The Limits of Territorial Interest Representation in the European Union

Abstract

According to the literature on lobbying, actors gain access to European policy-making in return for information and expertise. It is often assumed that territorial actors will be in a position to provide such information by virtue of being the implementing authorities. By contrast, this article argues that there is a need to examine further to what extent regions are able to use channels of interest representation and to supply information, what kind of channels they use and how they frame their message. For this purpose, it examines the strategies of seven legislative regions in two concrete policy cases. In particular, it argues that the seven regions rely predominantly on mediated channels of interest representation as their capacity and willingness to use unmediated channels of interest representation is limited. Secondly, it argues that regions tend to use technical language over politicised language in lobbying to avoid overt conflict, especially with national governments or other regions from the member state, but that their ability to produce extensive (technical) expertise is also very limited.