Information for sale in the European Union

•We explore the connection between EU trade policy and the European business lobbies.•We present a model of informational lobbying and derive testable predictions.•We construct an original dataset on the participation of organizations in EU consultations.•We exploit newly released information on non-tariff measures aggregated at the tariff-line level.•We show that European lobbies exert an important influence on policy decisions.

This paper empirically explores the role of informational lobbying in shaping the EU trade policy. To this purpose, we construct an original dataset by collecting information on the participation of national and international organizations in the European Commission consultations on trade issues and by merging it with newly released data on non-tariff measures aggregated at the tariff-line level between 1999 and 2007. Our results suggest that European lobbies exert a major influence on policy-makers. Drawing upon the panel structure of the dataset, we find that participation in consultation meetings increases the probability of a protectionist policy, even after controlling for product fixed effects and a number of control variables. Moreover, actual attendance turns out to be more effective than simple registration and organizations representing more than one industrial category are more likely to obtain protection than single-sector organizations. These findings are interpreted in light of a political economy model of lobbying with (possibly endogenous) costs.