The Treaty of Lisbon from a Lobby point of view
By Cédric Pierre-Louis on Friday 15 January 2010, 12:51 - Society & Politics - Permalink
After many setbacks (simplification of the Treaty, holding of a 2nd referendum
in Ireland, Czech President and Euro-pessimists opposition) the
Treaty of Lisbon entered into force on 1 December 2009. It is supposed to
"provide the EU with modern institutions and optimised working methods to
tackle both efficiently and effectively today's challenges in today's world",
such as globalisation, climatic and demographic changes, security and energy
(according to the European Commission website).
However, from a lobbyist point of view, the Treaty of Lisbon Introduces some changes and novelties which should change the rules of the "game". So for Eurodom, my ex-consultancy (where I worked 8 months as a fresh graduated trainee), it seemed necessary to make people realize how this new treaty will change the way we work and interact with European decisions makers. Consequently, I was in charge of achieving a 20-slides presentation for the General Assembly of the cabinet. At the beginning it was no big deal for such a powerpoint/keynote expert as I am. Nevertheless I worked hard on it with my boss, Mr Bally, and after some sleepless nights, and a working sunday afternoon, we managed to achieve the presentation he wanted.
The principal message we wanted to deliver was the following : the Treaty of Lisbon will reinforce democracy by providing the European Parliament (EP) with much more power than before. This is a good point for promoting the interests of European citizens, but that also signifies more efforts (and stress), more time, and more means for convincing a significant part of the 755 members of the Parliament. After all, Lobbyists will not suffer from this evolution; their work will just become a bit more complicated. In this economic downturn context, that probably means more jobs for experts in law and political sciences familiar with the EP functioning, which is a good news! Isn't? Anyway I hope you will appreciate this presentation and will not hesitate to write some comments about it.
You can also download the file: