Three members of the European Parliament have accused Amazon, Google and Meta of breaching lobbying transparency rules by using five smaller associations to influence the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act on their behalf.
A spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed with GCR today that MEPs Paul Tang from the Netherlands, René Repasi from Germany and Christel Schaldemose from Denmark filed a total of nine complaints to the enforcer on Thursday.
The complaints allege that Amazon, Google and Meta deliberately failed to list their members correctly in the EU’s Transparency Register – also known as “astroturfing”.
The complaints have not yet been made public but Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the EU lawmakers urged the commission to block the tech companies from accessing all EU lobbying groups in the future.
The transparency register is a database of all companies and other organisations that influence how EU institutions bring about laws and other policies.
The MEPs allege that five industry groups representing small-to-medium-sized companies were working together with the tech companies to break the law. These groups include the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), IAB Europe, Allied for Startups, SME Connect and the Connected Commerce Council (3C).
The complaints come after civil society groups Corporate Europe Observatory and Global Witness revealed through freedom of information requests in April that several technology companies abused their dominance by financially backing lobbying groups to influence the EU’s DSA and DMA.
The companies used these groups to ask MEPs to make last-minute amendments to the wording of certain provisions in the legislation and dilute others that directly threatened the companies’ interests, according to the civil society groups’ report.
The MEPs reportedly named two lobby campaigns in their complaints, Targeting Startups and Coalition for Digital Ads of SMEs, which particularly promoted the interests of small businesses in tracking-based advertising.
The lobbyists broke transparency rules by failing to properly identify themselves or the companies they worked for and providing lawmakers with misleading and inaccurate information, the complainants reportedly wrote.
The MEPs were unaware that these requests for amendments to the drafts were coming from Google, Amazon and Meta, the complaints add. They claim that the politicians only learned the funding and sources of these messages after the laws were voted on in July.
The complaints also reportedly cite a post by European Policy Centre think tank director Georg Riekeles, who warned in July that “as the EU debated the DSA and DMA package, front groups and other forms of hidden lobbying were swarming”.
“I dare say never before had Brussels seen efforts at such a scale and with such brazenness,” Riekele wrote.
The EU finalised the DMA – which will impose a host of competition-related obligations on so-called digital gatekeepers – in July. But the MEPs said they were still concerned about the potential harm to future digital policymaking if non-transparent policy influences from Big Tech are not rooted out.
This is why the companies involved should have their access to parliament denied if the allegations in the complaints are proven, Tang said on Twitter on Friday.
A spokesperson for Google said the company is committed to being open about its lobbying activities, having “clearly and transparently” listed its partnership with 3C on the transparency register’s website for years.
A spokesperson for Amazon denied its involvement with 3C as it lobbied against the DMA, DSA or any other European legislation and noted that the company does not work with the organisation in Europe.
Amazon does, however, have a partnership with the group in the US.
Rob Retzlaff, chief executive of 3C, said the transparency register began investigating his group in March but closed the case three months later after 3C submitted an “accurate” response.
A spokesperson for SME Connect said it is registered in the transparency register and is committed to bringing small organisations across Europe together to engage in policy issues in Brussels.
A spokesperson for CCIA said the group is regularly approached to co-sign joint letters or statements but denied any involvement in the Targeting Startups campaign. The association has supported Google during the EU’s high-profile antitrust investigations, and has also lobbied against digital regulation in the US.
A spokesperson for Allied for Startups said the group has been listed in the transparency register since 2015 and fully complies with EU lobbying rules.
In a statement on Friday, IAB Europe said the suggestion that it would pretend to represent anyone other than its own members is “absurd”. The group said it would need to see the purported complaints themselves to comment further.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
One EU competition lawyer, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to client conflicts, said the regulation of lobbying firms in Brussels is viewed by many as “inadequate”. Absent proper control, there is inevitably scope for what may be deemed as “inappropriate activity”, they said.
However, the lawyer said the issue must be looked at closely because, if something is inappropriate, it should be curbed by regulation.
Brussels is the “regulatory capital” of Europe, so it is “curious” that EU institutions have not done more to regulate lobbying, they added.
