The project
Lobbying in Europe is a research project, aiming to provide a clear, systematic and up-to-date picture of the vast and dynamic industry of lobbying and Public Affairs in Europe, not only at EU level, but specifically in each of the 28 EU Member States.
The first product of the project is the book Lobbying in Europe. Public Affairs and the Lobbying Industry in 28 EU Countries (Palgrave Macmillan 2017).
The book
Using contributions from political scientists and lobbyists from each country, the volume offers a comprehensive review of the European public affairs industry. It tackles elements such as the institutional framework and the political culture of each country, the perception of lobbyists by public opinion and politicians, the professionalization and the numbers of the industry in each country, the regulation of the sector (through dedicated laws, self-imposed ethical codes, etc.).
This book is a genuine attempt by scholars, practitioners and researchers from across the EU to present original research and provide a systematic analysis of how lobbying and public affairs work in the Europe Union, specifically in each of the 28 member states. By pooling groups of authors from each EU country, we have tempted to provide the community of scholars and practitioners in this field with the most complete overview on the industry of lobbying in Europe today, as never done before.
What's new about it?
As written in the Introduction,
"This project has at least three remarkable features. Firstly, the dimension of the research, covering the totality of EU member states and not only a few of them.
Secondly, the analysis of each country, not limited to the aspect of lobbying regulation, but providing a wider overview of the lobbying industry of each country.
Thirdly, the method: not relying (only) on secondary sources, but directly involving “privileged witnesses” (the authors of the chapters), who – as experts, scholars or professionals of the field – could help us collecting data and complex information concerning the country where, in almost the totality of cases, they were from. Thus we could break the linguistic barrier and take advantage of a knowledge “from inside” of each political and professional system, finding information very hardly accessible otherwise."