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How lobbyists want to befriend politicians behind the scenes of the EU

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Lobbyists are actively trying to come up with creative ways to influence politicians. Ideally, they want to be seen as friends. Adopted legislation to regulate lobbying within the EU does not cover the way it works in practice. Camilla Nothhaft has shown this in a thesis presented at Örebro University. She now works as a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Strategic Communication in Helsingborg.

Camilla Nothhaft has conducted research on how professional lobbyists in Brussels operate. She has studied how, where and under what circumstances lobbyists and politicians interact and the events that take place.

Previous research in this area has often involved other aspects of lobbying than the actual conversation between lobbyists and politicians, and when the topic has been discussed, there has been a tendency to perceive the communication between the two groups as strictly a transfer of information.

“My research shows that the current legislation, which is intended to regulate lobbying in the EU, does not correspond to the way things actually work. A lot of the lobbying occurs without the parties being aware of what is in fact taking place, and the roles are sometimes unclear”, says Camilla Nothhaft.

Camilla Nothhaft spent one week, respectively – from morning to late evening – shadowing seven different lobbyists and MEPs to observe up close everything that happened. She also conducted some 40 interviews.

“The most interesting result is the creativity demonstrated by the lobbyists in order to stand out and make themselves appear to be more than just any lobbyist. They are trying to establish relationships with the politicians, where their position as influencers is set aside in favour of other roles in the relationship. For instance, I noticed that they want to be seen as a helping friend”, says Camilla Nothhaft.

In her study, she was also able to demonstrate how lobbyists are trying to portray themselves as equal partners with the politicians, sharing the same interests. Their intention seems to be that they want to be able to meet with politicians under different circumstances and in roles other than purely lobbying contexts which take place in the offices of the MEPs.

Lobbyists employ different strategies and establish relationships with politicians with the objective of creating opportunities for friendship behind the scenes, where different rules apply.

“Here lobbyists can get access to not only underlying information, but also negotiate opportunities to cooperate with politicians in search of different but partially overlapping agendas. The lobbyists and the politicians can in this way work together to achieve their respective goals.”

“I was surprised by the amount of cooperation going on between the lobbyists and the politicians. They help each other and work together”, says Camilla Nothhaft.

Her results have already been discussed at a meeting in Brussels at the Globe EU, and Camilla Nothhaft hopes that they can be used as a basis also in EU institutions in connection with discussions on new regulations on lobbying activities in Brussels.

FACTS

At a seminar on 10 May at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, Camilla Nothhaft will talk about her research and the unwritten rules that exist between lobbyists and politicians. The seminar will conclude in a discussion on the questions: Is it possible to create smart government systems which are not affected by human reality? If more complexity, more revision and more controlled transparency does not necessarily create greater transparency in itself: How can transparency be achieved?