AN EXPERT IN EU affairs has said that the role of NGOs in Brussels is much greater and more positive than lobbying, suggesting the groups give greater access to the public into the European Parliament.

Rory Harte, the director of strategy at the European Movement Ireland – a non-profit group which educates the public on the EU – said the work of lobbyists and non-governmental institutions is “not necessarily as sinister as it sounds”.

At a joint event between The Journal and the University of Limerick on Monday, Harte suggested that the groups needed to be protected as their advisory roles for EU legislation can later benefit society.

As the second biggest lobbying market in the world, only behind Washington DC, groups and NGOs can have close, and ultimately consequential, relations with people within EU institutions.

This, however, is neither as sinister nor as complicated as some may think, Harte says.

The director of strategy said that while some lobby groups are tasked with furthering the priorities of large tech and pharmaceutical companies, there are also “wider, European-level platforms for civil society [...] that can help you get your voice out in Europe”.

Those levers are there and they’re easily accessed, just people don’t necessarily know about them and groups don’t know about them.”

Harte said that much of the work that European Movement Ireland does “is both making people aware of those processes, but also putting them in touch with MEPs” – to allow the public to lobby MEPs themselves for change.

In 2022, the 10 highest-spending lobby groups working in the EU represented companies such as Apple, Meta, Volkswagen, Shell, and Huawei – while groups concerned with civil society issues struggled to keep up with funding.

But Harte said that this arrangement could change.

“The EU does a lot of funding programmes as well for smaller civil society organisations,” he said, adding that the institutions also provide schemes in which the Parliament does not play a role.

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Harte said organisations such as Access Europe is one such example of this type of funding, which enables the less commercially-focused groups to inform the public of how the EU impacts them on a “day-to-day level”.

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This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.