By studying a series of mobilizations initiated by French Mutual Benefit societies against the European Union ‘Insurance’ Directives between the 1990s and the 2010s, we seek to identify the interaction between different factors likely to explain the failure of corporate attempts to promote their interests at the European level. The lack of strategic resources explains the difficulty faced by the actors under study in reaching the agenda. But once this gap filled, cognitive factors and their incapacity to legitimate the values underlying their demands to the European Commission eventually explain the failure of their mobilization.