The European Commission’s environmental stakeholder consultations: Is lobbying success based on what you know, what you own or who you know?

Abstract

Is the political system of the European Union (EU), and the European Commission (EC) consultations in particular, systematically biased in favour of some interests over others? In the course of the EC's stakeholder consultations, firms, interest groups and other stakeholders make competing policy recommendations. The EC rejects many such recommendations but adopt others in its policy proposals that initiate and steer the legislative procedures of the EU, creating winners and losers among stakeholders and prompting the question: What determines whether a policy recommendation from stakeholders will be adopted by the European Commission? Relying on a new data set of over 8000 policy recommendations from 693 stakeholders, with more specific measures of expertise and privileged access than previously available, this article evaluates whether the EC listens to stakeholders because of what they know, what they own or who they know. The article also presents a method that takes counter-lobbying into account statistically. Results indicate that lobbying success in the EC's environmental stakeholder consultations is based in part on what stakeholders know, but the consultations also significantly favour wealthy business interests.

Corporate political strategies in Europe: The determinants of firms' access to the European Commission

“…In the context of this research, access goods are equivalent to the outputs of political knowledge of firms. Our findings are also convergent with the results of Hermansson (2016), who suggests that stakeholders’ expertise is a relevant dimension for the Commission.…”

“…Before meeting detail information was made available, researchers relied on different measures. For instance, Hermansson (2016) measured privileged access through participation in exclusive public fora. Eising (2007) used surveys to analyze business associations and firms' access.…”

Less complex language, more participation: how consultation documents shape participatory patterns

“…Resourceful actors such as business actors have less costs participating in consultations as they already have expertise (Klüver 2013;Yackee and Yackee 2006). In particular for the European level, a well-established result is that consultations are biased toward the participation of well-resourced business groups (Heidbreder 2015) that offer valuable information (Hermansson 2016;Klüver 2013). The literature on regulatory rulemaking in the US paints a similar picture.…”

“…Organizations like the European Commission, national governments, or local communities routinely ask for the input of stakeholders. The hope is that civil society contributes information to decisions, thereby enhancing output-and input legitimacy (Arras and Braun 2018;Hermansson 2016).…”

“…The current literature either focuses on institutional features of the consultation, on the characteristics of the participants, or on the salience of the topic to explain variation in participatory patterns. Many studies find a dominance of business interests (Hermansson 2016), conditioned by policy characteristics , or the access rules (Beyers and Arras 2019;Pakull et al 2020). Most arguments are grounded in a rational actor model, with potential participants calculating the costs and benefits of consultation participation (Røed and Wøien Hansen 2018;Sjoberg et al 2017).…”