Lobbying and Litigation for Political Change – Insights from Corporate Multi-Venue Advocacy in EU Climate and IP Policy

The EU’s institutional framework offers a multi-venue landscape for interest representation, covering the executive, legislature, and judiciary, and with this contribution, I aim to offer a comprehensive approach to interest representation, rather than a singular focus on (political) lobbying strategies. In practice, interest groups strategically shop across advocacy venues and most even regard themselves as ‘multi-venue’ players, optimizing their chances at success throughout the policy cycle. While the strategic use of litigation as a political advocacy tool is irrefutable, the interplay between lobbying and litigation, or the notion of an integrated interest representation toolbox has received little scholarly attention to date. Mainstream EU scholarship, be it interest group politics or legal mobilization/judicial integration, tends to focus predominantly on one of these advocacy venues and among the limited number of EU interest group scholars analyzing litigation and the courts as part and parcel of interest politics, no consensus exists as to where strategies of legal (or judicial) interest representation are situated in the broader interest representation “toolkit”. To help bridge this gap, the paper seeks to ascertain how, and in which patterns, this type of multi-venue advocacy of corporate interests combining legal and political methods in pursuit of legal reform occurs at EU-level. To do so, I firstly conceptualize ‘multi-venue advocacy’ in the EU from the vantage point of the interplay between lobbying and litigation across the political and judicial advocacy venue, by bridging scholarly views on interest politics and legal mobilization. Secondly, the paper explores this practice empirically based on two qualitative case studies, drawing insights from corporate advocacy in two policy fields: EU climate lawmaking and IP policy, particularly the interplay between lobbying and litigation strategies targeting the formulation of the EU Emissions Trading System and the framework on Supplementary Protection Certificates. The paper aims to contribute to a fundamental re-thinking of what ‘lobbying’ practice entails in the multi-venue and multi-level governance context of the EU, and the position of litigation therein, going beyond its value as an ex post (enforcement) tool. The article also feeds into the study on the growing practice of strategic litigation in the EU. It does so through the acknowledgment of the judiciary’s place within a broader strategic framework from the perspective of corporate interests which strategically approach the judiciary, the executive, and legislature as (multi-)venues of interest representation.