions

The main functions of regional offices can be summarized in four activity areas: Information Management, Networking, Liaison between local and regional authorities and the EU, and the influencing of policy. The cornerstone of their work concerns the gathering, processing and filtering of information on EU policy and institutional developments. The information stream produced by the EU institutions is vast and overwhelming. Offices will scan the EU's current and planned measures to identify issues relevant for the home region. Effective signalling of relevant matters requires them to process and package the information in a meaningful way allowing the home region to determine its position on the matters at hand. Scanning and filtering measures in the EU policy and legislative pipeline is essential for them because it constitutes the first step towards a possible lobbying strategy. The EU's transparency policy, which renders many policy documents directly accessible on the Europa website, has not done away with the  office's role as an information channel. For regional authorities, having an outpost in Brussels is crucial because it allows them to obtain, besides the official documents available on official websites, crucial unofficial information on the subject. Moreover, the offices can monitor developments and debates closely and establish close ties with EU officials and policy actors. The issues or policy domains these offices are most interested in reflect in the first place the powers that typically belong to local and regional authorities: REGIONAL POLICY, SOCIAL COHESION POLICY, R&D, AGRICULTURE, ENVIRONMENT, TRANSPORT, INDUSTRIAL and ENERGY POLICY.

Gathering information is the starting point for the intervention of the regional offices, including for their other tasks, such as identifying funding opportunities, participating in trans-national networks, and influencing EU policy. At the same time, however, they also play an important role in providing the EU with information. Because of the small scale of their own administration, EU officials themselves seek information and expertise, and the regional offices (as "grassroots" or "civil society" representatives) are peceived to be valid and legitimate (public) sources of (regional) information and data. These offices are relevant partners for European Commission officials that enable the latter to develop programmes that meet the actual needs perceived at the grass-roots level.

Offices further liaise between the regions and the EU. Liaising between the home region and the EU institutions is a crucial function for them. Staff members of representations frequently visit their home towns or regions. They are in close contact with officials in local and regional authorities, but also with a number of key economic, social and political actors from their respective territories. They communicate information concerning the EU to their home constituencies through a broad variety of means (website, newsletters, etc.). They are well-positioned to provide assistance to actors of the home region on EU projects and programmes: They may mobilize local expertise to contribute to EU policy development, assist in partner searches, or even give practical assistance concerning contact persons and procedures in the European Commission. The offices also act as contact points in Brussels for administrators, interest groups, and even private citizens from the home constituencies. In fact, they receive a considerable amount of visitors from the home region, on an average 635 per year per office, since they appear more constituency-oriented and "user-friendly" than many other institutions in Brussels.

Regional offices are also strongly involved in networking and developing ties with other representations. They consider networking to be almost as important as gathering information. Through their location in Brussels, however, offices are able to play an important role in sustaining and developing such policy networks. These networks share some features of trans-national lobbies and private interest groups, but are nevertheless more modest in their goals. They are more oriented towards exchanging information and disseminating best practices than towards exercising political pressure. Besides such interest-oriented networks, regional offices (and their supporting regional administrations) also develop specific trans-national partnerships with a limited number of other regions and organizations in Brussels. Such partnerships often express the strategic choice of regional administrations to promote international co-operation. Sometimes, such partnerships lead to the creation of a collective inter-regional representation in Brussels. The pooling of several offices in one common location is occuring increasingly with the arrival of new offices in Brussels, as it enables the newcomers to be integrated into the new policy environment more swiftly.

A fourth important activity area of regional offices concerns their attempt to influence the EU policies. Most of them claim that they seek to influence the EU policy process and thus engage in substantial lobbying efforts to that effect. The representations of regions act very much like other interest groups and lobbies when they seek to influence policies. They contribute to the policy process by producing position papers, seek to establish issue-coalitions and networks to increase their credibility and impact on EU policy-makers, and participate in the wide array of consultation formats organized by the European Commission on important policy issues (e.g. expert groups, white and green papers, surveys, panels, public hearings, and the Commission-sponsored conferences). Offices also increasingly target (national) members of the European Parliament and national delegations in the European Parliament to get support for their lobbying efforts.

The Committee of the Regions (COR) offers regional entities their own institutional framework within the European Union, but regional offices are often sceptical about the impact that the COR, as a consultative body, has on policies. Although it is supposed to be the natural spokesperson of local and regional interests within the Union, they consider the COR to be an interlocutor of limited importance that does not warrant a lot of attention when they seek to influence policies. The COR is often seen as a vehicle through which the represented regions can capture the attention of the European Commission or the Council Presidency rather than an institution with a decisive impact on EU policy outcomes.

Conclusion

Brussels can indeed be considered the capital of the Europe of the Region. The activities of the regional representations in Brussels, present, however, a  specific profile that partly distinguishes them from classic interest groups and lobbies. The activities of regional representations in Brussels are broader and not focused solely on direct lobbying and interest representation. The diversified range of functions that regional offices fulfil is one of the reasons why they are likely to be a permanent fixtures in Brussels. Their presence is not dependent on the availability of EU funds or the COR's political influence. The varied tasks that they perform make them relevant and useful to their homeb regions even if certain policy changes or the end of funding opportunities force the regional offices to reorient their foci.