EU Lobbying and Anti-Dumping Policy

Lobbying in the EU is difficult to measure. It varies in intensity and modes of expression across different policy areas and EU countries. By looking at a specific EU policy area, this paper suggests to measure differences in the lobbying activity across EU countries by the combination of petitioning firms and Council voting in the case of anti-dumping (AD) policy. If the political position of countries in anti-dumping cases is influenced by domestic lobbying efforts, we expect that the empirical pattern of country distribution of petitioning firms in EU anti-dumping cases corresponds closely to the empirical pattern of EU country distribution in Council voting. Our results show a low petitioning intensity for anti-dumping investigations and a high voting intensity against anti-dumping measures in Northern Europe. Thus, it seems likely that domestic lobbying efforts have influenced the political position of countries in the special case of EU anti-dumping policy.