Regulating EU Lobbying: Regulatory Capture or Protecting the Public Interest?

The European Commission has recently proposed a reform of EU lobbying regulation, introducing a mandatory Transparency Register to which the Parliament and the Council have agreed to join. Our study asks two key questions regarding this important regulatory reform: to what extent was this reform supported and informed by the policy preferences of private actors who were its main targets? We answer by building on theories of regulatory regime design and change, and elaborate a theoretical framework that revolves around a fundamental dichotomy that characterizes EU lobbying and policymaking: policy insiders vs. policy outsiders. We test our expectations on a new, built-for-purpose dataset that provides detailed information about interest groups’ policy preferences and recommendations regarding the proposed reform of EU lobbying and their direct access to and meetings with top EU officials. The analysis shows that policy insiders are significantly more likely to oppose the reform proposal for a more stringent regulatory regime of EU lobbying and to support the status quo, while endorsing only incremental improvements of technical aspects of the Transparency Register. Our study reveals fundamental policy divergences in preferences for regulation of lobbying between policy insiders and outsider, with the latter being more successful in determining the text of the Commission proposal for an interinstitutional agreement. We contribute to the literature on interest groups’ participation in EU policymaking and that on the design of regulatory governance, while also adding important insights to the sparse literature on lobbying regulation in national and supranational systems of government.