REAL PROFESSIONAL LOBBYISTS IN BRUSSELS

There are about 3,000 interest groups in Brussels and they employ roughly 16,000 people as follows:

Number of Employees by Main Interest Groups Category

1. European Trade Associations and National Trade Associations: Estimated 5,000
2. Corporations: Estimated 2,000
3. Lawyer's Offices: Estilated 2,300
4. European Affairs Consultancies: Estimated 1,300
5. European Trade Unions: Estimated 100
6. Representation of Territorial Collectivities: Estimated: 1,500
7. NGOs: Estimated 4,000
8. Think Tanks: Estimated: 300

Rather than calling all these people 'Lobbyists', we prefer to say that there are roughly 16,000 people working for interest groups and/or working in the field of interest representation in Brussels.

From our perspective a ' Real Professional Lobbyist' is one who is actually asking for a meeting, knocking on doors, meeting with EU officials. Based on this definition, we believe there are about 5,000 real professional lobbyists operating in Brussels.  Our rule of thumb is that for each real professional lobbyist there are more or less 3 people who back up their work (clerical and administrative functions, secretarial, communications, policy research, public relations experts, marketers) as support personnel.