Best In-House Agency Collaboration award
The Chelgate team in Brussels was celebrating last week having won the ‘Best In-House Agency Collaboration’ award at the PRCA’s European Public Affairs Awards 2019. The award was given for our work with the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP) to establish a new way of working with the European Union.
Our aim was simple. Alongside LowCVP, we wished to develop a new working relationship with the EU Commission’s in-house scientific body, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) – a body of increasing importance in the formation of EU policy proposals.
This project has been a great success over the past twelve-months and ensured both Chelgate and LowCVP have become genuine stakeholders within the EU Commission’s scientific policymaking.
This engagement campaign was designed to move beyond specific individual lobbying projects and set up a flexible, forward-looking collaborative agreement with the EU Commission. Setting up such collaborative projects are not easy and require intensive research and engagement. However, as a result of this project, both Chelgate clients and LowCVP are in a far greater position contribute to scientific input and thinking into EU policymaking.
As those who spend time engaging with EU agencies, or even level two expert groups – will know, the JRC is an institution which lobbyists very much take a step back from and allow clients – and their respective in-house teams – to have frank and honest scientific discussions.
Our next step is to run testing in the JRC facilities with our clients and begin generating reliable data – collected alongside the EU Commission – to feed into future policy proposals.
