Commission Impossible? Inequalities in Lobbyist Access to the European Commission
P1-S19-2
Presented by: Susanna Eiselt, Iskander De Bruycker, Sandra Martinez-Böhme, Britt Vande Walle
Lobbyists play a key role in the EU policy-making process, yet their characteristics and the implications of these on their access to EU institutions remain understudied. Recent research has found that gender-balanced lobbying teams and lobbying teams with a similar nationality as the policymaker enjoy better access to the European Parliament. However, personal biases in access to the European Commission have not been studied and can have even more significant implications for policy outcomes. Additionally, lobbyists’ profiles are much more complex than gender and nationality. This article identifies relationships between the socio-demographic characteristics and skills of lobbying teams and their access to the European Commission, employing data from the EU transparency register, interest groups’ websites and social media profiles of EU lobbyists. This article offers new insights into inequalities in lobbying access between genders, nationalities, language skills, work experience, and educational backgrounds, identifying a potential source of bias in the EU policy-making process.
Keywords: Lobbying, Interest groups, Socio-demographics, European Commission, Gender