Three environmental organizations’ lobbying in the EU : How World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Sweden, Greenpeace Sweden and Friends of the Earth Sweden view their resources to influence the EU

The main purpose of our thesis is to describe how Swedish environmental organizations view their resources for lobbying towards the environmental and climate politics of the European Union (EU). Furthermore, we intend to describe how the Swedish environmental organizations lobby towards the EU, and what their views are on lobbying as a democratic method to influence politics. To obtain the material for this study we have interviewed Världsnaturfonden WWF, Greenpeace Sweden and Friends of the Earth Sweden. The results have been analysed by the Theory of Democracy by Robert Dahl, and by the democratic dilemma with lobbying.The result of the thesis is that the environmental organizations view their resources as being sufficient for lobbying towards the EU, and see themselves as being able to influence the EU. They do however experience difficulties in lobbying towards the EU, mainly because of deficient financial resources and competition with the influential industry lobbyists.Our conclusion is that the environmental organizations see democratic problems with lobbying, which are mainly unequal access to EU’s decision-making process and EU’s lack of transparency. The organizations do however value lobbying as a democratic method because of the benefits for decision-makers and citizens