Successful representation of interests requires procedural competence / Treaty of Lisbon leads to a paradigmatic change in EU lobbying

Brussels/Berlin/Munich (ots) - As a result of the Treaty of Lisbon
the basic conditions for successful communication between politics
and business have changed decisively - the structures of European
decision-making in the EU and its Member States have now become
increasingly impenetrable even for large international companies. In
practice, the companies do not lack content-related competence, i.e.
good arguments for their own concerns, rather there is an increasing
need for procedural competence, i.e. extensive knowledge of the
formal and informal decision-making process and effective
opportunities to participate in it.

Dr. Klemens Joos, CEO of EUTOP International GmbH, comments as
follows on this subject: "In particular, the Treaty of Lisbon
requires a paradigmatic change for the representation of interests -
content and arguments are necessary, but they must also be
communicated to the right recipients at the right time and place,
which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the increasing
complexity of the process and the plethora of European and Member
State decision-making levels. Procedural competence is therefore at
least as important for effective political communication as
contentual competence. Without procedural competence there can be no
success in political representation of interests."

In practice, this can be seen in the example of the far-reaching
changes in the European decision-making process resulting from the
Treaty of Lisbon. For example, up to now for decisions of the
European Council the principle of unanimity has prevailed. The Lisbon
Treaty has now introduced the principle of majority in many areas. Up
to now, if a company managed to convince the representatives of its
own Member State in the Council of its cause, no decisions against
its own interests could be made. After the Treaty of Lisbon this is
no longer the case - when the majority principle applies the votes of
one or only a few Member States can achieve little unless they
achieve a blocking minority.

Upgrading the co-decision process as an ordinary legislative
procedure and therefore a regular legislative instrument of the EU
has had similar consequences - as a result of the related mandatory
involvement of the European Parliament in virtually all legislative
measures of the EU which are relevant for companies, purely national
representation of interests is de facto condemned to failure. This is
exacerbated by the fact that the work of the parliament is not
oriented towards the executive, unlike at the Member State level. For
each matter new coalitions have to be forged across different
factions and different Member States. There are no government and
opposition factions.

The principle of a European procedural approach and the importance
of procedural competence in the representation of interests was
recognised by Dr. Klemens Joos at the end of the 1980s and put into
practice by him in 1990 with the formation of EUTOP International
GmbH. With his doctorate published in 1997 ("Representing the
Interests of German companies with the Institutions of the European
Union', Faculty of Business Administration at the Ludwig Maximilian
University of Munich) he laid down the scientific basis for the EUTOP
service model' yet at that time when the EU had only 15 Member States
and the principle of still largely applied in the European Council,
the co-decision procedure only being applied in a small number of
legislative acts. In his book "Lobbying in the New Europe -
Successful Representation of Interests After the Treaty of Lisbon',
published in 2010, Dr. Joos further deepened on this approach, taking
into account the far-reaching reforms brought about by the Treaty of
Lisbon.

The theory developed by Joos on procedural competence is
increasingly also being adopted by other authors, for example Daniel
Guéguen, who in his recent book "Reshaping European Lobbying"
differentiates between "technical components" (knowledge of the key
content and arguments) and "procedural components" (knowledge of the
decision-making processes and procedures) and attributes equal
importance both components for the success of an interest
representation strategy (backed up with procedural examples).

Joos' ideas and therefore EUTOP's service approach are empirically
confirmed by the company's success story, which now spans a period
of more than twenty years.

Press contact:
Bruno Seifert
Tel. +49 6133 5090880
Fax +49 6133 5099098
Mob.+49 171 33 22 434