The ECPA is delighted to announce that Michelle O’Neill is joining the organisation as an Officer. Michelle O’Neill joined Apple in November 2021 to lead European Union Government Affairs. Prior to joining Apple Michelle was at Mars, incorporated in the roles of Global Vice President Corporate Affairs for Cocoa and VP Corporate Affairs for Chocolate Europe and Eurasia where she also sat on the region’s business leadership team. Michelle started her career in Brussels in 1996 as an intern at the European Commission and went on to work at the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU covering mainly environment and trade issues. This was followed by government and public affairs roles in the multinational corporations Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell Inc., and Ingersoll Rand/Trane Technologies.  Michelle  is Irish and lives in Brussels with her husband, their son and daughter and their  Beagle and Labrador dogs.

Instinctif Partners hosted an ECPA Insights with Mark Thorpe, Head of Thought Leadership, on “The digitalisation of everyday life: lessons for public affairs”.
To view the recording: https://fileshare.instinctif.com/dl/O4uSMQrPKj
ECPA deck – 050722.

Increasingly, organisations are using advocacy to bring about policy and practice change in a wide variety of areas, from public health to the environment. However, there are specific challenges in being able to evaluate the contribution of advocacy. On 4 March 2021, Dr. Glenn O’Neil, founder of evaluation consultancy Owl RE, presented an overview of the challenges faced, assessed various methodologies and the possible solutions that exist to evaluate advocacy and public affairs initiatives, irrespective of location.

Justin Greenwood, Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, made a presentation on 15 October 2020 during an ECPA Insights on Access and Influence at EU level: a comparison between NGOs and Corporates. This event drew a distinction between ‘influence,’ ‘success’, and ‘access’ to political institutions, and appraised the strengths and weaknesses of business organisations and NGOs as operators at EU level. 

Through our collaboration with Leidar as an ECPA “Knowledge Partner”, we invite you to complete our short survey aimed at assessing the effectiveness of advocacy/public affairs campaigning as part of your organisation’s EU public affairs strategy. Individual results will remain confidential. Focused on Trade Associations and Corporations, the survey will take no more than 5-7 minutes to complete, and will look to establish commonalities and differences in public affairs campaigns strategic approaches, activities, tools and tactics currently implemented towards the EU institutions. Please complete the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LeidarCampaignEffectivenessSurvey. The survey results will be made available in the form of a short report, with a launch and networking event planned for the 2^nd April 2020 late afternoon. Thank you for taking the time.

On the occasion of an ECPA Insights, Dr. Lukasz Bochenek, Managing Director at Leidar https://www.leidar.com, a communications and public affairs consulting firm, presented the results of a survey carried out with 50 European and international trade associations headquartered in Brussels, including large and well-resourced organisations, as well as smaller ones from across a wide range of sectors and industries. To find out what keeps trade associations leaders up at night and how they manage their EU advocacy strategies to the benefit of their members, please download the attached executive summary.

The ECPA is delighted to announce the nomination of Renatte Georgescu, Head of Corporate & Regional Government Affairs at GSK, as a new ECPA Officer. Renatte brings a wealth of experience in EU Public Affairs, having worked at the Unilever Brussels office as Deputy Head and through her involvement with the Society of European Affairs Professionals until recently as Vice-President. The other ECPA Officers include: Michael Burrell, Mella Frewen, Sebastian Gaiser and Thomas Reynaert.