H/Advisors is at the forefront of EU institutional affairs with María Lledó’s participation in the Summit’s opening panel. With a distinguished career in high-level diplomacy and EU institutions, María consolidates the premier European public affairs summit.
H/Advisors took a leading role at the launch of the Public Affairs Summit Brussels 2026, the flagship forum for institutional relations that gathers 1,200 professionals and policymakers in the EU capital.
María Lledó, Executive Chairwoman, European & International Affairs, at H/Advisors, was a key panelist at the inaugural session Competitiveness, simplification and Single Market: can Europe “thrive” again?. In this panel, moderated by the pan-European media outlet Rapporteur, María shared the stage with high-level institutional leaders such as Michiel Scheffer (European Innovation Council), Ralph Schmitt-Nilson (DG GROW, European Commission), and Karel Lannoo (CEO of the CEPS think tank).
Cutting-edge positioning in public affairs
H/Advisors’ presence in this key arena reflects its extensive weight in managing complex regulatory environments. Former Secretary General for the European Union for the Government of Spain—a role in which she coordinated the development of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2023—María Lledó brings first-class experience acquired over a solid career in high-level diplomacy and community institutions. This technical background allows the firm to position its advisory and stakeholder engagement capabilities at the very peak of the Brussels “institutional bubble.”
During the Summit, María outlined H/Advisors’ distinct approach to navigating today’s geopolitical volatility, arguing that traditional legislative monitoring is no longer sufficient. “Today, decisions in markets like the U.S. or China transform a company’s plans overnight. H/Advisors’ core value lies in the combination of a global perspective and deep local roots: an international presence that provides a comprehensive overview, combined with on-the-ground teams who intimately understand the political culture, key stakeholders, and local regulatory processes of each market to act with absolute precision,” she notes.
Throughout the discussion, she addressed three key critical questions for Europe’s future.
1. What is the most important priority for strengthening Europe’s competitiveness?
The first priority is to understand that competitiveness is no longer just an economic issue. It has become a question of political power and strategic autonomy.
The world has changed. The United States is increasingly focused on its own industrial interests. China is a major technological competitor. And economic dependencies are now used as instruments of geopolitical influence. Europe can no longer assume that its economic weight will automatically turn into political weight.
So the priority is to complete the Single Market. We have 27 Member States, but too often we still behave like 27 separate economies. That is a serious handicap against the US or China.
This is why I believe the so called 28th Regime initiative is so important. It is an optional European legal framework that sits alongside the 27 national systems. A company can be set up once, under one set of rules, and operate across the whole Single Market and it is a real opportunity for innovative companies to scale in Europe instead of leaving to grow.
But I would add something. Europe’s strength has never been only its market. It is also its social model. If we build a common framework for business, we must be equally ambitious on the social side. Competitiveness and social Europe are not opposites. They reinforce each other.
Mario Draghi gave us a clear diagnosis. We know what to do. What we need now is political will, and the readiness of Member States to accept difficult compromises.
2. What concrete changes in regulation would make the biggest difference without compromising EU standards?
We should start by rejecting a false choice: that Europe must choose between competitiveness and its social and environmental standards. Our standards are part of the European model, and they should stay.
But good intentions do not always produce good regulation. We have overlapping obligations, excessive reporting and, sometimes, 27 different ways of implementing the same European law. That is not better protection. It is just more bureaucracy.
I would focus on 4 priorities:
- Simplify implementation. A company operating in several Member States should not face fundamentally different procedures for essentially the same activity.
- Apply proportionality. An SME cannot be asked to comply like a multinational.
- Eliminate duplication and digitalise.
- Assess cumulative impact. Every new initiative should be judged not only on its political goals but also on its effect on investment, productivity and competitiveness.
But simplification must not become deregulation by another name. The goal is to achieve our European ambitions with fewer obstacles, not to drop them because we made them too hard to implement. Europe should be proud of its standards, and it must make them economically sustainable.
3. How does H/Advisors help its clients navigate this volatile geopolitical environment?
The role of strategic public affairs has fundamentally changed. It used to be about monitoring legislation and engaging decision-makers. Today that is not enough. Geopolitics, trade, industrial policy, technology, regulation and economic security are all interconnected. A decision in Washington or Beijing can reshape a European company’s investment plans, supply chains or market access overnight.
At H/Advisors, we are a public affairs and strategic communications consultancy, and our value starts with our footprint. We have offices in most of the 27 Member States, but also in the United States, the United Kingdom, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. That gives us a truly global vision, and the ability to see how a decision in one capital affects a client in another.
But global vision alone is not enough. What makes it effective is local roots: our teams know the institutions, the political culture, the stakeholders and the language of each market. In public affairs, you cannot influence what you do not understand locally. We combine both, global perspective and local knowledge, so clients can anticipate risks and act with precision wherever they operate.
Concretely, this means 3 things:
- We help companies understand not just what governments are doing, but why, and what it means for their business.
- It is not enough to explain what a regulation says. Clients need to know how it affects their competitiveness, their investments and their opportunities in each market.
- In a fragmented political environment, few companies can defend their interests alone. We help them build credible arguments, relationships and alliances, and communicate them effectively.
One last point. Public affairs should not be about obtaining exemptions or defending narrow interests. It should also help policymakers understand economic reality and design policies that work. Our role is to connect the political world and the business world.
Ultimately, competitiveness is a shared responsibility. Governments must create the right conditions, businesses must invest and innovate, and those of us in public affairs must help bridge political ambition and economic reality, so that Europe grows stronger economically and fairer socially.
A global technical bridge
Through this participation, H/Advisors consolidates its position as the indispensable strategic partner for corporations facing global challenges. The firm stands out for its unique capacity to connect business realities with EU regulators, backed by an international network that bridges global corporate vision with strict technical expertise across key world markets
