Dinners, roundtables and conferences have long been a feature of lobbying culture. What is changing is who organises them
Meetings with Ursula von der Leyen are notoriously hard to get.
But at Politico’s “28” gala dinner in Brussels, Stefan Oelrich did not need one.
In the gilded setting of the annual event – an increasingly prominent fixture in the EU influence economy – the Bayer pharmaceuticals chief was among the few able to approach the Commission president. The brief encounter, with executives from Politico owner Axel Springer in tuxedos nearby, was informal and, aligned with current rules, absent from any public disclosures.
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