Lobbying weight in Brussels
Companion to our map of actors. What the main food, drink and sugar industry actors declare spending on EU lobbying each year, how many lobbyists they employ and how often they meet the European Commission at the highest level, compared with public health and consumer groups.
How to read these figures. All data come from the EU Transparency Register as published by LobbyFacts, accessed on 2 November 2026; each name links to its record. Budgets are declared in bands (for example €400,000 to €499,999), so we show the band. They cover all EU topics an organisation lobbies on, not only sugar. Figures are self-declared: Corporate Europe Observatory has argued that some major food companies and FoodDrinkEurope under-report their spending. UNESDA's latest declared year is 2024; Ferrero's financial year runs from September 2024 to August 2025; all others are 2025.
Non-commercial organisations no longer have to declare a lobbying budget since September 2021, so public health and consumer groups do not appear in the budget view. For scale, they declare their total budget for all activities: €983,304 for the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) and €5.17 million for foodwatch across its four national offices. BEUC represents consumers on every EU file, from energy to digital services, which explains its large number of lobbyists and meetings.
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