... sigh. Lobbying isn't equivalent to corruption. While the two can get very similar in the US because US elections have no campaign spending cap, therefore

... sigh. Lobbying isn't equivalent to corruption. While the two can get very similar in the US because US elections have no campaign spending cap, therefore politicians (and even some civil servants) have a constant need for massive political donations, in general lobbying is a lot more complex than "spend money, get law you like". It usually involves a high amount of, you guessed it, waiting around in lobbies. In the EU, the stereotypical industry lobbyist is a guy who will invite some commission members to a very fancy restaurant and tell them "About this regulation you're passing, we've prepared a full binder on it, with different policy options you could consider, case studies illustrating the trade-offs of each option, ideas for further research, etc". Bureaucrats know that the content of the binder will be biased towards the interests of the companies that funded it, but they still read it because it's full of industry information and technical knowledge they don't have. There's allegedly a bit of give and take, where they expect the info to be biased, but not too obviously biased otherwise they stop returning your calls. Good bureaucrats will then cross-reference that info with info from competing interest groups, researchers, wikipedia, etc, and hope that they end up with a balanced view of the industry. Bad bureaucrats will just copy the biggest group's proposed laws verbatim. But in any case, calling it "rampant corruption" is just ignorant. There's a lot of thought put into that process beyond "do what the corporations want".