Lobbying cycles in Brussels: Evidence from the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union

Abstract

The Council presidency holds direct responsibility for the Council’s functioning and moves between EU member states via a six-month rotation scheme. We argue that this rotating Council presidency causes a lobbying cycle among interest groups at the European level, whereby national interest groups from the country holding the presidency temporarily become active at the European level. Using a unique dataset including almost 16,500 registrations of interest groups in the European Transparency Register over the 2008–2017 period, we confirm that holding the Council presidency increases the number of interest groups from that member state in the Transparency Register. We also find that national interest groups generally have a higher likelihood to exit the register following the end of their country’s presidency.