Big Tech EU Lobbying in Germany

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 that is the focus of this article. As often the research on EU lobbying focuses on Brussels policymaking, this paper studies the confrontation between Big Tech firms and the EU on a national level in Germany. It asks how Big Tech firms lobby EU legislation in the largest EU member state before the EU Council decision-making through a qualitative case study that relies on interview data. This study reveals that besides direct lobbying in Brussels, the Big Tech companies use increased lobbying power through the EU member states and their governments. Besides traditional lobbying practices specific knowledge and structural power are used in their EU and general lobbying, but adapted to the national context and constraints. In addition to contributing to our understanding of the political agency of tech firms, the paper updates theories of lobbying in Germany.