2 PhD Candidates on EU lobbying at Maastricht University

The project’s objective is to understand how EU policy access is biased towards lobbyists from privileged socio-demographic backgrounds and why. Interest groups, including NGOs, business associations and labour unions, are key channels of policy representation. Nevertheless, interest groups’ democratic credentials are contested, and their representatives, so-called lobbyists, tend to have a negative reputation. In reality, we know very little about the people involved in lobbying—and even less about how lobbyists’ backgrounds affect their chances of securing access to policymakers. To study this, the project implements desk research, surveys and vignette experiments with EU lobbyists and policymakers.