Strategy and senior counsel for European public affairs.
The practice
Most European political and regulatory questions are best handled the way good public affairs has always handled them: understand the issue early, build the relationships, develop credible arguments, engage constructively, and find the workable outcome. Unchained PA practises that craft at senior level.
What the practice adds is the layer many organisations lack when an issue demands more than engagement alone: the ability to design and build the campaign, the coalition and the multi-market strategy around an objective.
The practice is founder-led by design. Clients work directly with Erik on every assignment, in the meetings, on the documents, throughout. Where mandates need execution capacity or local-market depth, Unchained PA works with established partners, including The Labyrinth Public Affairs in Stockholm, with Erik directly involved in the strategic layer.
Senior enough to advise. Operational enough to build.
The work
EU strategy and engagement
Political and regulatory strategy at EU level: reading the institutions, positioning the issue, and engaging where decisions are actually shaped. Particular depth in the European Parliament, where Erik led engagement for a multinational and served as the in-house reference point on the institution. Political assessment, stakeholder strategy and senior counsel on European political developments.
Campaigns, coalitions and external support
Some objectives need more than well-made arguments, they need support, organised. Campaign design, coalition building and third-party strategy; identifying and mobilising credible external voices; creating the platforms and structures through which support is built; and deciding who should carry which argument, where and when. Strategy that does not stop at the memo.
Pan-European strategy and coordination
European outcomes are rarely decided in one place. Erik has designed and coordinated political strategy across the EU institutions and some twenty national markets simultaneously, sequencing activity, aligning national and European teams, coordinating agencies and third parties, and ensuring that work in one market strengthens rather than undermines the wider objective. The craft is coordination and campaign architecture, not native expertise in every capital. It is a rarer discipline than it sounds.
Sweden–Brussels
Two political systems, known first-hand. Erik has spent his career in both: Swedish politics and public affairs on one side, Brussels and the EU institutions on the other.
Unchained PA supports Swedish organisations engaging with Brussels, European organisations engaging with Sweden, and files where the two political processes interact. The established partnership with The Labyrinth Public Affairs in Stockholm adds on-the-ground capacity on the Swedish side.
Experience
The practice’s experience runs through sectors where regulation is dense, politics is close to the business, and scrutiny is real. Working where stakeholder positions are adversarial, evidence is contested and the margin for strategic error is small builds a particular discipline, in positioning, coalition design and reputational care. That discipline travels: it raises the quality of the work in every political environment, not only the demanding ones.
When clients call
An EU file has become materially important to the business, and it needs senior strategic attention.
A European campaign has to work across many markets and Brussels at the same time.
Support has to be built around an objective, coalitions, third parties, credible external voices.
Swedish and European politics need to be connected coherently.
Leadership wants an independent strategic assessment before committing resources.
An established approach is producing diminishing returns, and it is time to ask why.
Erik Persson
Founder
Erik has seen the same political problem from three sides.
In politics: elected office at municipal and regional level in Sweden, and successive leadership roles in the party organisation, a first-hand education in how parties, politicians and political incentives actually work.
In consultancy: nine years with Nordic public affairs firms, latterly as Deputy Managing Partner of The Labyrinth Public Affairs in Stockholm, leading accounts for clients in complex and politically sensitive sectors.
In-house: senior European affairs at British American Tobacco in Brussels — leading European Parliament engagement and coordinating political strategy across some twenty European markets.
The three seats compound. He knows how decision-makers think, how advisers work, and what it is like to run public affairs inside a multinational — including the constraints his clients actually face.
He holds a Master of Laws in business law, works in Swedish and English, and lives in Brussels.
Thinking
Notes from practice: occasional writing on the craft of European public affairs — campaigns, coalitions, the politics of regulated markets, and, increasingly, AI and European technology policy. Written for practitioners.