A new report by a corporate watchdog says that Apple spent €7M ($8.1M) lobbying the EU in the past year, making it the joint second-largest spender in the tech sector. It says tech giants now spend more on EU lobbying than Big Pharma and the automotive industries combined.
It also reveals that Apple held a total of 76 meetings with Members of the European Parliament and high-level European Commission staff …
Corporate Europe Observatory examined spending by tech giants on lobbying the EU, as well as tracking the number of meetings held.
The digital industry’s lobby spending has grown from a 2023 spend of €113 million to €151 million annually today – an increase of 33.6 per cent in just two years […]
Over the past year, tech industry lobby groups have used their lavish budgets to aggressively push for the deregulation of the EU’s digital rulebook. The intensity of this policy battle is also reflected in the fact that Big Tech companies have on average more than one lobby meeting per day with EU Commission officials.
The vast majority of the lobbying spend is made by just ten tech giants, most of them US companies.
The biggest spender was Meta at $10 million, with Apple joint second at $7 million, alongside Amazon and Microsoft. Apple ranked fourth when it came to the number of meetings the company attended.
From January to June 2025, Big Tech has met with high-level European Commission staff 146 times – an average of more than one meeting (1,17) for every working day. Amazon has had the most meetings (43), followed by Microsoft (36), Google (35), Apple (29), and Meta (27) […]
Big Tech firms have also tried to exert their influence on the European Parliament, holding a total of 232 meetings with MEPs during the first six months of 2025 – on average almost two meetings (1.87) per working day. Meta tops the list with 63 meetings followed by Amazon (49), Google (47), Apple (47), and Microsoft (34).
The report notes that these figures are almost certainly underestimates as the EU’s transparency rules only apply to meetings with senior figures.
Additionally, lobbying is also performed by industry organizations funded by the same companies. Of the 15 biggest tech think tanks involved in lobbying the EU, Apple belongs to all but one of them.
Apple has been involved in numerous antitrust disputes with the EU and is currently calling for the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to be scrapped.
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