Go transparent or go home? The journey of a professional lobbyists’ association from the rejection to the diffusion of EU's lobbying regulations

The EU institutions never formally tried to export their transparency policies on lobbying. Yet, over the years, these policies came to dominate the definition of how lobbying should be “seen to be done” even with actors initially opposed to both Europeanisation as EU-isation, and to lobbying regulation as such. How to explain this normative power of the EU’s transparency policies? This paper looks into the appropriation of EU’s policies on lobbying by an improbable actor - a European association of national level lobbyists founded in 2011 by Italian and Spanish lobbying professionals. The association initially defended European collaboration beyond the EU’s borders and power centres, associating lobbying professionals from non-member states, and taking positions against lobbying regulation in favour of self-regulation. As EU regulation evolved and pressure at national levels emerged for more transparency in lobbying, the association nevertheless turned to the EU rules as a gold standard. It openly encouraged its members to promote the EU rules as a benchmark when in contact with national public officials. Based on observations of the association’s annual meetings since 2014, the paper investigates how and why a non-EU professional association converted to an intermediary in EU policy circulation, building EU-based representations of “good lobbying” into their own self-definition as professionals.