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Business lobbying is an ever present reality in European Union (EU) politics. With their significant economic and informational resources, business interests are able to exert influence along the European policy process from initiation and ratification of policy at the Council of Ministers, agenda-setting and formulation at European Commission (EC) forums, reformulation of policy at the European Parliament (EP) committees, to the final interpretation, harmonization, and implementation of regulation in the nation state. In being one of the few actors to follow all points of the policy process, business interests are an important supply of information for the development and delivery of EU public policy, and a potential source of legitimacy to policy-makers. Ever present at the formation of the European Community and Union, political activity by businesses exploded in the 1990s, building on access afforded by the single market programme and the creeping EU regulatory competencies (Mazey and Richardson 1993; Coen 1997, 1998). In response to this increasingly crowded and competitive lobbying environment, business interests have evolved new direct lobbying strategies (Coen 1997, 1998), collective action arrangements (Eising 2007; Greenwood 2007), complex political advocacy alliances (Coen 2002; Mahoney 2007), and adapted national interest models (Grossman 2004; Beyers and Kerremans 2007). Accordingly, business interests have matured into sophisticated interlocutors that often have more awareness of inter-institutional differences than the functionaries they lobby. The result is EU interests now have unparallel access and …