INTEREST GROUPS HELP MAKE THE EU MORE DEMOCRATIC

The European Commission’s embrace of interest groups is part of a long history of engagement and interaction. The Commission consults widely with representative associations and civil society during the policy making process. Interaction with interest groups is also institutionalized in the open consultation process, many ad hoc committees , and most explicitly in the Social Dialogue procedure and the two consultative bodies, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee. The logic behind these interactions is simple. EU decision makers are woefully understaffed and pressed for time and thus ill-equipped to cope adequately with the complex regulatory nature of EU politics. What the EU decision makers lack in terms of requisite knowledge and information, interest groups have in spades. They are, after all, experts in their fields and possess both the means and motivation for generating useful technical, legal and political information with regard to how a certain policy will play out.

In an important sense, interest groups bring a certain degree of legitimacy to the EU decision making process by linking citizens to the EU. Interest groups have long been recognized as a powerful channel through which citizens can voice their preferences. In some cases, interest groups may offer opportunities for participation in the policy making process that infrequent elections do not. While elections only count each vote once, interest groups take account of the citizen preferences on specific issues. Finally, many interest groups can also act as ‘schools of democracy’ for citizens producing in-group pro democratic and pro-civic experiences. Similarly, interest groups can also provide arenas for citizen discourse on EU issues and can even work to generate a sense of trust or so-called social capital between members.

The European Parliament also benefits from interacting with interest groups. MEPs depend on interest groups for providing them a link to EU citizens and with information about citizen preferences. MEPs tend to interact more frequently with interest groups than with decision makers in the EU’s other institutions.

The success in linking citizens to the EU’s decision making hinges on interest groups involvement. Bringing greater democracy to the EU cannot hinge solely on the Parliament and MEPs. Including interest groups in the decision-making process is nothing new.

There are three characteristics that determine the ability of interest groups to exert influence: The provision of policy-relevant information to the European institutions, the number of citizens represented by interest groups and the degree of economic power, that is the ability to control business investments and job creation. All three characteristics have a systematic positive effect on interest group influence. Thus, one cannot say that business is running the European Union. Surely, business associations have a good chance to shape policies, but only if they have a lot of economic power and provide policy-relevant information to the European institutions. The same is true for other organized interest groups: if they represent a high number of citizens and provide a lot of information to the European Commission, the Council and the European Parliament, they also have a good chance of shaping the outcome of a legislative debate. Although, in terms of representation, there is a clear bias in favour of business interests, in terms of influence, there is no clear bias in favour of business interests. There is a fairly optimistic picture of interest group participation in European policy making. The positive effect of information supply indicates that interest groups enhance the output legitimacy of European policy-making. The European institutions do not simply produce policies in favour of specific interests. They demand policy-relevant information in order to develop technically appropriate solutions for given policy problems. The positive effect of economic power and citizen support indicates that interest group participation also enhances the input legitimacy of the European Union.