Interest group lobbying success in EU policy-making

The aim of this study is to find the determinants of interest group lobbying success on the EU Climate action policy field. Drawing on theoretical approaches of interest group characteristics and issue-specific characteristics, this study aims to investigate whether interest group type and financial resources have an impact on interest group preference attainment on high salient and low salient climate action policy issues. Two cases under examination of this research are: a high salient policy proposal to the public –amendment to the Regulation (EC) 443/2009 to define modalities for reaching the 2020 target to reduce CO2 emissions from new passenger and a low salient policy proposal – amendment to the Regulation 1031/2010 to determine the volumes of greenhouse gas emission allowances to be auctioned in 2013-2020. The study aims to investigate lobbying success of four European associations representing industry and four large environmental NGOs that lobbied on the high salient proposal and lobbying success of four European associations representing industry and four large environmental NGOs that lobbied on the low salient proposal. The research method applied during this study is the preference attainment method. This method enables systematic analysis of interest group preferences when comparing them with final policy outcome. The findings show that neither issue salience nor interest groups type or financial resources were found to be strong determinants of lobbying success. The most successful interest groups were the ones, which had their preferences in line with the status quo and the least successful were organizations with revolutionary preferences.