You need lobbyists to pull on one side and the general population to be too uninformed or too non-caring to not pull enough in the other direction.

You need both, and both are responsible for the current state.

To stop this, you need to try to stop both until one doesn't exists.

The lawmakers are: in the EU you have a block of right-wing parties. The large part are funded by large companies and make laws which favour them. Same thing as in the US.

There are other right-wing (and left-wing) blocks who are funded by the Kremlin and Kremlin-supporters who just try to break things.

At the EC they're not corrupt, they try their best, but they're often given bad advice and are themselves not experts. And their power is limited (they can nudge but not push).

So lobbyists did do it then?