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Lobbying in Europe

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EU tech firms create 'European Tech Alliance' lobbying group. Today sees the launch of the European Tech Alliance, which aims to represent Europe’s technology ‘scale-ups’ to influence policymaking at EU governments and institutions.

EU tech firms create 'European Tech Alliance' lobbying group

Headed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, now the founder and CEO of VC firm Atomico, the brand new lobbying group intends to “share their experience of building their businesses in Europe with policymakers” and “contribute to the Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy“. The European tech companies that are backing the new association include King, Spotify, Rovio, BlaBlaCar, AVG, Made.com, Supercell, SwiftKey, Klarna and The Allegro Group. In a statement, European Tech Alliance president Zennström says: “We have formed an alliance to share our collective experience with policymakers and challenge mindsets about Europe, technology, and the Internet. There are so many European tech company success stories. A brief guide to tech lobbyists in Europe. In the last few years, lobbying by web giants like Google and Facebook has increased dramatically on both sides of the Atlantic.

A brief guide to tech lobbyists in Europe

As noted by the Financial Times, Facebook’s spending in Washington trebled in 2012 — and similar expansion has also been seen in Europe. That’s no surprise, perhaps: with COO Sheryl Sandberg intimately familiar with the way power works, both from her time with the Department of the Treasury and then at Google. There’s an obvious reason they’re concentrating their energies, too. Amazon, eBay privacy lobbying sparks cut-and-paste crowdsourcing drive.

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