LobbyFacts – Exposing lobbying in European institutions | Hacker News Reader

LobbyFacts – Exposing lobbying in European institutions

lobbyfacts.eu

323 pointsbelter41 comments

Very cool! I've been working with U.S. lobbying data recently, and it's interesting to compare with what's going on in the Europe.

If anyone is interested, here's my project combining data on proposed legislation, U.S. lobbying by publicly traded companies, and congressional stock trading: https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/behind-the-curtain/

This is slick!

On the home page, there is a transaction that was added yesterday, but the transaction itself was on Nov 7th. Is there a 6 month delay for congressmen to disclose?

It would be nice to see these transactions in near real time (or better, ban congress from buying/selling individual stocks)

That's actually due to a STOCK Act violation (surprisingly common)

Transactions are supposed to be disclosed within 45 days, but they are sometimes disclosed late. The fines for late disclosures are usually a couple hundred dollars at most.

How do you monetize? Do you disclose the source for your datasets

Cool site. It would be nice to be able to search by subject of meeting (such as "Artificial Intelligence act").

Microsoft: https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/microsoft-corporation?rid...

OpenAI: https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/openai-lp?rid=67221974675...

Google: https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/google?rid=03181945560-59

There is a "Topic Search" tab. You can then search for "Artificial Intelligence act" and get 146 results. Granted, it searches more than just the topics, but at least you'll be able to narrow it down (and can download the results for further filtering).

It would be interesting to see the breakdown by client - e.g. Amazon are paying more than €500k via Fleishmann-Hillard and at least another €400k via FTI consulting. Maybe I'm cynical but it seems like an attempt at indirection.

EDIT: Searching by client, it's possible to see that Amazon pay 16 different consultants for lobbying [1], and that's just under the Amazon name, they also have ten subsidiaries that lobby the EU via consultants.

[1] https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/client?cid=627

(I know nothing about big companies)

Or just different departments doing their own lobbying in their own preferred way

Very cool, found the party behind the recent privacy invading proposal (I forget the name) that mullvad was advertising against: https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/thorn?rid=854246640306-96 Surprisingly informative

It's a major pet peeve how we misapply the term "lobbying". Lobbying is basically just asking. A citizen writing a letter to their representative is lobbying. The problem isn't lobbying in and of itself. It's paid access and, by extension, regulatory capture.

It's far worse. There is no difference between a high end lobbying entity and a full blow intelligence agency. If the lobby wants something, they also do things such as genuinely help person X on dossier Y for free in order to covertly influence the personnel of person Z that they otherwise can't reach.( Without anyone knowing, and targeting anyone they deem worth it. )

The groups behind this initiative aren't just providing a journalist-friendly interface to scraped data from one source. They are also preserving historical data that is no longer available from any other source.[1]

This also provides a degree of needed redundancy as the EU Transparency Register is still far from perfect and subject to attempts at manipulation and obfuscation. See for example this story of a failed attempt to memory hole a lobby group's activities.[2]

They also keep the pressure on the EU Transparency Register by filing formal complaints and campaigning to improve transparency.[3]

It's a great example of how data science can help strengthen democracy.

  1. https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/about
  2. https://www.politico.eu/article/eva-kaili-sister-mantalena-europe-lobby-register-transparency-qatargate/
  3. https://corporateeurope.org/en/2022/09/complaint-eu-lobby-transparency-register

Lobby fights lobby

  -> https://www.corporateeurope.org/en/who-we-are#our_funders
  -> The Open Society Foundations were set up in 1979 by George Soros €129,570

There are 15 funding organizations on that page, why did you choose to only mention that one?

Also, this is a simple listing of self-declared lobbying efforts. Even the most mal-intentioned nefarious lobbyist could not seriously consider this site to be "fighting" them.

https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/open-society-institute-br...

>"Since 20 September 2021 self-declared 'non-commercial organisations' are no longer required to provide a lobby budget."

That's rather convenient for them.

Finally IT is being used for something useful, recently a Swedish version[1] was launched too.

1. https://lobbykollen.se/

Is there something like this for North America? That would be even more fun! And then comparing the relationships between them...

I commented above, but I'm currently working with U.S. lobbying data so I can help answer that question!

Here's the U.S. disclosure site: https://lda.senate.gov/filings/public/filing/search/

I've been working on building an improved version of that site (allowing users to search by the issue being lobbied on, show trends by company, etc.) but it's still in the pretty early stages of development. Have a big update coming in the next few weeks though: https://www.quiverquant.com/lobbyingsearch/

OpenSecrets also does great work summarizing lobbying data: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying

opensecrets

https://www.opensecrets.org/

a few years ago i was maintaining lobbyfacts. ama

Did you ever get any feedback from journalists and researchers using it?

yes, back in the days CEO (Corporate Europe Observeratory https://corporateeurope.org/) alter-eu (https://www.alter-eu.org/), and a bunch of other NGOs where using (and also sponsoring it). But it is also well known by the OCCRP people (one of whom actually started the whole thing).

hello sir :-P

haha. hello OG

What constitutes lobby costs?

Also why do some organizations have relatively big lobby costs but no EP passes or meetings with EC? Does that mean that they are less "effective" than their peer lobby organizations?

lobby costs is a self reported value based on their spending on lobbyings, including for example staff, office rent, events, etc.

not having ep passes or meetings with the ec, only means less direct contact, or possibly having outsourced this contact.

Is there a way to see breakdown of exactly what a company is paying lobbyists, either directly or via a consultancy? It's currently a lot of manual work searching for e.g. Amazon and looking at the eleven trading names that lobby the EU via a multitude of consultants.

What constitutes lobby costs?

Also why do some organizations have relatively big lobby costs but no EP passes or meetings with EC? Does that mean that they are less "effective" than their peer lobby organizations?

> What constitutes lobby costs?

"Legal" corruption. The money they invest trying to convince the EU representatives.

As long as the EU representatives aren't getting paid, lobbying seems fine to me, unless you want all campaigns publicly financed (which I'd also be good with).

It's a dubious claim to state that lobbying is legal corruption.

The difference between actual corruption and lobbying is large: corruption enriches politicians personal wealth, while lobbying (at its worst) increases the money a politician can use to get elected. Maybe some would believe one is just as bad as the other, but I don't. Election finance law is critically important to preventing corruption from creeping in.

Using lobbying corps can spend money to get laws that are against common good. Whether that money goes to the politician directly or indirectly (ie corruption), or a bunch of astroturfing puppets whose goal is to drown out the peoples voice with FUD is irrelevant.

Laws are proposed by the (lobbied) Commission, and also the Council. Not by the Parliament, which is made up of the MEPs that citizens directly vote for.

Lobbying is not election finance.

Lobbying is telling elected officials what you want the law to be. It costs money because employees get salaries, websites cost money to build, reports cost money to write and publish, TV ads cost money to make and run, etc.

None of that goes to the elected official or their election campaign. It’s paid to staff, consultants, and vendors.

https://lobbyleaks.eu/

What is up with Belgium? Or is the dataset incomplete and therefore skewed?

Brussels

Oh that's right.

That's where Brussels is located. It makes sense to have your lobbying office near the offices of the institutions you want to lobby. Less time spent travelling.

Brussels. It is just like a lot of lobbying groups in the US have their office in Washington D.C.

For example United States Chamber of Commerce, Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, Business Roundtable and NCTA The Internet Television Association all have their HQ in Washington D.C. (all 4 are in top 10 largest lobbying groups in the US)

"Meta Platforms Ireland Limited", something is off here, hmm...

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