WHY EUROPEAN PEAK ASSOCIATIONS HAVEN'T REPLACED NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

National associations in all member states understand that effective influence requires stronger 'lobbying' of EU institutions. Despite challenges, national associations have managed to adapt to European integration in most areas. They have done so through the development of various European resources: opening European offices (e.g. German national associations come first), creating EU affairs management structure, sometimes even buying the services of Brussels-based lobby firms. At the same time, they have helped their members to increase their own EU-related expertise and to keep them informed about eventual future policy developments. National business associations with an office in Brussels maintain significant more contacts both to the working and the top level of EU institutions and they also make use of a wider range of lobby instruments than their competitors.

National associations provide a bridge between, national systems of interest intermediation and EU decision-making procedures. National associations have undergone significant learning processes and they continue to be centarl players in the European political game. All in all neither EU-level associations nor individual lobbying has entirely replaced national associations.

National associations try to move EU-harmonizing measures as close as possible towards the national model to avoid adaptation costs and potential competitive disadvantages.

National associations can provide an aggregate view of all their members' objectives and are therefore the most legitimate partners for those seeking to act on behalf of a country'sb economic sector. But this information is not only relevant to national governments. Since the Council of Ministers together with the European Parliament has the potential to block pending legislation, the European Commission has a strong incentive to anticipate the position of individual countries, to avoid proposing a legislation that will rally member states against each other and therefore block the proposed directive. In seeking to prevent such a stalemate, European officials solicit the information that national associations can provide. Inversely, national associations translate information about EU policies from the European to the national context. By doing so, they provide valuable information for their members that can or do not want to commit resources to monitoring European policy-making themselves.

The capacity to pool resources for monitoring and translating EU policy-making is therefore a key component of national associations' activities. Although not all national associations in the EU respond to these opportunities, there is no question that those that have succeeded in re-inventing themselves have become part of a specifically European way of governance.

AALEP stronly encourages national associations' advocates and leaders to join us for increasing their outreach, visibility, networking  with peers and sharing best practices.