The Power of Big Tech Lobbying Via the EU Member States

The power of big tech firms has become a defining social scientific and policy challenge of our times. At the same time, the European Union (EU) has emerged as a global forerunner in tech regulation. It has been even argued that the EU impacts globally the tech regulation in third countries through the Brussels Effect. These two phenomena have led to a significant expansion of big tech lobbying in EU politics. For example, the “Big Five” firms alone increased their EU advocacy budgets ten-fold, to nearly €30 million, in 2013–21. This paper is part of the Seeing Like a Tech Firm: Advocacy in the Era of Platform Capitalism research project that analyses how big tech firms aim to control the scope and impact of the EU’s novel tech regulation regime both through their advocacy in the EU, and by influencing third countries that emulate EU policies. As often the research on EU lobbying focuses on Brussels policy-making, this paper presents a research agenda to study the confrontation between big tech firms and the EU on a national level. It asks how big tech firms lobby EU legislation in member states before the EU Council decision-making. Besides direct lobbying in Brussels, how do the big tech companies use lobbying power through the EU member states and their governments? Besides traditional lobbying practices, how are social media and other new technologies used? The paper focuses on the pioneering regulation of the first Ursula von der Leyen Commission through the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). Empirically the paper analyses especially the case of big tech EU lobbying in Germany through a qualitative case study that relies on interview data. The paper combines interest group and political economy research. This research aims to contribute to our understanding of the political agency of tech firms, especially on a case that has a global impact beyond the EU.