Apple has built one of the largest corporate footprints in Brussels, meeting European Union policymakers more often than almost any European company and spending more on lobbying than three of the continent’s biggest industrial groups combined, according to an analysis by Financial Times.
Since the June 2024 European elections produced a new European Parliament and Commission leadership, Apple has held 257 meetings with senior Commission officials and members of the European Parliament, Financial Times found in a review of the EU transparency register and the meeting databases of both institutions. That places Cupertino second only to Google and its subsidiaries, which logged 302 meetings, and ahead of Amazon, with 239.
Google, Apple, and Amazon each recorded more meetings with officials at the European Parliament and the European Commission than any individual European company, Financial Times reported. Among European businesses, only France’s TotalEnergies, Germany’s Volkswagen, and the aerospace group Airbus appear in the top 20 organizations ranked by number of meetings.
The spending gap is just as stark. Apple spends €9 million a year on lobbying in the EU capital, FT said, while Meta spends more than €10 million. TotalEnergies, Volkswagen, and Airbus together spend up to €8.7 million. Apple’s declared budget alone exceeds the combined outlay of those three European industrials.
The access is concentrated on the digital rulebook that has defined Apple’s relationship with Brussels. FT reported that Google, Amazon, and Apple have discussed proposed cloud regulation and online safety rules for children. Google alone held 22 meetings on the EU’s so-called digital omnibus, a package that loosens parts of the AI framework, including by giving companies more leeway to train models on personal data. American companies have used their Brussels presence to push back against the bloc’s digital rules, an effort that has coincided with repeated tariff threats from American President Donald Trump over Europe’s drive for “tech sovereignty.”
Transparency groups argue the pattern raises questions about whose voice reaches policymakers. “We do need to ask hard questions of … the policymakers in charge because they seem to be giving more access to U.S. companies rather than to European ones,” Raphaël Kergueno of Transparency International told FT.
Apple and Amazon told FT that they engage with policymakers on topics that matter to their customers and their businesses. The numbers still underline how thoroughly American technology groups have embedded themselves in the EU capital: on meeting counts and declared spend, Apple now sits ahead of the European companies that once defined corporate influence in Brussels.
MacDailyNews Take: Ooh, a whole €9 million a year! How did Apple ever get that kind of cash? What a blockbuster exposé!
Seriously, you can’t blame Apple for trying some PITA mitigation, especially in the PITA capital of the world.
By the way, TotalEnergies, Volkswagen, and Airbus are large, but they aren’t platform companies whose entire European business model is being rewritten in real time by the DMA, DSA, App Store rules, cloud proposals, and child-safety bills.
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