"Participation and Policy Making in the European Community: Mediating Contending Interests"

Young, Alasdair R. (1995) "Participation and Policy Making in the European Community: Mediating Contending Interests". In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 1995 (4th), May 11-14, 1995, pages 20, Charleston, South Carolina.

Abstract

The EC's policy making process was already quite open relative to that in a number of member states, because it is only by consulting widely that the Commission can lend legitimacy to its proposals in the eyes of the democratically elected governments of the member states. The internal market, by transmitting the consequences of national policies to the other member states, has also opened the EC's policy process. The internal market provides a mechanism whereby influential civic interests, be they articulated by voters, political parties or associations, that shape policy in one member state can shape EC policy. It is through this process that the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden, with their long traditions of consumer and environmental protection, might have a dramatic effect on the EC's consumer and environmental policies. Although civic interests still tend not to wield the same degree of influence as producer interests, the extent to which they are taken into consideration in the EC's policy process is much greater now than when the EC was founded. How rapidly and to what degree civic interests will continue to gain influence relative to producer interests is impossible to predict, but the jinni of public opinion is out of the bottle.