Lobbying Sanctions: Data from the European Union

Abstract This article introduces the Lobbying EU Sanctions dataset. Sanctions have become a decisive tool in international relations, including in the European Union’s (EU) foreign affairs. Business actors are heavily affected by sanctions, especially economic and financial ones. Yet, scholarship and the public know little about how business actors interact with decision-makers in the context of sanctions. The Lobbying EU Sanctions dataset addresses this problem. The dataset builds on an original survey (2020) with European business groups and contains data on their interactions with decision-makers regarding EU restrictive measures. The article discusses the need for fine-grained data on interaction between business groups and decision-makers in the area of sanctions, describes the survey design and structure of the data, presents some initial survey findings, and illustrates how the Lobbying EU Sanctions dataset opens new opportunities for research on sanctions.