How the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union cuts through the noise with EU Issue Tracker

AmCham EU speaks for American companies committed to trade, investment, and competitiveness issues in Europe, and aims to ensure a growth-oriented business and investment climate in Europe. “Our bread and butter is the single market and trade,” explains Stefano Marmo, senior policy manager at AmCham EU. “We also heavily focus on a breadth of issues, such as sustainability, digital, healthcare, and financial services, just to name a few.”

With a policy team of nine people and over 80 dossiers to keep track of, AmCham EU needed a solution to act as a force multiplier and help them cover all of their policy needs. “We were looking for a service that would allow us to follow all of our policy areas. It is challenging to find a service that can cover so many areas in depth.” In 2018, AmCham EU deployed FiscalNote’s EU Issue Tracker (EUIT), a service monitoring the EU policy landscape. EUIT tracks dossiers as they move through the EU institutions and combines human analysis — written by our policy team in Brussels — with technology to distribute the latest developments and analyses to clients.

Bolstering their Policy Strategy

Marmo and his colleagues now rely on EUIT for their day-to-day work and when preparing their long-term advocacy and outreach strategy. “There can be a lot of white noise and updates occurring that don’t necessarily change the course of your strategy,” explains Marmo. “EUIT provides fact-based and unbiased analysis of what’s happening at the EU level. It offers an objective look at what’s happening now and what might come next. It also provides relevant documents for context. This monitoring tool is really useful to strengthen our understanding of how dossiers evolve.” Finding the most relevant information at the right time can be a big time saver. AmCham EU needed a tool that allowed them to cut through the noise and get down to the crux of every issue.

Keeping Stakeholders Informed

EUIT has also helped AmCham EU’s policy team prepare for committee meetings and set policy priorities for the year. “We are a member-led association, meeting monthly to set the strategy and priorities for the coming months. We follow all issues, but some are more member-led,” says Marmo. “EUIT comes in handy for any issues we need to lead directly or where we need to have the latest intelligence. The tool also helps us prepare for member meetings and approach situations from an advisor’s perspective.” EUIT has become AmCham EU’s go-to tool for meeting preparation.

Coping With a Global Pandemic

With the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, AmCham EU moved operations online. “All our member companies were impacted by the pandemic. Many were working hard to ensure business continuity and provide support to the communities where they operate. We provided a service to our members through our COVID-19 portal to help them understand what was happening day to day, especially as measures were different across EU member states. We relied on EUIT for some of this information,” explains Marmo. AmCham EU also shared EUIT intelligence and analysis with their executive leadership team to inform them of the latest developments. “The EUIT team was key and very helpful during that time,” says Marmo.