Who are we ?
CRISP
The "Center for Socio-political Research and Information" – CRISP – is an independent organisation consisting of approximately fifteen employees, whose objective is to study political decision-making in Belgium and within the European context. Since 1959, the focus of CRISP has been to demonstrate the issues surrounding political decision-making, to explain the mechanisms via which it operates and analyse the role of the key players participating in it, irrespective of whether these key players are political, economic, social, associative etc. Its objective is to make available to the general public the explanations that it needs to understand the Belgian socio-political system. To do this, the CRISP team makes every effort to deliver high quality information, in the interests of accuracy, relevance and pluralism. It is supported in this endeavour by many external collaborators from the scientific or socio-political worlds.
The information is provided to the public mainly via publications with a scientific and pedagogical character: the publications edited by CRISP, the Courrier hebdomadaire (weekly Review), the Dossiers du CRISP (case studies) and the Analyses d'éducation permanente (analyses for continuing education), etc. It is also provided by participating in events or training and by various media broadcasts.
The Economics Unit
Research is organised in two distinct organisational units. On the one hand, the Social and Political Unit studies political parties, organisations representing social causes and various pressure groups. On the other hand, the Economics Unit has, for several decades now, been studying business groups, which are the most important economic power structures and which are clearly key powers in political decision-making. With the financial support of the Walloon government, the Economics Unit still gathers data meticulously about share ownership in Walloon companies. The tangible result of this work is a permanent directory on share ownership of Walloon companies. This database, which is added to and updated daily, includes more than 100.000 commercial companies. This website is the part which is visible to the public. It provides a complete, dynamic, effective and user-friendly tool to those members of the public wishing to identify the real decision-making centre upon which a company depends.