European Commission in a Bubble? The Role of Homophily Between Lobbyists and Policymakers in Interest Group Access to the European Commission

Access to the European Commission is a fundamental pathway for interest groups to seek influence on European Union policy. The Commission is widely considered a highly technocratic institution, so access to it is typically modelled as expertise driven. However, the Commission is not an apolitical institution and is staffed by individuals with personal preferences and biases. The mechanisms driving lobbying access beyond expertise-based explanations remain underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on the personal similarities between commission staff and lobbyists to explain access. It hypothesizes that access to a particular decision-maker at the Commission is more likely achieved by lobbying teams with similar educational degrees and similar national backgrounds. To test this hypothesis, this article combines data from the European Transparency Register on meetings between interest groups and European Commission staff with desk research on the individual characteristics and backgrounds of Commission staff and the lobbying teams of more than 650 interest groups. The results of this study are expected to provide insights into biases in lobbying access to the European Commission, and more broadly, have implications for the inclusiveness of EU policymaking.