Law and lawyers in Brussels’ world of commercial consultants

This paper argues that European public affairs is a growing labour market exposed to a gradual institutionalization, albeit important internal cleavages and fragmentations. The primary focus of the analysis is on the position and orientation of legal firms and consultants. The author agrees to scholarly writing by underlining that commercial consultants and lobbyists do not belong to the powerful actors and stakeholders of the European arena. However, he argues that these companies do have an important impact on European politics on another dimension of analysis, because they play an active role (along with the European institutions, amongst others) in the construction and organization of public affairs as a labour-market of paid work on the basis of specific skills, shared claims to superior knowledge and ethical commitments. While the legal profession tries to preserve its own professional status and privilege, and attempts to dissociate itself from the dusky work of interest representation and lobbying, it cannot detach itself from the steady institutionalization and professionalization of European public affairs, which is having indirect effects on European politics.