Why foreign governments are paying lobbyists to make their case in Brussels

Lobbyists like to keep a low profile in Brussels. In fact, they don’t even describe themselves as lobbyists most of the time. Instead you’ll hear them marketing their expertise in political consulting, public affairs, government relations, strategic communications or “advisory services”.There are a lot of them here, working for clients to influence the legislative and regulatory beast that is the European Union, often with plenty of success. In the vast majority of cases, the lobbyists have been hired by a private company or industry group to bat for them in Brussels. Increasingly, though, the client is a country. READ MORE“We are freer to talk about a compromise, or some deal,” says Andreas Geiger, managing partner of Alber & Geiger, a lobbying firm that specialises in representing foreign governments. The company, which describes itself as a “lobbying powerhouse”, represented Panama in the aftermath of the Panama Papers offshore money laundering scandal. More recently it has done work for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and India. Geiger, who started out as a lawyer, explains that it can be useful for sovereign clients to have plausible deniability, or a layer of cover, in political dealings. A lobbyist from a “local” Brussels-based firm might be better placed to get through to an MEP or EU official, and could have more latitude to wheel-and-deal than a country’s ambassador. “We connect better with the legislators than the clients,” Geiger says. Foreign governments are paying lobbyists to get in the room with officials and lawmakers that matter. “When we go to our counterparts in the European Parliament, they can be more willing to negotiate,” Geiger adds. Knowing how and when to intervene and exactly who to target is important, he adds.The work pays well. Alber & Geiger’s contract to lobby for the UAE was worth between €300,000 and €400,000 last year, financial records show. For countries who have a poor record on human rights, a resolution criticising those abuses passed by the European Parliament could cause a public relations “catastrophe” domestically, Geiger says. The firm’s work for Panama involved talking up reforms undertaken to push back against its reputation as a tax haven and help keep it off the EU’s money laundering “black list”. They were hired by the Indian government to make the rounds in the European Parliament and head off concerns MEPs had about an EU-India free trade deal being negotiated. The UAE was worried that mounting evidence it was backing one side in Sudan’s brutal civil war would complicate efforts to build closer economic links to the EU, and scupper preliminary talks about a trade deal. So, Alber & Geiger mapped out a plan to lobby the EU institutions to keep “the trade agenda moving”, despite concerns about the fighting in Sudan. In fairness to the lobbying firm, they are transparent about their business and set out all the above in a section on their website titled: “Wins”. That’s not always the case. The Irish Times last week detailed how Anders Rasmussen, former Danish prime minister and Nato secretary general, forged a lucrative career after politics advising the governments of Japan, Taiwan, Armenia, Albania and Ukraine. Our reporting found multiple occasions where Rasmussen did not disclose these contracts while publicly echoing the talking points of governments he was being paid to advise. Sometimes governments just want to get an accurate read through the political fog.Glyn Ford, a former British Labour MEP, runs a small company, Polint Ltd, that advises clients on the lay of the land in the European Parliament. “We provide what I call political intelligence,” says Ford. Two of his long-term clients are China and Thailand’s embassies in Brussels. Ford tracks debates and other goings-on in the parliament to weed out what’s important from “all of the noise,” he says. There’s a big difference between a statement being made by the leader of the centre-left Socialists and Democrats, the second biggest grouping in the parliament, and an intervention by a nonaligned independent MEP. Ford, who is in the process of winding down his company, says he wasn’t meeting MEPs to encourage them to vote one way or another on legislation. “We made it very clear to the Chinese, we were not prepared to lobby on their behalf”, he says. European politics was rocked by a scandal four years ago, Qatargate, that forced the parliament to tighten up its transparency rules. Several individuals were arrested and bags full of cash seized in an investigation that centred on Qatar and Morocco paying bribes to influence MEPs and swing votes. The sprawling criminal inquiries are still trundling away, beset by legal delays and rows over immunity. The controversy shook Brussels awake to the lengths unscrupulous governments will go to get their way.