Economic Interests and the European Union: A Catalyst for European Integration or a Hindrance?

Abstract

This special issue of The British Journal of Politics & International Relations focuses on the role of economic interests in European integration. Economic interest groups are defined as representative associations that pursue—as their overriding objective—the material economic interests of their members. They include peak and sectoral business associations, trade unions, professional associations, farmers’ unions and associations representing small-scale businesses, shopkeepers and tradespeople. Economic interests can also include individual companies that lobby governments directly. Groups that represent political actors which do not focus explicitly on the material interests of their members and economic goals would be excluded from this definition: for example, women’s groups as well as nongovernmental associations that focus on environmental or human rights issues. Existing studies of the role of economic interests in European integration fall into one or more of four camps, none of which has entered into a sustained analysis of the role of all major economic interests and European integration. First, there are studies where the role of economic interests is part of and is seen in terms of a particular theory or analytical approach that makes broader claims about European integration. Andrew Moravcsik (1998), notably, examines a limited range of economic interests in the context of his liberal intergovernmentalist study and understands national policy formation in terms of competing economic, and principally business, interests. Neo-functionalists emphasise the role of interests that operate supranationally and independently of the activities of national governments to shape EU-level policy developments. For neo-functionalists, economic interests proactively support the successive integration of various sectors of the economy in order to diminish the transaction costs created from the cross-border movement of goods, services, capital and people. Neo-Gramscians (van Apeldoorn 2002; Bieler 2001) focus upon the pro-integration role of transnational business and financial interests and the complex positioning of trade unions. In the second camp, there are studies of a broad range of interest groups operating at the EU level but not economic interests per se. Justin Greenwood and Mark Aspinwall’s (1998) edited volume explores EU-level policy-making as a collective action problem involving various interests. Greenwood (2007) has undertaken the