European Parliament ‘Bans’ Amazon Lobbyists
Don’t call it a ban, says Amazon.
Despite the European Parliament revoking the company’s permanent access lobbying badges this week, the e-tail juggernaut says that it’ll still be able to enter the building in Brussels; it just has to sign in first—something akin to moving from staff to visitor status.
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“We are very disappointed with this decision, as we want to engage constructively with policymakers,” said Sarah Tapp, Amazon’s corporate communications manager. “As a company that has been active in the EU for more than 25 years and now has more than 150,000 permanent employees here, we take our engagement with policymakers in Brussels and across Europe extremely seriously.”
She said that Amazon’s commitment stands “despite this decision” and that it will continue to participate in “balanced, constructive dialogue” on issues that affect European citizens.
The Everything Store had 14 employees with previous unrestricted admittance. It’s now only the second company, after Monsanto in 2017, to have its lobby access stripped.
The move comes after the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) formally asked for a ban, citing Amazon’s “refusal” to attend a hearing on working conditions in the bloc in January, just after it “canceled” a visit by a Members of the European Parliament delegation to its warehouses in Germany and Poland the month before.
“This house believes in dialogue & stakeholders need to respect it too,” Drago? P?slaru, chair of the EMPL committee, wrote on X on Wednesday. “There is no cooperation without transparency & dialogue in the EU. It is unreasonable for members to be lobbied by Amazon while at the same time being deprived of the right to represent the interests of European citizens and inquire about claims of breaches of fundamental rights enshrined in EU treaties and EU labor laws.”
The committee’s request was backed by dozens of trade unions and civil society groups, including the Clean Clothes Campaign and UNI Global Union, which wrote to European Parliament president Roberta Metsola earlier this month urging the body to “use its full powers to ensure Amazon, and other big companies, cannot continue avoiding democratic scrutiny.”
Oliver Roethig, regional secretary of UNI Europa, called the access revocation an “important victory in the struggle for good working conditions at Amazon.”
“The European Parliament has drawn a clear red line: Amazon’s anti-democratic behavior won’t be tolerated—whether that’s towards trade unions or parliaments,” he said on Wednesday, noting that Amazon had nine meetings with MEPs in January alone, including one that took place a day after the hearing.
But Tapp insists that the Whole Foods owner has repeatedly expressed its willingness to engage with EMPL members and has on several occasions invited them to visit its facilities.
“That invitation still stands, and we would welcome an opportunity to showcase the investments we have made to ensure that our work environments are modern, engaging and safe,” she said.
P?slaru pushed back Tapp’s assertions on Wednesday, writing in a statement that Amazon has evaded the committee’s attempts to connect since 2021, making it “impossible for MEPs and European citizens to gain first-hand accounts from the company’s management on the pressing questions and allegations.”
The Jeff Bezos-founded firm has continued to fend off accusations of excessive work hours, unsafe conditions, union busting, tax avoidance and market power abuse. It has been beset by waves of strikes, most notably a Black Friday demonstration in November that rallied employees across 30 countries in the “biggest ever global strike.”
“It was important to signal the fact that their approach was disrespectful to the European Parliament and EU citizens in general,” he said. “It was just fair to apply our rules of procedure and withdraw the long-term badges of Amazon representatives. We understand that Amazon is ready to cooperate from now on, it just remains to be seen how this will happen in practice in the next legislature and if lessons were truly learned.”
Amazon has allocated 18.8 million euros ($20.3 million) toward lobbying European institutions, according to LobbyFacts.eu, a joint project of Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl.
“Amazon treats our democratic institutions like it treats us, its workers: with contempt. Today’s decision by the European Parliament shows Amazon that it can’t continue disregarding our democratic institutions without consequences,” said Italian Amazon worker and European Works Council member Gianpaolo Meloni. “And I hope the same will be true in the future when it comes to our democratic rights: like the right to freely join a union and bargain for better conditions and pay.”
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