Preliminary Agenda

Keynote Speech by James Kanter, American and British award-winning journalist and Brussels-based commentator on European Union affairs, formerly with the New York Times and now host of EU Scream

What when AI does the lobbying? (Joe Foti, Open Government Partnership)
This session explores the emerging role of AI in lobbying and policymaking, with a focus on transparency and democratic accountability. Building on ongoing work at CFG to track AI-assisted advocacy practices and develop potential transparency standards, it brings together perspectives from the public sector, media, and academia. By comparing evolving approaches across these fields, the session aims to identify common challenges, highlight good practices, and draw practical lessons for ensuring responsible and transparent use of AI in policy processes.
Uncovering Misleading Consensus and Lack of Transparency in Corporate Lobbying (Jana Hoess and Peter Webster, EIRIS Foundation)
The success of corporate lobbying depends on many different factors. One of those factors can be the ability to present a united front of ‘the industry’s position’ which carries a lot of weight with policy makers. However, research conducted by the Social Lobby Map demonstrates these claims can be misleading. Drawing on our research into lobbying around the EU CSDDD, this session will present practical examples of how misleading representations of industry unity are constructed and communicated. By looking into these practices, the session aims to contribute to broader discussion on transparency and accountability, and democratic legitimacy in corporate lobbying on social policy.
Spamming the Regulator: Corporate Strategies and Captured Research to Minimise Competition Oversight and Lessons on Epistemic Inequality (Helena Malikova, European Commission, Ioannis Lianos, University College London)

Regulation is facing myriad pressures from political polarisation to attacks on science and overreliance on interest-driven lobbies. Among the latter is the strategy of spamming the regulator. The strategy consists of an oversupply of expert economic reports that contain complex modelling and unverifiable assumptions, with the objective of overwhelming competition investigators while disguising the accumulation of market power. “Spamming” not only makes it harder to determine what is factually true but also diminishes the scope for shared, evidence-based understanding in public policy.
Why Deregulation Is Winning: Demystifying Europe’s Anti-Regulation Lobbying (Alberto Alemanno, The Good Lobby, Julia Manresa, AVAAZ, Liesbeth Van Den Bossche, WWF, Carlota de Paula Coelho, B Lab Europe)

Europe – similar to the US – is experiencing a deregulation moment framed as simplification and competitiveness. This session examines how anti-regulation lobbying has turned rollback into common sense, despite limited democratic demand for it. Drawing on emerging research, it unpacks the narratives, tactics, and beneficiaries behind the omnibus agenda, and asks how progressive actors can reclaim the debate. Bringing together civil society voices and corporate actors from across the advocacy spectrum, the session maps the rhetorical strategies driving the simplification omnibus agenda, identifies the fictions embedded in the competitiveness framing, and explores how progressive actors can reclaim the narrative.
Beyond Political Philanthropy: How Private Wealth Can Defend Civic Power (Neil Campbell, The Good Lobby, Elsa Özmen, Independent, Martino Cortese, Fondazione Nidi Fioriti, Samuel Sigere, CIVITATES)
Civil Society has had a bad year. Advocacy impact has been diluted by executive decision-making/maladministration in public institutions, political regression, funding gaps and anti-NGO rhetoric. Delays, restrictions and withdrawals of bilateral or European Commission funding continue to place more and more NGOs in survival mode. Narratives to undermine the role and space for civil society are abundant. This session asks what political philanthropy means when nearly everything is political, and how foundations can better support advocacy, resilience, and progressive change. It explores what philanthropy is doing, what it could do differently, and how private wealth can help defend civic power without replacing it.
B Corps and Collective Action (Carlota de Paula Coelho, B Lab Europe, Sarah Cerange, B Lab France)

How to keep impact-driven businesses engaged in advancing and scaling responsible business conduct while making sense of fast‐moving legislative agendas? Here we would like to present some of our coalitions, where B Corps convene to think outside the box – that is, beyond compliance with EU legislation – to innovate and improve corporate performance
Lobbying for the Youth and Future Generations (Jonathan Hoffmann, Bertelsmann Stiftung)
Future generations remain structurally underrepresented in political systems shaped by short-term incentives. This session explores key institutional design challenges, strategies for building political support for long-term governance, and the role of narratives in making future-oriented politics resonate beyond expert circles. Combining insights from political theory and practical advocacy experience in Germany, the session engages participants in exploring the tensions and trade-offs of representing future interests in democratic policymaking.
Who Speaks for Business? Trade Associations, Power, and Accountability (Dieter Zinnbauer, The Good Lobby
Peter Webster, EIRIS Foundation)
Business associations are central yet often overlooked actors in corporate lobbying. Drawing on REBASE findings, this session examines how they aggregate influence, shape policy agendas, and sometimes blur accountability. It will explore where governance and regulation fall short, and what a more responsible model of collective business representation could look like.
The Quiet Retreat? Corporate Advocacy, Policy Hushing, and the Future of Sustainable Transitions (Facundo Etchebehere, Ambition Loop, Julia Manresa, AVAAZ, Katrien Martens, The Protein Project, Sarah Cerange, B Lab France)
As climate, nature, and broader sustainability agendas become increasingly politicised, many companies are reassessing how visibly they engage in public debate. While some continue to advocate for ambitious policies, others are choosing caution, silence, or behind-the-scenes engagement – a phenomenon sometimes described as “policy hushing.” This panel will explore what this quiet retreat means for sustainable transitions. If companies that support the transition leave the room empty, do they risk allowing the enabling conditions for change to be delayed, diluted, or blocked by actors less willing to move? The discussion will examine the evolving role of business in shaping public policy on climate and nature, the risks of disengagement, and the conditions needed to rebuild trust, legitimacy, and courage for credible, responsible corporate advocacy in a contested political landscape.
Getting kids hooked: commercial determinants of health, lobbying strategies of addiction and counter-strategies to reclaim childhood (Amandine Garde, Liverpool University, Sebastien Fassiaux, ESADE, Juan Collado Perez, May Van Schalkwyk, University of Edinburgh)
Commercial actors have increasingly been implicated in the development of environments that promote addiction and poor health outcomes, particularly for children. These actors, which have included the tobacco and alcohol industries for decades, now also encompass the advertising and technology, the ultra-processed food (UPF) and the gambling industries… This panel proposes to reflect on the impact that the commercial determinants of health have had on our living environments, not least the digital environment that children inhabit, with a specific focus on 1) the lobbying strategies that they have deployed to get children addicted to their products, and 2) the counter-strategies that policy actors have developed (or could develop) to protect children’s physical and mental health from harmful products and commercial practices. It will adopt a comparative approach, considering several industry actors from tobacco, alcohol and UPF to gambling and social media, as well as various country case studies from Europe and beyond.
How To Campaign Under Hostile Conditions (Alberto Alemanno, The Good Lobby, Liesbeth Van Den Bossche, WWF, Julie Manresa, AVAAZ)
With USAID gutted, European donors pivoting to security priorities, and the aid funding landscape permanently reshaped, 2026 is the year we find out who survived the pivot, and who didn’t. The funding crisis is reshaping more than budgets, it’s forcing a fundamental rethink of how campaigns are built, run, and sustained. This session asks the harder question: not just how do organisations survive, but how does campaigning itself evolve when the structural conditions that enabled it are gone?
The Long Now: Lobbying as Future-Making (Dieter Zinnbauer, The Good Lobby)

Most accounts of lobbying focus on the present: get into the room before the deadline, insert your amendment before the vote, react quickly to the crisis of the week. This presentism is understandable, since policy windows are real and often narrow, but it misses a large and consequential portion of what sophisticated actors actually do.

Alongside reactive, just-in-time influence, there is a quieter and often more powerful form of lobbying that operates on much longer time horizons. It builds access infrastructure and relationships that can be redeemed years later. It shapes university curricula and the professional socialisation of future decision-makers. It invests in the intangible assets of societies: values, norms, narrative frames, and the imaginaries through which we picture possible futures. And it seeks to shape institutional mechanisms, from standard-setting bodies to scenario-planning processes, that synchronise political time horizons with corporate ones.

This session invites participants to step back from the urgency of the present and interrogate lobbying as a form of future-making. Reframing lobbying this way sheds new light on familiar practices and brings into focus a set of tactics and influence investments that often evade scrutiny precisely because their payoffs are deferred. A focus on the future also raises pointed ethical questions: who speaks for future generations in lobbying arenas, and what responsibilities come with the power to architect the world others will inherit?
Predictive Markets as the Latest Lobbying Manifestation (Dieter Zinnbauer, The Good Lobby)
Can lobbying still be regulated, and how? (Pauline Bertrand, OECD tbc)
How do Policymakers like to be Lobbied? An How to Guide on Effective Policymaking Influencing