A technocratic or responsive Commission? How interest groups’ information supply affects their agenda-setting influence on the European Green Deal

This paper analyzes the circumstances under which interest groups’ information supply affects their agenda-setting influence concerning the European Green Deal (EGD). Current interest group scholarship is ambiguous about what type of information helps interest groups get their way. In the European Union (EU), groups that rely predominantly on policy expertise in their interactions with the European Commission (EC) are often presumed to be most likely to attain their preferences in the ECs legislative proposals and policy outcomes. This paper, in contrast, turns to the ECs informational dependencies as a legislative agenda-setter rather than its demands as a designer of public policy. We argue that when the EC decides over its issue priorities within broader policy areas, it primarily needs political information about the societal support various priorities enjoy. Additionally, the positive effect of emphasizing political information on preference attainment in terms of issue prioritization is expected to be contingent on the degree of issue politicization. We test our expectations in the context of the EGD, drawing from six expert interviews with EC officials concerning interest groups’ advocacy activities on 36 concrete issues in the policy areas of Competition, Energy, Environment, Mobility and Transport, Research and Innovation, and Trade. This data collection strategy then allows us to gather information about a high number of involved interest groups. Empirically, we distinguish between interest groups’ successes and failures to keep their ‘nightmare’ issues from and to push their ‘dream’ issues onto the EGD agenda. The preliminary interview results contribute to our understanding of the relationship between informational lobbying and agenda-setting influence.