by Paul Martin
Brussels — It is a place famous for its cafes offering 400 fine local beers, amazing culinary delights and a Grande Place that is one of the finest medieval squares in Europe. However, this city of just over one million has an importance far in excess of its size.
It is the heart of European decision-making; home of the European Commission, the European parliament, the Council of Ministers and other EU institutions, NATO, the Western European Union and several thousand international companies and bodies.
The dynamo in the Brussels powerhouse is the 20 member European Commission which has written more than 50,000 pages of EU legislation, governing everything from corporate behavior to eating habits. From its Breydel headquarters here, it dispenses the EU’s 90 billion dollar annual budget, and it exercises an awesome power over the EU’s 420 million citizens.
The other center is the 626-member European Parliament which is exercising an increasing influence over European decision-making from its brand new 300 million dollar great marble and glass monolith a stone’s throw from Breydel. Although this is the Parliament’s Second Seat — Strasbourg is the first — it is increasingly becoming the pivotal location. While the Commission is the initiator of laws and polices, the Parliament drastically modifies these and all but throws unwanted bills out.
With the fate of Europe in the hands of these two bodies and the Council of Ministers — it is no wonder that Brussels has spawned a lobbying industry second only to Washington DC. There are more than 3,500 special interest groups of varying types, with up to 10,000 people working in the lobbying sector. One authoritative directory of the Euro-trade organizations lists some 500 bodies that represent more than 10,000 individual national associations — and several million members.
Such is the intensity of the lobbying efforts on the EC institutions that both Commission and Parliament are drawing up codes of conduct for the interest groups that target them. The envisaged rules will be decidedly liberal in comparison with those in the United States, where all lobbyists are subject to tight measures, such as compulsory registration.
In the days of the Cold War the closest the Soviet Ambassador, or his Warsaw Pact colleagues, got to NATO headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels was the high steel front gate. Any diplomatic message they might have had were left with the security guard.
NATO’s Partnership for Peace has changed all that, and today Western visitors to NATO are likely to find themselves in the minority in its corridors, which now bristle with officers of the former Warsaw Pact nations.
An austere four-story building in a former car park now provides offices for military representatives from most of the 21 former communist nations, including Armenia which has joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace.
For the newly emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the former communist bloc, the EU offers a lobbyists’ kaleidoscope.
Full membership in NATO might be a long way down the track for these countries but they are making the most of the newfound-friendship with their once deadliest of enemies.
