The lobbyists

You gotta spend money to make money, someone – possibly DelBoy – once said. And with around one billion euros spent every year on the lobbying industry that surrounds the European Parliament, gaining access to MEPs and Commissioners, someone must be making a helluva lot of money.

Lobbying on behalf of big business is big business in itself. Two experts, members of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation, writing in Scottish Left Review (SLR) say it is estimated that there are 1,000 lobby groups at work in Brussels, along with a vast army of PR firms and corporate-funded think tanks, not to mention businesses’ own ‘EU affairs’ offices.

It’s a cosy scene. So cosy in fact, add the SLR writers, the Society of European Public Affairs Professionals, the body which represents the lobbyists, “complained to the European Parliament in 2004 about the lack of physical space available for lobbyists in the building, many of which would be ‘forced to stand during committee meetings’.”