The Lobby Network: Big Tech's Web of Influence in the EU (Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl, 2021) by Max Bank, Felix Duffy, Verena Leyendecker, Margarida Silva comments
As Big Tech’s market power has grown, so has its political clout. Just as the EU tries to rein in the most problematic aspects of Big Tech – from disinformation, targeted advertising to excessive market power – the digital giants are lobbying hard to shape new regulations. They are being given disproportionate access to policy-makers and their message is amplified by a wide network of think tanks and other third parties. Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl profile Big Tech’s lobby firepower, given it is now the EU’s biggest lobby spending industry.
The lobby firepower of Big Tech undermines democracy
In the last two decades we have seen the rise of companies providing digital services. Big Tech firms have become all-pervasive, playing critical roles in our social interactions, in the way we access information, and in the way we consume. These firms not only strive to be dominant players in one market, but with their giant monopoly power and domination of online ecosystems, want to become the market itself.
In her announcement1 of plans to shape the EU’s digital future, President of the European Commission von der Leyen declared: “I want that digital Europe reflects the best of Europe – open, fair, diverse, democratic, and confident.”
The current situation is quite the opposite. Tech firms like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft long ago consolidated their hold of their market, and dominated top spots in the world’s biggest companies.
A mere handful of companies determine the rules of online interaction and increasingly shape the way we live. The COVID-19 pandemic has only sped up the momentum for digitisation and the importance of the companies. Big Tech’s business model has received heavy criticism for its role in the spread of disinformation and the undermining of democratic processes its reliance on the exploitation of personal data, and its immense market power and unfair market practices.
Meanwhile as the economic power of big digital companies has grown, so has their political power. In this report, we offer an overview of the tech industry’s lobbying fire-power with regard to the EU institutions, including who the big spenders are, what they want, and just how outsized their privileged access is. This is especially important given that EU policy-makers are currently seeking to regulate the digital market and its players via the Digital Services Act package. This EU initiative is made up of two components, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, meant to “to create a safer digital space in which the fundamental rights of all users of digital services are protected”, and “to establish a level playing field to foster innovation, growth, and competitiveness, both in the European Single Market and globally”.
We map for the first time the ‘universe’ of actors lobbying the EU’s digital economy, from Silicon Valley giants to Shenzhen’s contenders; from firms created online to those making the infrastructure that keeps the internet running; tech giants and newcomers.
We found a wide yet deeply imbalanced ‘universe’:
- with 612 companies, groups and business associations lobbying the EU’s digital economy policies. Together, they spend over € 97 million annually lobbying the EU institutions. This makes tech the biggest lobby sector in the EU by spending, ahead of pharma, fossil fuels, finance, or chemicals.
- in spite of the varied number of players, this universe is dominated by a handful of firms. Just ten companies are responsible for almost a third of the total tech lobby spend: Vodafone (€ 1,750,000), IBM (€ 1.750.000), QUALCOMM (€ 1.750.000), Intel (€ 1,750,000), Amazon (€ 2,750,000), Huawei (€ 3,000,000), Apple (€ 3,500,000), Microsoft (€ 5,250,000), Facebook (€ 5,550,000) and with the highest budget, Google (€ 5,750,000).
- out of all the companies lobbying the EU on digital policy, 20 per cent are US based, though this number is likely even higher. Less than 1 per cent have head offices in China or Hong Kong. This implies Chinese firms have so far not invested in EU lobbying quite as heavily as their US counterparts.
- These huge lobbying budgets have a significant impact on EU policy-makers, who find digital lobbyists knocking on their door on a regular basis. More than 140 lobbyists work for the largest ten digital firms day to day in Brussels and spend more than € 32 million on making their voice heard.
- Big Tech companies don’t just lobby on their own behalf; they also employ an extensive network of lobby groups, consultancies, and law firms representing their interests, not to mention a large number of think tanks and other groups financed by them. The business associations lobbying on behalf of Big Tech alone have a lobbying budget that far surpasses that of the bottom 75 per cent of the companies in the digital industry. Academic and Big Tech critic Shoshana Zuboff has argued that lobbying – alongside establishing relationships with elected politicians, a steady revolving door, and a campaign for cultural and academic influence – has acted as the fortification that has allowed a business model, built on violating people’s privacy and unfairly dominating the market, to flourish without being challenged.
This is also the case at EU level. The aim of Big Tech and its intermediaries seems to make sure there are as few hard regulations as possible – for example those that tackle issues around privacy, disinformation, and market distortion – to preserve their profit margins and business model. If new rules can’t be blocked, then they aim to at least water them down. In recent years these firms started embracing regulation in public, yet continue pushing back against behind closed doors. There are some differences between what different tech firms want in terms of EU policy, but the desire to remain ‘unburdened’ by urgently needed regulations is shared by most of the large platforms.
Big Tech’s deep pockets might also reflect the fact that this industry is rather new and emerging, and its home base is not the EU. Most of the big players come from the US. This has several consequences for the lobbying efforts of the industry in the EU. First of all, channels of influence are still in the process of being built. The ties to governments are not as close as, for instance, between the German Government and its national car industry. This, in addition to growing criticism of Big Tech’s business practices, can start explaining why the digital industry’s lobbying relies heavily on influencing public opinion and on using third-parties, such as think tanks and law and economic firms, as a tool for that purpose.
The Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act – the two strands of the Digital Services Act package – are the EU’s first legislative attempt to tackle the overarching power of the tech giants. And the lobbying battle being waged over them show us the lobby might of the tech industry in practice. More than 270 meetings on these proposals have taken place, 75 percent of them with industry lobbyists. Most of them targeted at Commissioners Vestager and Breton who are responsible for the new rules. This lobby battle has now moved to the European Parliament and Council. In spite of the lack of transparency, we start seeing Big Tech’s lobbying footprint in the EU capitals.
