Interest group–party interaction in EU politics

Abstract

Europe has brought about important changes in representation by strengthening the ability of national interest groups to influence policy at the expense of national political parties. Nevertheless, results from a project on the relationship between interest groups and political parties in Denmark, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom show that interest groups still attach high priority to interacting with national political parties in EU politics and that their party contacts have not moved to Brussels. Instead, national and European party contacts strengthen each other. Moreover, it is not the most but the least Europeanized groups that attach the lowest priority to interacting with national political parties in EU policy. Thus, the strategic adaptations in representation to the new EU opportunity structure may not be as serious as feared by some of the critics of EU democracy.