43 posts
Millions more in EU propaganda
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There is a short piece in the Sunday Times (paywall)Ashton’s £8m PR bonanzaThe EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, 54, is to spend £8.5m on outside public relations consultants to try to raise the public profile of her new Brussels di...
Commission wrong to approve Verheugen’s lobby consultancy - new ethics rules must be Verheugen-proof
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The European Commission’s decision earlier this month to approve ex-Commissioner Günter Verheugen’s setting up of his own lobby consultancy firm went against the advice of the Commission’s own ethics committee. Internal documents reveal a comp...
Commission under fire over revolving doors scandals and ‘farewell bonuses’ – will it block Verheugen?
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After brewing for months, the controversy around the number of former Commissioners going through the revolving door into lobbying and lobby advisory jobs has finally boiled over. In the last few days, the six Commissioners that have moved into priva...
Brussels’ missing link: the digital position paper?
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Since Ivy Lee’s famous press release in 1906, media communication has evolved. Some would argue the pinnacle of this development is the social media press release. It’s nothing revolutionary in The Lobby’s opinion, but it does hit the nail on t...
They just don’t understand me!
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As a consultant in the public affairs sector here in Brussels I am beginning to sound a lot like many representatives of other industries I meet. The recent furor in the UK over ex-ministers allegedly seeking lobbying jobs with journalists posing as...
4 social networks for EU affairs people
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Whereas social networks grow up with more and more users and features and community management becomes a real specialty/added value, the EU bubble also wants to have its piece of cake. What are the main social networks for EU affairs people? How are...
Register now for European Public Affairs Action Day – 30 November
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Further to our recent post our blogs stats show a veritable stampede of readers (ok, 40 or so…) seeking to find out more information about the European Public Affairs Action Day. You will recall we have a panel at the 30 November event on ̶...
Whatever happened to... Fritz-Harald Wenig
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It's a year ago this week that the Sunday Times reported that a high-level official from the Commission’s trade department had offered to leak commercially sensitive information in return for financial rewards. Undercover reporters from the UK news...
Getting lulled and distracted: PR strategies in the European Web 2.0
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Yesterday, The Lobby, a blog run by the PR agency Grayling (Brussels), lobbied for better strategies of European PR and communications agencies:"PR is not about ‘pushing’ news, rather it is about creating relationships “with the greater communi...
EU lobbying scene not quite ready for next generation PR
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On Saturday Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times published an article that has made the rounds of the blogosphere in quite some fashion (a Google blog search for the article generates just over 14,900 hits). The article “Spinning the Web: PR in...
Is the writing on the wall for public affairs professionals?
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The Commission is due to evaluate the effectiveness of its voluntary lobby register, but so far, more than 70% of the companies in the Society of European Affairs Professionals (SEAP) haven't registered.Yesterday, the Society of European Affairs Prof...
Public affairs in a global world - a new internet resource
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Image via Wikipedia Over recent years, our work here at FH Brussels has become increasingly international in nature. The internet has of course contributed to this. In this globally connected age, the issues and policies that our clients care abou...
No Romanians in top EU lobby posts
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In an interesting argumentation (Romanian), Dan Luca points out that among the around 5,000 lobby and interest groups in Brussels, non is headed by a Romanian, in particular because of the status of new member state and the lack of industrial structu...
Sunday's reading: Dubious entries in the European Commission lobby register?
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After bringing up the GPlus-Affair some weeks ago, Brussels Sunshine now has taken a closer look at some entries within the EC lobby register that they find dubious.The question they ask is: Is the register really fostering transparency?EUobserver ha...
Them Lobbyists...
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Lovely story about the European Commission's register of Lobbyists on EUObs.Italian prankster spams EU lobbyist register The European Commission's voluntary online register of Brussels lobbyists has been hijacked by a mysterious mischief-maker who re...
A two-way street
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It’s good to see that the PSE group is not just streaming video from its website, but using it as a two-way street for communication. According to an announcement yesterday, the Young European Dream conference will be webcast, and those young E...
Reminder, start a blog today
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EurActiv, everyone’s favourite news source, interviewed Helen Dunnett, eCommunications Manager at the European Crop Protection Association, blogger and former interviewee on this blog. She continues to proselytize for digital communications,...
We have a winner: digital communications sweeps Brussels awards ceremony
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Last night saw the inaugural European Agenda Public Affairs Summit Gala Award ceremony, the second award ceremony of the season. Held in the (prestigious?) Renaissance Hotel’s Ball Room complete with US style oscar night voice overs (could they...
Can the net help companies plant roots in Brussels?
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Image by loungerie via Flickr A post last week on the website Wired got me thinking about the use of grassroots in Brussels. The author highlights that GM has sought to use its own employees to lobby federal US policymakers for the money it needs to...
One week before election 2.0 - new tools
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No, I not talking about the upcoming elections in the Czech republic, the Maldives, Lithuania or in Zambia, which are also taking place really soon. I’m talking about “that one”, the American one. I’ve been following the Techp...
Spring comes early to Place Luxembourg, or…
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how an energy company learned how to stop fearing climate activism and love grass roots mobilisation. Place du Luxembourg, the glamorous square in front of the European Parliament building, seemed to think that it was time to sprout a beautiful field...
It’s for you: NGOs fill the digital space in the Telecoms Package
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Image via Wikipedia Leading up to last week’s vote in the European Parliament of the Telecoms Package, it was striking to see the myriad of digital advocacy tools that were used by a group of NGOs called ‘La Quadrature du Net/Squaring the Net’...
Google ads for politicians
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Image via CrunchBase Expanding our reading beyond our traditional EN sources, we note that the use of Google Adwords for political campaigns has caught the attention of our Italian friends at left leaning daily la Repubblica. Surely our MEPs, Italia...
How visible is your brand on Youtube?
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Have you ever wondered how visible particular brands are on online social networks? There are some people who have. Visiting http://howsociable.com you can type any of 2337 brands (status for August 14th) and measure the level of their visibility...
Harvard Political Review and Politics 2.0
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Good to see the Harvard Political Review’s online edition turning its attention to the impact of digital on politics. Interesting point raised in the article - does the use of digital in campaigning encourage undue focus on senstionalist and c...
Public Affairs 2.0 - one year on
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Health warning - this is a self-indulgent end of school term post. It’s about time that some of us left the unseasonal sunshine of Brussels for southern climes. As we put the out of office on, set the voicemail up and send long to-do lists to t...
Been round the Brussels internship block one too many times?
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Image via Wikipedia Clocked up some institutional experience (read internships)? Hold far too many Masters degrees in things that your mates back home can’t understand? About ready for gainful employment after far too long gaining nothing but e...
Digital association decides to go digital
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Our eagled eyed ICT team member Magnus Norman spots that EICTA, “the voice of digital technology in Europe” has decided to join the growing ranks of the Brussels trade association blogging community. Given their sector; about time some ma...
Working with NGOs
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At the end of last week I met environmental NGOs from countries who have either just joined or are looking to join the EU. They were a very knowledgeable group of people who were genuinely committed to improving the quality of life in their own coun...
Read all about it: digital public affairs in print
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If you’re looking for an overview of our (my) world view in terms of how digital and public affairs fit together, then have a read of this article. Originally available in the “strategy and practice” (!) section of the print version...
Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2008
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Nominations are now open for the fourth edition of the annual “Worst EU Lobbying Awards”. All the details about the awards as well as the nomination form can be found here. This year there are two categories: “Worst EU LobbyingR...
Online campaigns and Facebook at the PES conference, Vienna
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I’ve just made presentation at the PES Activists conference in Vienna on how to campaign online. It’s all straightforward stuff if you’re a usual reader of this blog, but it might be a handy summary. The presentation can be download...
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you: some thoughts about Brussels lobbying
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My old MP Paul Flynn is in Brussels at the moment with the Public Administration Select Committee from the House of Commons and in his typically thoughtful and visceral way he has a go at the ‘dark arts of lobbying’ in Brussels. Look at B...
MEPs’ QDOS - another way to measure performance?
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I was informed a couple of months ago about a system - QDOS - that tried to compare the online profile of Silvio Berlusconi and Walter Veltroni, and Berlusconi scored higher. While writing my previous post about that I started to wonder: what MEPs ha...
Overview of prices for EU public affairs online campaigns
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A comparison of the prices for a 1 month advertising campaign on Brussels' online media shows that EUObserver is probably the place where you get most for your money.The print publication European Voice is listed for comparison (and because of their...
