[wobbleblob]

The intention with EU regulations like these is usually to prevent a 'race to the bottom' as they call it. They're turning the EU into a common market without internal trade barriers, but when you do that, what happens when one country has a VAT of 15% and another of 25%? Businesses that can move, will move (administratively) to the 15% country, forcing all countries to lower their VAT to the lowest level. You can argue that this measure isn't working, or that the cost outweighs the benefits, but I don't think it is regulatory capture. Brussels is really trying to minimize the impact of the common market on member states' domestic policies.

[Lawtonfogle]

>The intention with EU regulations like these is

Regulatory capture is almost always given some reason behind it. As such when determining if something was regulatory capture, the stated reasoning behind it is ignored, which is why I was asking to what extent did multinational organizations influence this decision.

[wobbleblob]

It's difficult to see why the EU would try to favor large, usually American and Asian tech giants like Amazon, Samsung and Google versus local startups through tax regulation. The most likely explanation if you ask me is that the motivation behind VATMOSS is exactly what it says on the tin: harmonization of the common market without forcing every member state to adopt the same domestic policies.

The dynamics are different in the decision making processes in the EU. None of the commissioners are elected, they don't have campaign funds to worry about, so there is no legal veneer for corporate 'lobbying' as you would call it. I can't tell you for sure that it doesn't happen, but it can't happen out in the open as it would be considered corruption, and illegal.

The problem instead is that the commissioners are put forward by the (elected) governments of member states, so there is always the danger of them either deliberately or unwittingly favoring their national interests, and it makes them potentially vulnerable to domestic political pressure.

[Lawtonfogle]

>It's difficult to see why the EU would try to favor large

It is just as difficult to see why the US population would support laws that favor massive companies at the cost of the general populace but they still do. Large companies have no nationality in the realm of politics.