EU has done really well on passing big laws such as GDPR in the recent years, while the US can’t even seem to decide whether to fund their own government. Why do you think Europe is doing better than the US? One would think that since EU is more diverse it would be harder to find common ground. And there were examples of that during the Greece debt crisis. But not anymore, it seems.
I think it is much harder to lobby the EU due to it’s structure. The EU is composed of many countries with distinct culture and objectives. The only way for everyone to agree on policies is compromise. This makes it much harder to successfully lobby…
If you lobby one political party in the EU successfully, you will only have about 2% of the votes Whereas in the US you have about 50% of the votes and of course you would focus on the party best placed to make the change.
Europe does still have issues with lobbies. In many of the individual countries the effectiveness of lobbying is comparable, and in some cases worse.
The best solution are anti-lobbying regulation, increased political engagement of the electorate, better journalism and proportionate representarion.