Shop till you drop? : venue choices of business and non-business interests in the European Union

Abstract

The EU offers a variety of access points through which interest groups can attempt to influence policy-making. In this paper, we analyze differences in the use of these access points, or venues, by interest groups. Considering the roles played by different EU institutions along the policy cycle, we argue that the venues differ by the extent to which they encourage lobbying from different interest groups. Analyzing survey responses by more than 700 European interest associations, we find that the distribution of access-seeking by business and non-business actors differs across venues. Reflecting its pivotal role at the pre-proposal stage, the Commission encourages non-business organizations to spend much of their finite lobbying resources. In the context of the European Parliament, non-business groups are not only interested in influencing its decisions, but also in connecting to ordinary Members of the European Parliament. Business groups, for their part, apply greater resources to the rapporteurs. Finally, we show that business groups also allocate their resources to regulatory agencies at the implementation stage in the policy process, where incomplete legislative contracts are finalized and non-business groups’ resources are depleted.