Brussels, 30/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - According to a study by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) published on Tuesday 29 September, the German Volkswagen (VW) group is the biggest lobbyist of the EU institutions among European automobile manufacturers.
According to data provided by LobbyFacts, Volkswagen spent €3.3 million on lobbying in 2014 and employed 43 people for this purpose. The second biggest spending automobile manufacturer with a view to influencing the EU's legislative process is Daimler, also a German company. Nevertheless, with 14 employees and a budget of €2.5 million for the same year, Daimler lags far behind VW. The BMW group reportedly spent €1.5 million that year and employed 8 people.
By way of comparison, the workforce of ACEA, the organisation representing European car manufacturers, is of 16 employees and had a budget of €2.5 million in 2014. The Verband der Automobilindustrie (VDA), the association just of German manufacturers, apparently had the same budget as ACEA.
According to CEO, which monitors pressure groups at the European institutions, VW has developed its lobbying activity significantly over recent years, since at the start of the decade, the group declared its lobbying expenditure as €800,000 and this had increased to €1,250,000 in 2013. BMW is reported to have doubled its budget between 2013 and 2014.
As regards staff, VW declared 4 lobbyists on the EU's 2013 transparency register compared with 43 in 2014. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens).