I don't agree with this. I think the article does a good job at pointing out the problematic aspects of this particular lobbying campaign, and even how/why to stop it.
A lot of people view lobbyism as basically exchangeable with nepotism and bribery (strictly negative), but this is not the case.
The "happy path" with lobbyism is that local industry gives input on new laws/regulation to prevent unintended negative side-effects. Politicians have typically a much more cursory understanding of how a new law is going to affect any particular industry than people in that industry (obviously).
If you lock down any mechanism like this, you are invariably going to end up with numerous laws that are highly detrimental to local industry in a way that achieves very little (compared to laws designed with input from lobbies).
The article points out exactly how this fossil lobbying case deviated from this ideal (foreign influence instead of domestic, obfuscation and lack of transparency on originators/funding, use of methods to directly affect/manipulate the outputs of lawmaking instead of providing inputs).
In this case the biggest failure was that ExxonMobil et al were capable of subverting EU lawmaking via external pressure (via US diplomatic channels/trade negotiation) and indirect influence by targetting individual countries.
This seems difficult to systematically prevent to me, and the fact that they went for an approach like that is IMO actually a good sign that its not trivial and cost effective to direct such efforts at EU regulators themselves.
What we actually need to prevent cases like this in my opinion is to hold companies accountable for damages when they sabotage legislation or research in that sector.
A really good historical example is leaded gas: Industry knowingly hobbled research (discredited researchers, paid shills, etc.) and legislation for decades, but there were zero consequences after everything came to light. If there was a credible threat of company leadership going straight to prison and shareholders losing everything in extreme cases like that, companies would be MUCH more circumspect when messing with law/science.
A lot of people view lobbyism as basically exchangeable with nepotism and bribery (strictly negative), but this is not the case.
The "happy path" with lobbyism is that local industry gives input on new laws/regulation to prevent unintended negative side-effects. Politicians have typically a much more cursory understanding of how a new law is going to affect any particular industry than people in that industry (obviously).
If you lock down any mechanism like this, you are invariably going to end up with numerous laws that are highly detrimental to local industry in a way that achieves very little (compared to laws designed with input from lobbies).
The article points out exactly how this fossil lobbying case deviated from this ideal (foreign influence instead of domestic, obfuscation and lack of transparency on originators/funding, use of methods to directly affect/manipulate the outputs of lawmaking instead of providing inputs).