Andreea Vass, Ph.D. in Economics: LOBBYING OPPORTUNITIES, CONFUSIONS, MISREPRESENTATIONS and PUBLIC TRUST
 
A. Vass is a researcher at the Institute of National Economy of the Romanian Academy (November 2001 - present) and a collaborator to the Faculty of International Business and Economics at the Academy of Economic Studies.
During 2005-July 2007, she was an adviser in the Department of Economic and Social Policies of the Romanian Presidential Administration. Since December 2007, A. Vass is an adviser to the European Parliament.
 
Lobby activities are often likened to the misuse of authority and bad practices. Such parallels generate problems that easily spiral down into crises and conflicts, and the symbiosis of politics and business turns into an ambiguous platform. Why should we look into the core of the suspicions regarding the intertwining and overlapping interests of political and business communities? The answer: because in Romania public interest is often defined in a private or personal framework, whereas private interests are defined in markedly public terms. Confusion sets us clearly apart from the effective Israeli, American, British, Czech, Polish or Magyar lobbyists. The same confusion has a damaging effect: we are unable to efficiently handle institutional relations and public-private relations, be they national or international, that is, European. To what extent is the politics-business relationship deemed appropriate? Which are its constraints, prerequisites and possible sanctions? These are the questions which accompany our dilemmas.