From retirement job to demanding EU career

Thomas Tindemans, 44, a counsel in the law firm White and Case, stands out from the more uptight Brussels suits. He is modest and amusing. Flemish, he is parfaitement bilingue and his English is so good that he can clear his throat in either BBC or estuary accents.

He straightforwardly describes himself as a lobbyist, about which trade, he says, many detect a "fragrance of indecency". But he is robust in defending an activity he sees as legitimate: "The Commission represents general European interests, Parliament represents the voters, and the Council is where the countries negotiate. Lobbyists place ideas and arguments into that game. It’s not a matter of dirty lobbyists versus democratic decisions. It’s never that simple or one-sided."

Tindemans studied law. He had an early career as a musician and radio station entrepreneur, and in the late 1980s marketed Belgian beers in America.

This proved a fast-track business education, cut short by the stock-market crash of 1988 and a cut in the Belgian quota of green cards. He was conscripted to work for his father Leo, a former Belgian foreign minister and prime minister, in the EU-ACP assembly and in 1992-4 in the European Parliament, where his father was president of the centre-right EPP Group. That was his fast-track political education, taking in the fall of the Berlin Wall, transition in South Africa, monetary union, German reunification, and Maastricht. He was well-blooded for his next job, with the Belgian boutique law firm of Forrester and Sutton in the mid-1990s.

It, and Tindemans, were subsequently swallowed up by White and Case. He is among the 200 political specialists working for the top ten law firms in Brussels such as Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer and Cleary Gottlieb. White and Case, with its big new offices on the rue de la Loi, has 48 lawyers and two consultants on its books.

Adjusting the rudder of the European ship was once a matter for discreet conversations between hommes d’état or diplomats. All that changed in the run-up to direct European elections in 1979. There are now roughly 2,600 permanent offices of special interest groups in Brussels, a third of them trade federations, the rest specialised consultancies, companies, national and regional associations and representations, and a handful of think-tanks. The lobbying army of around 15,000 range from schmoozers of the press to those offering legally and economically underpinned arguments.

The growth of lobbying reflects the complexity and fragmentation of European decision-making, especially since the Single European Act of 1986, with increased qualified majority vote in the Council, and co-decision with parliament. Tindemans’ work takes him all over the world, but he will invariably be in Strasbourg for Parliament plenary sessions and "36 hours of wall-to-wall meetings".

Lobbyists’ targets are not in the main ‘sexy’-sounding committees like foreign affairs or agriculture. Neither of these actually makes policy. Industry, transport, research and environment are more to the point, because they can and do.

Tindemans notes a profound shift in Brussels since the torrent of internal market regulation in the 1990s. Now, there is little demand from member states for new legislation. The focus is on compliance, and therefore on the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

For Tindemans the essence of lobbying in the EU is finding solutions, which also implies a broad sympathy with the European idea.

To get into a serious law firm you need a decent law degree and a thorough grounding in economics, hands-on experience of the European institutions (minimum a stage), understanding of how decisions are made in Brussels, integrity, and at least three languages. Lobbying, once a retirement job, has become difficult and demanding of high qualifications; the pay has also improved. Starting salary at White and Case: about €5,000 a month before tax.

Thomas Tindemans, 44, a counsel in the law firm White and Case, stands out from the more uptight Brussels suits. He is modest and amusing. Flemish, he is parfaitement bilingue and his English is so good that he can clear his throat in either BBC or estuary accents.