Lobbying spending is concentrated in the hands of tech giants, mainly from the U.S., according to the analysis by Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl, two non-profit campaign groups focused on corporate influence.<\/p>\n
The ten largest technology spenders \u2014 which include Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Qualcomm and Google \u2014 outspent the top ten firms in pharmaceuticals, finance and the automotive industries combined.<\/p>\n
Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have \u201cnoticeably\u201d ramped up their expenditure since 2023, by more than \u20ac4 million for Amazon and \u20ac2 million for Microsoft and Meta, the analysis said. The Brussels-based lobby group Digital Europe, which includes many U.S.-based tech giants among its members, added more than \u20ac1 million to its lobbying budget.<\/p>\n
Meta, with a budget of more than \u20ac10 million, is the overall largest lobby spender in the EU.<\/p>\n
This is a \u201cprecarious moment,\u201d said Bram Vranken, a researcher at Corporate Observatory Europe, arguing that years of progress in limiting the harmful effects of technology and the power of Big Tech risks being reversed. <\/p>\n
With the deregulation push in Brussels and strong industry support in Washington, \u201cBig Tech is seizing this new political reality to erase a decade of progress to regulate the digital sector,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lobbying spending is concentrated in the hands of tech giants, mainly from the U.S., according to the analysis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[1942,1394,2437,2575,7157,21469,2000,299,5187,806,11582,2441,10057,2443,2444,11587,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-534614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-big-tech","10":"tag-companies","11":"tag-corruption","12":"tag-digital-markets-act","13":"tag-digital-services-act","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-european","17":"tag-industry","18":"tag-lobbying","19":"tag-markets","20":"tag-pharma","21":"tag-regulation","22":"tag-regulatory","23":"tag-transparency","24":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115455405873881406","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}