EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - If you are a lobbyist in Brussels and you want to win over a public official to your client's point of view on a new law, whatever you do, do not invite the politician to a fancy evening reception.

It just won't work.

Such is the counter-intuitive and startling conclusion of a survey of European political elites on what sort of lobbying works and what does not.

Decision makers do not find evening receptions useful

Just two percent of decision-makers in the European institutions think that going to an after-work gathering with smoked-salmon triangles and tepid chardonnay is in any way useful in providing information on laws they are working on, says the report.

In what will come as a goodly shock to the European capital's powerful croissant, rubber chicken and light-nibbles industry, breakfast, lunch and dinner briefings are also all considered something of a waste of time in comparison to plain old one-on-one meetings and written reports, according to the Guide to effective lobbying, published on Monday (12 October) by Burson-Marsteller, one of the largest lobbying, public relations and crisis management firms in the world.