"The Commission as stimulator of interest representation: Two cases"

Ross, George. (1997) "The Commission as stimulator of interest representation: Two cases". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The European Commission receives all manner of assiduous interest group attention, particularly in those areas (which have grown substantially in the period since the early 1980s) where it makes important decisions and regulates key areas. There should be no mystery, therefore, why national and transnational agricultural lobbies and groups like employers’ associations and chambers of commerce spend substantial resources following and interacting with the Commission. This kind of interest representation is obviously of great importance, and most of it looks very much like what occurs within national states. Groups with stakes in specific decisional outcomes try to shape and influence these outcomes. From the Commission’s point of view listening to these groups is a fundamental task, indeed in many such areas, like agriculture, it is a mandatory one. The study of this standard kind of interest representation is as old as the Commission itself, even though much more work is needed, in particular on the degree to which interest groups focus on the Commission and other Euro-level instances actually increases a group’s stake in European integration.

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