Although I feel like I am 35 in my head, the reality is that I am retiring soon. My career started in 1982 (I’ll spare you the maths, this means 42 years) as a researcher at the Consumer Law Research Centre of UCLouvain in Belgium. I was one of a handful of consumer lawyers in that field in Europe at the time and there was a sense of pioneering all around us. The EU institutions had come up with the first Consumer Programme in 1975 (coincidentally on my birthday) and were working on the first legislation aimed at protecting consumers. It was a thriving period that, in hindsight, offers many lessons for today.
1. Advocacy is not a sprint, it’s a marathon
To be a successful consumer advocate, you need to prepare for uphill battles against powerful establishments and companies. Vision and strategy must integrate the need for restless conviction, accumulation of evidence combined with elevator pitches. And be ready to face changes of decision makers whenever there’s a new election. That means that you must start the advocacy race all over again.
When I was still a naive young researcher working on European collective redress back in 1984, I innocently claimed that I would not retire before having an EU-wide collective redress system for consumer complaints. Over the decades, I started to believe I would need to work forever. But the directive was eventually adopted in 2020, almost 30 years later, in time for my retirement.
Like for heptathlon athletes, advocacy is not only about endurance, but it is also about diversity of skills: expertise, interpersonal skills, communication and negotiations power, perseverance, and a good dose of stubbornness.
2. Less is more: pull the brakes on advocacy overload
More than ever, there is a tendency to jump on the news and feel compelled to be part of the feed. Hyperbolic congratulation letters, long technical statements, last-minute amendments, alarming press releases at every single procedural step of legislation…It is now easier than ever to communicate to policymakers at the highest levels.
The information overload they [policymakers] must cope with is just mind blowing
However, as long as policymakers are not replaced by machines, the information overload they must cope with is just mind blowing. I regularly tell my colleagues to just relax: successful consumer advocacy is not judged against the quantity of material that you dump on the decision maker, but on the strategic moment where your input will make a difference. This is a token of respect not only towards the decision maker but also your staff, when burnouts are the disease of the decade.
3. It’s not about the EU institutions, it’s about the people
While the EU institutions have developed a strong body of structures and regulations that promote consumer policy, I’ve observed first-hand that it is the people working within them who have been consistently pushing the boundaries of EU competence and ambition towards consumer protection.
They saw that consumers too would benefit from such regulations, breathing cleaner air and getting lower bills
The change at the top of Competition Services between Commissioners Almunia and Vestager in 2014 implied a major change of attitude towards the Googles of this world. When Commissioner Barnier realised that the banking sector was steering the meetings preparing the Single European Payment Area (in place since 2014), he told bankers to give consumer representatives the floor. This marked the start of a systematic constructive relationship between the consumer movement and the Commission services in charge of retail financial services.
Another fantastic game changer took place in 2012, when the then Climate Commissioner Hedegaard invited me to share the consumer perspective at a press conference on cutting car CO2 emissions. It showed that policymakers across the EU institutions had become aware that this was not just about saving the environment. They saw that consumers too would benefit from such regulations, breathing cleaner air and getting lower bills at the petrol station. This was confirmed four years later when EU Commissioners Frans Timmermans and Jurki Katainen offered to convene the press in our offices. The Ecodesign measures were blamed to kill innovation back then, and Commission high officials teaming up with consumer groups to save this policy spoke volumes.
Above: Monique Goyens (right) and then Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard (left) in 2012
But it is not only the Commissioner level that matters. I am grateful to many EU Commission officials – whom I will not name (to respect their privacy), who demonstrated openness to our concerns and suggestions and fully understood the need for action. All officials and those who support them – such as MEP assistants – are key resources for constructive advocacy. They prepare decisions, reports and defend (or not) progressive consumer policy initiatives.
4. Never give up your advocacy goals
Some consumer files are difficult to promote, because the other stakeholders are just so powerful that it is the traditional David vs Goliath power play. I’m thinking here of sectors like financial services, Big Tech or energy. However, continue building up your body of evidence, regularly provide a booster when a new EU consumer policy is being prepared. The change of people in charge will bring you new interlocutors. It is hard work to build a new relationship from scratch, but it is also an opportunity to inject new energy into the initiative you are pitching.
It takes time to be heard. Let’s take the example of social media, which has become a major vector of unverified news, putting our democracy at risk. When I was a member of the Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on the fight against misinformation, I consistently called platforms’ bluff as soon as 2018. But I was alone, as my fellow group members and the Commission were still in honeymoon mode with Big Tech and believed their ‘trust-us-we-know-how-to-handle-it’ mantra. Well, we all know now where this ended.
Further down the (long and winding) road, together with other civil society groups, consumer organisations nevertheless secured some hard-fought provisions in the Digital Services Act this year. That it will be attacked for decades in court by the companies is another story.
5. No blame, no cheating, but solutions
The EU lobby world is full of blaming, shaming, and cheating – think of undocumented figures and baseless claims. A powerful response to crying wolf attitudes is to go for the opposite: be polite, constructive and well documented.
If markets would function well without policy intervention, this would be known by now wouldn’t it?
As consumer organisations, we are blessed to be able to rely on a solid body of people’s lived experience that our members from across the EU channel through to us. It is our job to inform EU decision makers with this real-life feedback on why there is a need to intervene in markets. And fundamentally, we can rely on a simple observation: if markets would function well without policy intervention, this would be known by now, wouldn’t it?
6. Don’t apologise for being an NGO
I am old enough to have experienced the marginalisation of NGOs, including consumer organisations, where the main objective of some decision makers was to keep us quiet. Over the years, however, thanks to the professionalisation of our networks, but also to our constructive participation to the EU processes, we were able to conquer our seat at the decision-making table. Not only EU policymakers but also private sector stakeholders have come to consider consumer organisations as valuable discussion partners. Not saying that sometimes they would still prefer us to stay quiet, but our legitimacy is no longer put into question.
And that is what I am most proud of.
(1st photo credit: Knack)