European affairs and institutional communication

Becoming a useful interlocutor for public decision-makers.

An organisation does not earn attention by asking for it, but by bringing something the institutions lack: field data, technical expertise, a reading of what a text will actually do. Our work is to identify what you have to offer, and to make it available at the right moment, to the right person.

How we read the trade

Political timing is prepared long before it opens.

A European file is rarely decided at the vote. It is decided in the public consultation, in the impact assessment, in the choice of rapporteur, in committee amendments — months earlier, when almost nobody is watching yet.

That is why monitoring and advocacy are one trade for us, not two separate services. Knowing that a file is coming is worthless if you have not prepared what you will say about it; an excellent argument is worthless if it arrives three weeks late.

What we do

Six components, assembled to fit your means.

Few organisations need all six at once. The first conversation is there to determine which ones matter to you, and in what order.

Mapping

Stakeholders and the decision-making ecosystem

Knowing who decides, who influences, who opposes and who might become an ally — across the EU institutions, national administrations and regional authorities.

  • Identification of the key actors in your regulatory environment
  • Analysis of positions, room for manoeuvre and calendars
  • Realistic entry points, including the ones you had not considered

Monitoring

Anticipatory policy and regulatory intelligence

Monitoring that does not merely report what has been published, but identifies the moments when an intervention can still change something.

  • Tracking of directives, regulations, public consultations and work programmes
  • Analytical notes and impact assessments for your internal decisions
  • Targeted alerts on the subjects that genuinely concern you

Advocacy

Editorial production and carrying your positions

Turning a technical position into a political argument legible to someone who is not from your trade, and who has twelve other files on their desk.

  • Position papers, consultation responses, proposed amendments
  • Speeches, lines to take, op-eds, articles and public interventions
  • Interest representation, within the applicable transparency rules

Dialogue

Events and stakeholder mobilisation

Creating the occasions where your organisation and decision-makers actually talk, rather than exchanging documents.

  • Seminars, roundtables and institutional dialogues in Brussels, Paris and the regions
  • Formats designed to give the people you want to see a reason to come
  • Facilitation of networks and coalitions

Seven years designing this kind of encounter as an administrator at the European Parliament, including more than twenty high-level seminars.

Reputation

Digital influence and crisis communication

What is said about you online is part of your file, whether you follow it or not. We make it a subject you handle rather than a blind spot.

  • Reputation monitoring and analysis of your information environment
  • Online visibility and professional community management
  • Crisis communication, prepared and then conducted

Training

Building capability in your own teams

Many organisations do not need a permanent provider, but teams able to do the work themselves. We train on real cases, not generalities.

  • Understanding European decision-making and its entry points
  • Writing for an institutional readership
  • Preparing a hearing, a meeting or a public intervention

Our framework

Transparency is not a burden we endure.

What we do, and what we do not

Interest representation before the EU institutions operates within a framework: the transparency register, declaration of mandates, a code of conduct. We comply with it, and we encourage our clients to treat it as an argument rather than a formality — an organisation that publicly owns what it defends is more credible than one that gets found out.

We do not accept assignments whose purpose is to conceal the identity of a principal, nor arrangements resting on intermediaries presented as independent. This is not only a matter of principle: such constructions end up documented, and they then cost far more than they earned.

How we work

Three stages, over long cycles.

01

Understand

What you do, what you want to obtain, and what you can legitimately bring to public debate. This stage often rules out objectives that were never reachable.

02

Position

Building an argument that holds against a contradictor, choosing channels and moments, and preparing documents before you need them.

03

Carry

Making contact, and sustaining it. European affairs rarely produce results within a quarter, and we prefer to say so beforehand rather than afterwards.

A file that concerns you, an interlocutor to reach?

The first conversation is there to establish what is actually achievable — including telling you when it is not.

Get in touch