Interest Groups and Lobbyists in the European Political Space: The Permanent Eurocrats

Transnational Depoliticisation and Industrial Policy: The European Commission and French Steel (1980–1984)

“…However, the multiplicity of state and non-state actors involved in supranational decision-making processes and their divergent interests complicates such form of depoliticisation as policy outcomes might depart from the initial intents of domestic authorities (Papadopoulos 2017;Snaith 2017). Indeed, EC policy can be influenced by actors who witness significant independence from national government such as the European Roundtable of Industrialists (Van Apeldoorn 2002), interest groups and lobbies (Courty and Michel 2013) or even consultative expert groups (Robert 2010). In the case of steel policy, decision-making involved a range of actors including the Commission's DG III directorate on industrial affairs, EUROFER, the European steel trade association, and the Consultative Committee which represented producers, labour and consumers/traders (Grunert 1987).…”

The 'Angels of Europe': Corporate Public Affairs Employees as the In-House Entrepreneurs of Europe

“…sionals [Georgakakis 2002;Michel 2005] engaged in the process of constructing Europe alongside other political and administrative groups. Over time, authors have witnessed [Courty and Michel 2013;Laurens 2018] a proliferation of economic-and public-interest lobbying of European Union institutions, largely produced by European institutions themselves. Indeed, following the concomitant transfer of responsibilities to the European Union and changes in institutional procedures, as well as the globalisation of economic activities, there has been an increase in the number of European-level interest associations and national interest associations with offices in Brussels and an overall increase in the direct representation of lobbyists in Brussels [Laurens 2018].…”

EU Civil Society

“…Many of these contributions discuss the field of 'Eurocracy' and the 'bureaucratic field', yet rarely do they address EU civil society actors as themselves constituting a field (for exceptions, see Bernhard, 2011;Courty and Michel, 2013;Kalm and Uhlin, 2015).…”

“…As CSOs were absent as such (except in the chapter on representation of interest, cf. Courty and Michel, 2013), this is a good opportunity to enrich the scope of this study and to make amendments or refinements to the model.…”