🚨🇪🇺 EU lobbying hits record highs: How Tech giants bend the rules

Big Tech’s lobbying in the EU has surged from $122M in 2023 to $163M in 2025 — a 33.6% jump in two years and a 55.6% rise since 2021, according to Corporate Europe Observatory & LobbyControl.

📈 Just 10 companies — Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Intel, and Samsung — spent $57M, up from $46M two years ago. Biggest increases came from Amazon - $4.87M, Microsoft and Meta - $2.32M each, & Digital Europe - $1.39M.

The lobbying army includes 890 full-time lobbyists, outnumbering Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), many with near-unrestricted access.

💳 In H1 2025 alone, Big Tech held 146 meetings with top Commission officials — more than one per working day. Amazon leads with 43, followed by Microsoft (36), Google (35), Apple (29), & Meta (27).

Main focus: AI regulation, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), DSA (Digital Services Act), which makes platforms safer and accountable for illegal content, DMA (Digital Markets Act), which stops big tech gatekeepers from abusing power, and the upcoming Digital Fairness Act.

😨 AI alone drove 58 meetings in six months. Hundreds of AI start-ups joined Brussels lobbying since 2023, while $9.7M/year flows to consultancies, think tanks, and PR firms (from Bruegel to CEPS), blurring lines between research and industry propaganda.

US & the Trump administration pressure, and EU deregulation threaten digital safeguards. Meta calls the DSA (safer content rules) “censorship,” while Apple wants the DMA (big tech competition rules) scrapped.

💩 Tech lobbying now dwarfs pharma, finance, energy, and automotive sectors — the top 10 digital spenders alone triple the lobbying budgets of the top 10 in pharma, finance, and auto combined.

Why this matters for India & South Asia:
Why this matters for India & South Asia:

⛔️ EU rollbacks give Big Tech a global playbook to weaken digital and AI rules.
⛔️ Lobbying, legal threats, and strategic investments let tech firms shape policy to their advantage, challenging sovereign authority.
⛔️ Expanding influence may delay stronger AI, data privacy, and digital market protections.
⛔️ Lobby-funded think tanks could frame “innovation vs regulation” debates, echoing EU trends and weakening digital rights enforcement.

Big Tech weaponises money, political access, & global influence to rewrite digital rules — and set the stage for emerging markets worldwide.