The 64-page paper titled "Spin doctors to the autocrats: how European PR firms whitewash repressive regimes" reviews more than a dozen controversial cases documenting "repressive regimes outsourcing their diplomacy to public relation specialists, lobbyists and front groups."
In particular, it was reported that some African leaders, accused of corruption and war crimes, hired PR experts from Europe to handle their election campaigns and help improve their image abroad.
The report quoted Andrew Stroehlein, the European Media Director at Human Rights Watch, as saying that leaders of authoritarian regimes justify spending large amounts of money on top-level PR campaigns because they live every day in paranoia and fear of rebellion.
"Ironically, it would actually be cheaper and more effective for these regimes to just release political prisoners than to pay firms around Europe to try and get meetings and media coverage and influence, to attempt to reputation-wash dictators. But that's the mentality of authoritarianism," Stroehlein told the CEO.
The study also looks at less-dire, business-related cases, including that of Israeli EU lobbyists successfully steering a major 2012 EU-Israel pharmaceutical trade deal despite growing international criticism over the Gaza Strip blockade, a failed deal involving Russian companies and Western PR experts over European gas interests amid international sanctions over Ukraine, and Bahrain, despite widespread and well-documented repression of ethnic minorities within the country, enjoying an expensive professional image cleansing.
Authors of the report urged Brussels to change certain rules of legislature procedure, including the mandatory and legally-binding registration of lobbyists.
