"Lobbying" in the EU

Today we are glad to have a speaker, Mr. Linus Turner, from Brunswick Group to speaking around “lobbying” in the EU. Lobbying is “the effort to influence government public decision making toward favored outcomes on subjects deemed relevant to those directing or funding the lobbying effort.”
This is quite an interesting topic to me because we never have this concept in Taiwan. Sometimes trying to persuade or to cooperate politicians to pass regulations in favor of one’s interests would be treated as dirty or not ethical. As Mr. Turner mentioned, lobbying is regulated and often seen in the US and UK, but not in any other counties, including those EU Member States, which makes lobbying a new merging concept in EU.

From the business perspective, lobbying can important as, defensively, they need lobbying
1. to protect the company’s license or bottom line to operate.
2. to ensure fair competition across markets.
or, offensively,
3. to improve corporate image and/or pre-empt regulatory action
4. to create the perfect regulatory environment for a product or a service.
As a British Politician said,
“If I enact a piece of act that has negative effect to your business and I don’t know, that’s not my fault, it’s yours.”
And considering the size of the EU market and the power of the regulation, it is quite important for companies to pay attention and even actively participate the lobbying activities.
The presentation was going smooth with vivid examples and great discussions between classmates and speakers. One good thing about this trip is that you get to see different topics “on-site”, so I believe I had quite a good lesson today. :)