European Governance and Democracy: Power Protest The EU

Richard Balme
and
Didier Chabanet
European Governance
and Democracy
Power and Protest in the EU
European Governance
and Democracy
GOVERNANCE IN EUROPE
SERIES EDITOR: GARY MARKS
Regional Integration and Democracy: Expanding on the European Experience

Edited by Jeffrey J. Anderson
Europeanization and Multilevel Governance: Cohesion Policy in the European Union
and Britain
By Ian Bache
European Governance and Democracy: Power and Protest in the EU
By Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet
A Wider Europe: The Process and Politics of European Union Enlargement
By Michael J. Baun
Between Europeanization and Local Societies: The Space for Territorial Governance
Edited by Jeanie Bukowski, Simona Piattoni, and Marc Smyrl
A Ruined Fortress? Neoliberal Hegemony and Transformation in Europe
Edited by Alan W. Cafruny and Magnus Ryner
Governing after Communism: Institutions and Policymaking
By Vesselin Dimitrov, Klaus H. Goetz, and Helmut Wollmann
The New Political Economy of EMU
Edited by Jeffry Frieden, Daniel Gros, and Erik Jones
Democracy beyond the State? The European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order
Edited by Michael Th. Greven and Louis W. Pauly
Common Goods: Reinventing European Integration Governance
Edited by Adrienne Heritier
Differential Europe: The European Union Impact of National Policymaking
By Adrienne Heritier, Dieter Kerwer, Christophe Knill, Dirk Lehmku!'
Michael Teutsch, and Anne-Ct~cile Douillet
Multilevel Governance and European Integration
By Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks
Voices of Europe: Citizens, Referendums, and European Integration
By Simon Hug
Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Integrating Europe
Edited by Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow
Flexibility and European Unification: The Logic of Differentiated Integration
By Alkuin Kolliker
Wiring Europe: Reshaping the European Telecommunications Regime
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Transatlantic Governance in the Global Economy
Edited by Mark A. Pollack and Gregory C. Shaffer
How to Democratize the European Union . .. and Why Bother?
By Philippe Schmitter
A Europe of the Air? The Airline Industry and European Integration
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The European Parliament: Moving toward Democracy in the EU
Edited by Bernard Steunenberg and Jacques Thomassen
The Euro: European Integration Theory and Economic and Monetary Union
Edited by Amy Verdun
European Governance
and Democracy
Power and Protest in the Ell
Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet
ROW MAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
ROWMAN & L1TILEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Balme, Richard.
European governance and democracy: power and protest in the EU / Richard
Balme and Didier Chabanet.
p. cm. - (Governance in Europe)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-2934-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7425-2934-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-2935-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7425-2935-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. European Union countries-Politics and government. 2. European Union. 3.
Political participation-European Union countries. 4. Pressure groups-European
Union countries. 5. Lobbying-European Union countries. I. Chabanet, Didier.
II. Title.
JN40.B35152008
322.4094-dc22
2007045934
Printed in the United States of America
@r The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
To Sidney Tarrow, an American friend
Contents
List of Figures and Tables Xl
Preface xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
Introduction: Collective Action and European Democracy 1
Party Democracy in Crisis 5
Interest Group Politics beyond Corporatism 8
Changing Forms of Contention 9
Collective Action and State Building 12
European Integration and European Democracy 14
Methodology of the Book 15
Book Outline 17
Notes 18
1 Approaching Collective Action 21
The Politics of Organized Interests 22
Understanding Social Movements 24
Pluralism, Corporatism, and Protest: Collective Action Regimes 28
Public Policy and the Mobilization of Interests 35
Conclusion: Collective Action in an Expanding Polity 39
Notes 40
2 Collective Action and Civil Society in Europe 45
Civil Society Density 47
Europe of Religions 50
Organized Labor 53
vii
viii Contents
Structure and Change in Civil Societies 55

Mapping Protest and Its Repertoires 60
Civil Society and Protest Behavior 62
Social and Institutional Foundations of Collective Action 65
Conclusion 71
Notes 72
3 The Making of a Polity: Interests' Mobilization around
European Institutions 75
Policymaking in a Complex Environment 75
Brussels: The European Interests Fair 77
Toward a Limited Europeanization of Protest 82
Paths of Access to European Influence 85
Conclusion 89
Notes 90
4 European Integration and Varieties of Capitalism: The
Brussels Consensus 93
The Different Worlds of European Capitalism 94
Business Interests and the Single Market 100
Negotiating Social Europe 103
The Integration of European Capitalisms 107
Conclusion 112
Notes 114
5 The European Burden: Unemployment and Political Behavior 117

Twenty Million Unemployed: Social Exclusion and Labor
Instability 117
(Un)employment Policies at Domestic and EU Levels 120
Mass Unemployment and Voting Behavior 123
Organizing the Unemployed within the Member States 128
European Marches and Altermondialist Movements 133
Conclusion 136
Notes 137
6 Beyond State-Building: Centers and Peripheries in the
European Union 141
The Organization of Territorial Interests in Europe 142
The EU Regional Policy Structure 145
Mobilization of Territorial Interests in the EU 150
Current Features of European Territorial Integration 155
Conclusion 161
Notes 162
Contents ix
7 Collective Action and New Rights 165

A Window of Opportunity for Women's Rights 166
The Environment: Think GlobaL Act Local 172
Immigration and Citizenship: Building the Fortress 178
Conclusion 185
Notes 188
8 Interests' Mobilization in the Constitutionalization of Europe 191
The EU Constitution and the Framing of Collective Action 193
Gender, Citizenship, and Religion: Controversies Regarding
the Values of the EU 196
The Social Dimension 198
Making Up the EU Democratic Deficit 202
Alternative Mobilizations 204
Conclusion 206
Notes 207
9 The Regulation of Interest Groups in the European Union 209
The Abortive European Parliament Initial Attempt at
Regulation 210
Implementing the Ford and Nordmann Reports: No Easy
Matter 212
The European Commission and the "Organized European
Civil Society" 216
Interest Groups, Ethics, and the Construction of the
General Interest 219
Transparency at the Heart of European "Culture Shock" 223
Emergence of the Alter-EU Movement 225
Conclusion' 229
Notes 229
Conclusion: European Democracy and Social Justice 235
Patterns of Europeanization of Collective Action 236
Interests' Influence and the European Polity 239
Insiders and Outsiders 241
Social Justice as a Challenge for Europe 247
Note 248
Bibliography 249
Index 263
About the Authors 267
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
1.1. Structuring Collective Action 32

1.2. Interests Mobilization and Policymaking 36
2.1. Civil Society Density, 2000 49
2.2. Patterns of Secularization 52
2.3. Labor Protection in OECD Countries 56
2.4. The Structure of Civil Society 59
2.5. Protest Behaviors 1999 61
2.6. Repertoires of Protest Behavior 63
2.7. Civil Society and Protest Behavior 66
3.1. Creation of Eurogroups by Year (frequencies) 78
3.2. Creation of Eurogroups by Year (cumulative frequencies) 79
3.3. Creation of Eurogroups by Sectors (%) 80
3.4. Creation of Eurogroups by Period 81
5.1. Assessment of the Employment Situation by Country 126
5.2. Reasons for Rejection of the EU Constitution in France 127
7.1. Membership in Women's Rights Organizations, 1999 170
7.2. Membership in Environment Protection Organizations, 1999 176
TABLES
1.1 Union Membership as Percentage of Eligible Workforce 8

1.1. Three Regimes of Collective Action in Europe 34
xi
xii Figures and Tables
2.1. Correlation Table between Protest and Socio-economic

Indicators 67
2.2. Correlation Table for Protest, Growth, and Inequality 68
2.3. Correlation Table between Protest and Political Opportunities 70
2.4. Linear Regression of Protest with Executive Dominance,
Civil Society Density, and Local Autonomy 71
4.1. The Different Worlds of European Capitalism 94
5.1. Rates of Transition from Employment to Unemployment
in Europe 118
6.1. Cohesion and Convergence among EU-15 Member States:
GDP 1986-2001 156
6.2. Cohesion and Convergence among EU-15 Member States:
Unemployment and Poverty 157
6.3. Regional Disparities (Standard Deviation) in GDP per Head
and Unemployment among EU-15 Member States 159
C.1. Case Studies Summary 240
Preface
After several years of erosion ofthe general public's "permissive consensus"

supporting European integration, the European Union entered a deep in-
stitutional crisis precipitated by the rejection of the draft Constitutional
Treaty in France and in the Netherlands during the spring of 2005. At least
two precepts were proven wrong during this period: the belief that Euro-
pean citizens have little interest in European integration, and the idea that
citizens can hardly influence the politics of the European Union. However,
this new context has left citizens with a high level of distrust in integration,
and the EU institutions with limited capacities to cope with issues the pub-
lic considers priorities, primarily unemployment and social inequalities.
This book explores the complex nature of this evolving relationship be-
tween citizens and European institutions over the last decades. It shows
how European-arena interest groups formed, and how protesters were able
to mobilize in some areas. It argues that disappointment with European in-
tegration stems from Europe's changing political economy, and the impact
that this has had on different social interests. It claims that this contentious
politicization has also been nourished by the European Union policy
process itsel£ which leaves more room for interest groups and protest poli-
tics than for political parties and representative democracy.
The collaborative research presented here originated several years ago, in a

somewhat different Europe, and owes much to a number of people and in-
stitutions. Nuffield College, with the Maison Fran<;:aise d'Oxford and Sci-
ences Po, hosted the international conferences we organized with support
from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in 1998, 1999, and
2000. These initial meetings were decisive in identifying the research area
xiii
xiv Preface
and exploring initial ideas more fully exposed here. We later had opportu-
nities to present different aspects of our work at the Robert Schuman Cen-
tre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, at
the MZES of Mannheim University, at the Marc Bloch Centre and Humbolt
UniversWit in Berlin, and during seminars held in Sciences Po at the CERI
and at the CEVIPOF. Some of our results were also discussed during the
conference organized by the French Political Science Association in Bor-
deaux in April 2006, and during the American Political Science Association
meeting in Chicago in August 2007. Our own institutions-Saint Antony's
College, the European University Institute and GARIG-INRETS for Didier
Chabanet; Sciences Po and the Hong Kong Baptist University for Richard
Balme-constantly and generously supported our efforts. Fieldwork and
data collection were also supported by the grants obtained from the Net-
work of Excellence CONNEX, funded by the European Union within the
Sixth Framework Programme of Research. The Faculty of Social Sciences at
Hong Kong Baptist University graciously welcomed Didier Chabanet as a
visiting scholar for a decisive period during the spring semester of 2006
while we were preparing the manuscript.
Gary Marks, the series editor for Rowman & Littlefield, welcomed the proj-
ect with enthusiasm, and we received useful comments from two anony-
mous reviewers. Susan McEachern and Meg Tilton have constantly helped
us along the way. We also wish to thank Mairead Loughran from Limerick
University for her editorial assistance in preparing graphs and figures.
We benefited from discussions and exchanges with numerous scholars of

collective action and European integration. Sophie Beroud, Peter Cheung,
Chen Feng, Marco Giugni, Virginie Guiraudon, Beate Kohler Koch, Christ-
ian Lahusen, Jean Leca, Patrick Le Gales, Li Lianjiang, Pierre Muller, Yannis
Papadopoulos, Christopher Rootes, Frederic Royall, Dieter Rucht, Sabine
Saurugger, Kathryn Sikkink, Sylvie Strudel, Kathleen Thelen, and Charles
Tilly commented on early versions of our arguments or provided advice on
different aspects of the research presented here. This book owes immensely
to their sense of collegiality. Finally, we are particularly grateful to Sidney
Tarrow for his meticulous and stimulating comments, and for his perma-
nent and generous encouragement.
Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet

Abbreviations
AT Austria
ATTAC Association pour une Taxation des Transactions financieres
pour l'Aide aux Citoyens
BA Bosnia and Herzegovina
BE Belgium
BG Bulgaria
BY Belarus
CA Canada
CAG Competitiveness Advisory Group
CAP Common Agricultural Policy
CEEP European Centre for Enterprises with Public Participation
and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest
CFDT Confederation Fran<;aise Democratique du Travail
CGT Confederation Generale du Travail
CH Switzerland
COPA Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations in the
European Union
COR Committee of Regions
COREPER Committee of Permanent Representatives
CZ Czech Republic
DE Germany
DG Directorate General
DK Denmark
EBCU European Bureau of Consumers' Unions
EC European Commission
ECB European Central Bank
xv
xvi Abbreviations
ECJ European Court of Justice

ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
EE Estonia
EEB European Environmental Bureau
EMU European Monetary Union
EP European Parliament
ERT European Round Table of Industrialists
ES Spain
ESC Economic and Social Committee
ETUC European Trade Union Confederation
EU European Union
EWC European Work Councils
FI Finland
FR France
GAIT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GB Great Britain
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GR Greece
HDI Human Development Index:
HPI Human Poverty Index:
HR Croatia
HU Hungary
ICcru International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
IE Ireland
IGC Intergovernmental Conferences
IS Iceland
IT Italy
JP Japan
KR Republic of Korea
LI Lithuania
LU Luxembourg
LV Latvia
MK Macedonia
MO Montenegro
MT Malta
NGOs Nongovernmental Organizations
NL Netherlands
NO Norway
NZ New Zealand
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OEEC Organisation for European Economic Co-operation
PL Poland
Abbreviations xvii
POS Political Opportunity Structures

IT Portugal
QMV Qualified Majority Voting
RO Romania
RS Republic of Serbia
RU Russian Federation
SE Sweden
SEA Single European Act
SI Slovenia
SK Slovakia
TR Turkey
UK United Kingdom
US United States
UNICE Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Eu-
rope (now BusinessEurope)
wro World Trade Organization
WUF World Union Federation
WVS World Value ( s) Survey( s)
Introduction
Collective Action
and European Democracy
Who gets what from the European Union? The question underpins the ar-
guments of the political debate on European integration for both its pro-
moters and opponents. For convinced Europhiles, the institutional devel-
opment of Europe benefits most of the populations of the member states.
The single market and the single currency are seen as instruments to en-
hance the competitiveness of the European economy, ensuring domestic
growth, heightened international strength, and the promotion of a specific
model based on the joint affirmation of political and social rights. Euro-
pean integration appears from this perspective as a public good, procuring
non-separable benefits for social as well as national interests. This reason-
ing is turned around by its detractors, however, for whom the building of
Europe is seen as an oligarchic, elitist process, organizing the transfer and
relinquishing of sovereignty in order to serve the specific interests of influ-
ent minorities. European integration is criticized on economic grounds (the
domination of big business and financial capitalism) as well as on political
grounds (the bureaucratic hegemony of a supranational technocracy).
More than half a century has passed since the early foundations of polit-
ical Europe with the Congress of The Hague in 1948 and the signing of the
treaty instigating the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951.
The institutions of the EU appear firmly established, and their major ac-
complishments-the single market on the one hand, and peace secured
among member states on the other hand-do not raise doubt. For several
decades, European integration was supported by a "permissive consensus"
among public opinion, made of acceptance without enthusiasm. The reluc-
tance to join the European project by Switzerland and Norway appeared as
1
2 Introduction
exceptions. Its principle remained obviously less acceptable in certain mem-

ber states-the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden in particular-
or among certain social groups (support for integration in public opinion
used to increase according to educational level and to decrease with age).
But the growing number of applicant countries served as a test of legitimacy
for European institutions, in a way comforted by citizens "voting with their
feet." However, a growing Euroskepticism developed in the 1990s, espe-
cially with the difficulties in ratifying the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. This
trend in public opinion was coupled, and in some way nourished, by the
debate on the democratic deficit of the EU. Although the Constitutional
Treaty had been signed by national governments in Rome in 2004 and was
to be ratified by parliaments in a majority of member states,l citizens, when
called upon in referendums, largely abstained (such as in Spain). Others ac-
tively opposed the treaty, including the citizens of France and the Nether-
lands (two of the six founding member states), in the spring of 2005. The
Constitution, the result of tortuous decision-making between representative
institutions of the EU and of the member states, failed to meet popular con-
sent. The critical assessment of European integration therefore coincides
with a deep divide between public opinion and political elites at the EU
level and in the member states.
These events clearly established that a very significant part of the European
public is not obtaining what it expects from European integration, and dis-
agrees with the orientations and outcomes ofEU public policies. As European
integration does not fulfill citizens' expectations and conflicts with their pol-
icy preferences, European democracy is clearly at stake in this process. The EU
institutions may increasingly impose policy choices in contradiction with
those expressed through the channels of national political representation. If
this is indeed the case, a European bureaucratic process restrains, distorts, and
conflicts with representative government in the member states. Alternatively,
if EU policymaking is indeed driven by national governments and effectively
controlled by supranational channels of democratic participation and politi-
cal accountability, then the whole process of representative government in
Europe fails to meet citizens' expectations. In this perspective, the democratic
deficit is not primarily related and confined to the EU, but rather generalized
to the whole of democratic institutions in Europe, and mainly located in the
governmental processes of the member states.
However serious the gap between citizens and political institutions, it
would be misleading, and indeed wrong, to pretend that policymaking at
the EU level has been conducted behind closed doors by diplomats and bu-
reaucrats without any input from social interests. In fact, it is quite the op-
posite. The literature of the last two decades has extensively documented
and discussed the transnational dimensions of European integration,
among which the roles of non-state actors are crucial elements.
Collective Action and European Democracy 3
When interests' representation and mobilization are considered, contem-

porary Europe displays a two-sided situation. First, it provides a framework
for protest in the public sphere. The demonstrations by farmers associated,
since the 1960s, with agricultural marathons and the reforms made to the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), are the most familiar examples of this.
They have recently been supplemented with the emergence of "Eurostrikes"
in the industrial sector, the most remarkable being that ofVilvorde in 1997
against the closure of the Renault plant in Belgium. This event was not with-
out precedent. At the beginning of the 1980s, German, Spanish, and French
workers indeed contested the proposed restructuring of Gillette's European
sites. In 1996, German workers at Alcatel demonstrated in Paris against the
closing of a factory in Germany while in the same year, European rail work-
ers marched on Brussels to oppose plans for the deregulation of railway
transport. However, the strength of the mobilization at Renault-Vilvorde
was highly publicized and politicized with the position taken by Lionel
Jospin during the campaign for legislative election in France and the inter-
vention made by the Commission towards the firm's management. It then
became a benchmark for other movements (Levi's workers in 1997 or road
transport workers in 1998). Industrial action with a European dimension is
increasingly frequent. Demonstrations by the unemployed, whose difficul-
ties to mobilize are well-known, have been held at the European level for
the first time during the Amsterdam Summit in June 1997. This selective
sampling suffices to show that collective protest has been significantly af-
fected by European integration. New mobilizations have developed in reac-
tion to the transnationalization of economic relations, in particular when
they address the strategies of European or American multinational compa-
nies. Movements also emerge in order to obtain the intervention of the Eu-
ropean institutions (in the case of Vilvorde or of the unemployed), or to
contest their decisions (the deregulation of railway transportation, or the
limitation of working time for lorry drivers).
On a more confidential and somewhat controversial level, interests' rep-
resentation in the EU is also conveyed through lobbying by consultancy
firms and legal offices, whose growth and booming activity in Brussels is
well known. Critics frequently refer to the bureaucratic opacity of the EU
and to its permeability to pressure groups, accused of capturing decision-
making and removing it from public scrutiny. Indeed the EU institutions,
particularly the Commission, are largely open to consultation and dialogue
with organized groups. The making of the single market relied upon the de-
velopment of a system of interest representation and, more recently, of pro-
fessional forms of interests' intermediation structuring a vast market for
lobbying activities. The Commission estimated in 1992 that 3,000 special
interest groups were present in Brussels and that the lobbying sector em-
ployed around 10,000 people. Eurogroups, or associations specifically
4 Introduction
organized at European level, were estimated at around 500 in 1985,2700 in

1996,3889 in 2000, and 851 in 2006 according to our own count.4 While
European integration was unfolding, interaction with the EU institutions
became a stake for a constantly growing number of increasingly diversified
interests. Moreover, integration did not simply motivate mobilizations of
existing interests; it also led to renewed, specifically European, forms of or-
ganization and intermediation, with the potential to transform the whole
structure and balance among interests active in European societies.
This book borrows from the three different approaches of interest group
politics, protest behavior and social movements, and public policy analysis
at the EU level. Each of these domains offers complementary perspectives
on European integration, on the way different types of interests influence
the EU policy process, and on how this policy process in turn impacts on
political and social conflicts in European countries. Our first goal is to esti-
mate how and to what extent the organization of interests, for centuries de-
ployed around nation-state institutions, has been transformed with Euro-
pean integration, and if the same tendencies similarly affect interest groups
and social movements. We also aim at specifying the degree and the nature
of influence of interests in the EU policy process. In particular, our objec-
tive is to analyze the types of protest-pro-active or reactive-addressing EU
institutions and policies, and to assess whether they can supplement, limit,
or counter-balance the influence of business exerted through lobbying.
These different processes developed specifically European patterns of
mobilization, identification, and sometimes intermediation among inter-
ests, and therefore contributed to shaping the European polity over the last
decades. We believe that they need to be better specified if the characteris-
tics of the nascent European polity, and if the poor democratic perform-
ances of European institutions in the current period, are to be properly un-
derstood. We conceive democratic performances as the capacity of political
institutions to motivate loyalty and identification as expressed through po-
litical participation on the one hand, and to provide public policies in ac-
cordance with citizens' preferences and expectations on the other hand.
More than general political values, policy preferences are attitudes towards
policy justifications, alternatives, and instruments, backed with moral prin-
ciples and rooted in practical social situations. The political economy of in-
terests as experienced by citizens in everyday life serves as a test case for
democratic performance. There lies their belief and trust in the capacity of
political institutions to deliver social justice. As exposed in the following
chapters, the situation is challenging for political institutions in Europe,
both at the EU and at the national levels.
Before addressing these issues in detail, this introduction is devoted to
the state of political participation in Europe. It provides a review of the cri-
sis of party democracy, the evolution of interest groups beyond the making
of corporatist systems of intermediation, and the development of new

repertoires of contention. We also consider how collective action and state
building are interrelated historical processes, and indicate the main chal-
lenges posed on European democracy by European integration. The last sec-
tion presents our methodology and the content of the book.
PARTY DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS
While participation is a key element of political integration in inputting cit-

izens' preferences in the policy process, turnout in national elections has
regularly declined in West European countries since the 1950s, a period
long enough for controlling short-term effects. Although national situa-
tions present some variations, the total for the original fifteen EU countries
first showed a fall-off in the 1970s, followed by a gradual decline in the
1980s, bringing turnout levels under the threshold of 80%. This trend was
reinforced in the 1990s to produce contemporary turnout in elections fre-
quently below 70%. It should be noted that this tendency has a longer his-
tory and is more pronounced in the United States and in Switzerland than
in countries of the EU, where citizens remain overall more politicized and
more active in elections. However, following a significant trend, increas-
ingly larger percentages of citizens tend to abstain in national elections. 5
On the same note, electoral volatility, defined as the change in partisan
preferences expressed by voters from one ballot to the other, is also in
progress. Overall, with the end of the growth years of the post-war era
(1945-1975), during which there was an exceptional stability of elec-
torates, a more individual and versatile electoral behavior emerged in the
late 1970s. 6 Accordingly, studies converge to highlight the partisan de-align-
ment of voters, still relative and contrasted across countries, but consistent
with the idea of an increased mobility. 7 Similarly, class voting, understood
as the alignment of political behavior based on social class belonging, fol-
lows a pattern of decline in the long run. 8
On top of these tendencies is a decreasing electoral support for the most
established governmental parties. The large left-wing (Socialist and Social
Democrat) or right-wing (Christian Democrat or Conservative) parties reg-
ularly record a loss of their political audience in favor of smaller parties.
New parties propose more clear-cut policy positions, reviving the extremes
of the ideological spectrum (to the far right or the far left), but most of all
bringing new issues onto the political agenda-the environment and "new
politics" on the one hand, immigration and national identity on the
other-constituting the two polarities of a new political cleavage primarily
defined in relation to cultural liberalism. Since the 1980s, new parties ob-
tained enough electoral support to gain access to executive positions at the
6 Introduction
local, regional, and finally, at the national levels. As a result, when the dis-
persion of electorates and the number of parties in local or national execu-
tives are considered, partisan systems appear overall significantly more frag-
mented. 9
This picture must be completed with the decrease in party membership
as registered by the regular decline in the number of party activists. The vast
majority of European countries registered a very significant decline in party
membership between 1978 and 2000 both in relative and absolute terms,
above 50% in France, Italy, and in the UK.IO The development of new par-
ties did not significantly revive party membership during the 1990s. In to-
tal, with less consistent voters and less stable electorates, a decrease in num-
ber of activists, and competition from parties disputing their hegemony on
new political issues, governmental parties-most structuring in partisan
systems-find themselves in a weakened position. The tendencies depicted
above concurred to create a crisis in political representation. The partisan
linkage and the electoral connection established between citizens and po-
litical elites on the one hand, between citizens and state institutions on the
other hand, have weakened.
It is nevertheless difficult to say whether governments are less legiti-
mate today than in the past. Indeed parties and elections, although still
at the core of representative government, are not as exclusive as they used
to be in the making of political leadership. In "post-parliamentary"
regimes,l1 elections are supplemented and challenged by welfare policy-
making and services delivery, by constitutional review, and by continu-
ous political communication (assessment and shaping of public opin-
ion) in designing governmental activities. Contemporary political
legitimacy derives from complementary and competing sources. The elec-
toral mode of legitimization is based upon universal suffrage and party
competition for the selection of leaders accessing political positions, and
at least on some control of the executive by the legislative. Besides elec-
tions, a second form of legitimization, rooted in policymaking, is proce-
dural. It is based on cooptation and bargaining with organized groups for
the elaboration of instruments and institutional procedures used in the
day-to-day guidance of public policy. A development of a third normative
mode of legitimization may also be depicted, with the control of public
policymaking by non-elected authorities such as constitutional courts,
central banks, and the range of independent administrative bodies or
"quangos" (quasi nongovernmental organizations), whose competences
are based on technical, scientific, or professional knowledge. Such a use
of expertise in designing public policy can be considered as an import of
exogenous norms and interpreted as a restriction to the set of policy pref-
erences of political parties and the electorate. It can also be observed,
along with the tendency towards growing judicial action, as part of the
policy process. Finally, government activities also draw legitimacy from a
communicational register, through the increasing reliance on public opin-
ion polls and use of the media, where political leaders present them-
selves and exert their capacity of persuasion and conviction to defend
their policies.
In such a context, the crisis of political representation has to be inter-
preted as a relative decline of the electoral process in the making of politi-
cal legitimacy. Government activities are more exposed and, due to this fact,
more easily subject to public criticism. But the more relative position of
party democracy within the legitimization of representative government
does not lead ipso facto to public policy being less democratically founded,
and does not necessarily reduce the capacity of executives. The longevity in
government of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990), Felipe Gonzalez
(1982-1996), Helmut Kohl (1982-1997), or the two consecutive presi-
dential mandates of Fran<;ois Mitterrand (1981-1995) and Jacques Chirac
(1995-2007), show that the duration of executives does not seem to be af-
fected by this development. 12
Regarding European integration and the EU political process, two main
observations should be drawn from the preceding developments. What we
termed the electoral mode of legitimacy building is particularly weak at the
EU level. Public policies of the EU are not primarily determined by the re-
sults of the election of the European Parliament (EP). Probably in relation
to this fact, political communication is not as developed at the EU level as
it is in the member states. The EU decisions mainly seek legitimization
through the procedures of public policymaking, in particular with the coop-
tation and consultation with organized groups, and in the reliance on the
normative expertise of the European Central Bank (ECB) and of the Euro-
pean Court of Justice (ECJ). On the other hand, the use of universal suffrage
after 1979 for the election of the EP did not compensate for the declining
turnouts at the national level. Turnout in European elections is systemati-
cally lower than for national elections, and follow the same general trend
of decline. In other words, the parliamentarization of the European Com-
munity was in no way a remedy nor a substitute to the crisis of party de-
mocracy in the member states. But when the overall context of party poli-
tics, and particularly the declining tendency in electoral participation, is
considered, the EU has been quite successful in motivating the interest and
participation of the majority of citizens in the vast majority of member
states. Turnout for European elections is indeed higher than in federal elec-
tions in Switzerland, or in national elections in the United States. The dem-
ocratic deficit" of the EU cannot in our view be rooted in the turnout for
If
European elections.
8 Introduction
INTEREST GROUP POLITICS BEYOND CORPORATISM
Due to the structuring of political conflicts and partisan systems in indus-

trialized countries, one of the major aspects of participation in organized
groups lies with union membership and its evolution. The International
Labour Organization recorded a fall between 1985 and 1995 in the levels
of unionization among the employed workforce in France (-37%), in the
UK (-28%), in Germany (-17%), and a less pronounced decrease in Italy
(-7%) and in the Netherlands (-11 %). It also registered a slight increase in
Denmark (+2.3%) and in Spain (+6.2%).13 These trends are confirmed by
other sources, particularly Eurobarometers,I4 and for the period 1993-2003
by the European Industrial Relations Observatory On-Line. IS The decline in
union membership is therefore very general. Significant divergences in de-
velopment, particularly in Scandinavia where continuous growth since the
end of the war led to union membership of above 70 percent, still indicate
that organizational and institutional factors may limit, or invert, structural
factors destabilizing union activism: the decrease in industrial employment,
development of the tertiary sector, increase in unemployment, growing flex-
ibility of labor markets, casualization of employment status and feminiza-
tion of the workforce. Important contrasts persist between northern coun-
tries (and Belgium) with a high level of unionization, where unions offer
services-particularly insurances against unemployment-and those of the
Baltic region, central and southern Europe where a more protest-based
unionism has undoubtedly lost ground, except noticeably in Spain (which,
however, retains a low level of unionization).
In parallel, civil society nourishes a movement of organizational prolif-
eration by the creation and rapid turnover of voluntary groups. In France,
the number of associations registered under the legal provisions of the 1901
law is estimated between 700 and 800,000. Participation in voluntary
Table 1.1. Union Membership as Percentage of Eligible Workforce

(average for the period 1993-2003)
? 70 69 to? 50 49 to? 30 29 to? 20 19to?10 < 10
Belgium Cyprus Austria Czech Republic Estonia France
Denmark Malta Ireland Germany Hungary
Finland Italy Greece Latvia
Norway Luxembourg Netherlands Lithuania
Sweden Slovakia Portugal Poland
Slovenia United Kingdom Spain
Sources: European Industrial Relations Observatory On-line, "Trade Union Membership 1993-2003,"
www.eiro.eurofound.ie/2004/03/update/tn0403105u.html(accessed 21 April 2007); Sophie Beroud and
Rene Mouriaux, "Continuites et evolutions de la conflictualite sociale," in Le conf/it en greve ? Tendances
et perspectives de /a conf/ictua/ite contemporaine, ed. lean-Marie Denis, Paris: La Dispute, 2005, 121-44.
groups leads to the registration of 60,000 new associations per year, and
groups include 20 million members over the age of 14.16 These nongovern-
mental organizations (NGOs), particularly when they act in the domain of
humanitarian aid, human rights, or the environment, offer opportunities
competing with more traditional forms of participation, particularly in po-
litical parties or unions. 17
As we will see in chapter 2, the frequency of organizational membership
varies significantly from country to country. It also tends to become more
diversified and less dependent on socio-professional status. It is less exclu-
sive and less permanent, more easily provoking fluxes in mobilization and
demobilization or inter-organizational transfers. IS European societies com-
bine organizational density with the accrued autonomy of individuals to-
wards interest groups. In relation to the decline in partisan and trade union
activism, this situation represents the end of the secular tendency in Europe
towards the dominant organization of interests along corporatist or neo-
corporatist lines. The institutional structure inherited from the industrial
society still persists, but no longer provides the prevalent frame for durable
and exclusive memberships and identifications.
In the long run, relations between interest groups and bureaucracies were
continuously forged through the development of public policy; and in con-
tinental Europe established predominantly corporatist or neo-corporatist
arrangements along the different sectors of state interventions. The integra-
tion of interest groups with state bureaucracies, especially the institutional
association of employees' unions in Bismarckian welfare-states, and the con-
tribution of professional organizations to agricultural policies, led to softer
forms of mobilization when compared to the periods where collective actors
and corresponding public institutions were constructed. With the develop-
ment of public policy, social movements frequently evolve into interest
groups' networks. Their institutionalization contributes to the civilization of
social and political conflicts as well as to state-building. The long period run-
ning from the establishment of liberal institutions to the completion of con-
temporary welfare systems where major social interests were established is
now globally over, at least for the core countries of Western Europe. Al-
though the structuring of policy networks recently expanded to new issues
such as the environment or security, innovation in public policy more often
consists of a resetting of existing policy networks through their relative open-
ing to new entrants, their decentralization, or their Europeanization.
CHANGING FORMS OF CONTENTION
Such trends are very apparent with the repertoires of collective action and
their transformation. The last twenty years have witnessed the development
10 Introduction
of new forms of mobilizations along the lines of "coordinations," the term

coined with the development of French protest movements. The origins of
these movements are more spontaneous and their leadership largely es-
capes to union-based organizations, who generally ensure the logistics of
their actions without directly controlling the direction they take. Such a re-
luctance to rely on established organizations conveys the aspiration toward
more direct forms of participation and democracy, as exemplified with the
systematic use of assembly general meetings. In many aspects, the patterns
of these mobilizations are reminiscent of students' movements of the six-
ties and seventies and make use of the same template. These movements
frequently develop within specific sectors (farmers, truck drivers, different
categories of health-care or education personnel), where they value specific
professional identities of rank-and-file workers. The movement of the un-
employed, in France as well as in other European countries, also takes the
form of coordinations that distance themselves from uJ;lion organizations.
The mobilization of such social movements at the meSO-level, most often
within professional sectors, responds to the institutionalization of interest
groups at the top, and in particular to the close connections between pub-
lic policies and major unions. As the French case demonstrates with the
flourishing of coordinations in the movements of December 1995 or March
2006, the decrease in union membership is not synonymous with a weak-
ened capacity for mobilization. Rather, it indicates a more erratic tendency
of these movements and a transformation in their modes of activity and
leadership, in which unionism occupies an increasingly relative position.
This trend must also be paralleled with the development of protest be-
haviors since the 1970s. 19 A curious paradox lies in the fact that the relative
crisis of political representation is accompanied by both an increase in and
a diversification of the types of participation. Richard Topf has estimated
that 15% of western European citizens were engaged in political activities
beyond voting in 1956 in comparison to 56% in 1990. 20 These activities in-
clude petitions, boycotts, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, and the stopping
of traffic. Such activities regularly occur throughout western democracies. In
opposition to the claim of the development of political apathy, this is prob-
ably the clearest tendency revealed by large surveys on political participa-
tion. Despite a lower interest in elections, citizens are still politically con-
cerned and active, although in a much wider range of behaviors.
It is possible to contrast the public-spiritedness and civic tradition of
Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries, which easily resort to petitions
and boycotts, with the more openly contestant style of Latin countries, par-
ticularly France, which are more inclined towards street demonstrations
and where violence is more frequent. 21 Historical and mltural elements in-
terplay in the construction of the repertoires of collective action and in the
combination of their various aspects. In chapter 2 we will return to the rel-
evance of these national patterns of protest. Recourse to the different forms

of participation is also affected by cultural and generational changes, lead-
ing to greater autonomy and citizen initiatives. 22 Protest is not restricted to
the most underprivileged social actors. It also involves individuals from the
middle class, or with high levels of education (particularly students) and
political sophistication. However, the phenomenon may also be interpreted
as a consequence of the over-institutionalization of party representation, on
the one hand, and of interest groups on the other hand. The saturation of
the public sphere and the crowding of the policy space tend to undermine
linkages between social interests and organized groups, and are conducive
of alternative processes in the definition of political issues.
The way the contemporary democratic polity has been transformed by
the development of communication techniques should also be mentioned
here. Due to the prevalence of the audiovisual over the media in general,
the impact of mobilization on public opinion depends principally on ac-
cess to television news programs. This access can be obtained by means of
a mass mobilization (a strike or a march, for instance) or, often at lower
cost, by means of a spectacular action carried out by a few activists well-con-
nected with the press and well-trained in the production of "political
scoops."
More recently, France has witnessed radical mobilizations of workers
contesting the closure of production sites by threatening to destroy ma-
chines or factories, or even to provoke ecological disasters. In July 2000, the
employees of the Cellatex firm in Givet in the Ardennes threatened to blow
up their factory and to empty the contents of tanks of sulfuric acid into the
river Meuse. The radical nature of this action, widely publicized on televi-
sion, led to further conflicts in the weeks that followed: the Adelshoffen
brewery near Strasbourg, the Bertrand Faure automobile subcontracting
firm at Nogent sur Seine, the Forgeral ironworks in Valenciennes. Such con-
flicts break out in firms with particularly impoverished industrial relations
and affect the phySical capital and the reputation of enterprises, thus forc-
ing them to negotiate. Their resolution did not avoid lay-offs, but the
threats of sabotage and media attention, at once reporting risks for the sur-
rounding population, employees' desperation, and the attitudes of em-
ployers, have led to measures more favorable to personnel in the closure of
industrial plants.
In addition, the Internet has allowed for a tremendous expansion of ac-
tivists' networks, an increase in the volume of information circulated, and
an unprecedented increase in the speed of communication. It nowadays sig-
nificantly facilitates the use of petitions and the organization of meetings,
and constitutes an essential vector of transnational mobilizations. Finally, a
more sophisticated and professionalized collective action increasingly em-
ploys legal channels to attain results. European integration plays an important
12 Introduction
role in this juridicization of interest politics, a theme to which we shall later

return.
To summarize, contemporary policymaking involves an enlarged process
of mobilization, where social movements and the media playa more active
role than in the past. The relative decline in party democracy as well as the
development of protest over the last thirty years suggests a resurgence of so-
cial conflicts, eroding the legitimacy of political leaders and, although over
a longer term, of political compromises supporting institutional arrange-
ments in European countries.
COLLECTIVE ACTION AND STATE BUILDING
From a historical perspective, nation-states provided the dominant frame-

work for the structuring of contemporary forms of interests' mobilization
and organization. 23 Monarchies and absolutist regimes definitely hosted
forms of corporatism as well as social protest. In the estates society, orders
and status were largely inherited from the past and exclusively granted from
above by royal authorities. In other words, organized interests were defined
as status groups benefiting from privileges, not as social actors as we con-
ceive them in contemporary societies. Social unrest such as peasants' upris-
ings against taxes or landlords, grain seizures, land riots, and religious con-
flicts, essentially remained parochial, spontaneous, and ephemeral. A new
repertoire of contention was progressively developed between the late eigh-
teenth and mid-nineteenth centuries with cosmopolitan (rather than local),
modular (transferable from different sites and issues), and autonomous
(beginning on the claimants' own initiative) forms of mobilization, 24 mak-
ing use of boycotts, mass petitioning, cortege marches and defiles, urban in-
surrections, and later on strikes. Charles Tilly identifies four key processes
conductive to these early social movements as war (and related taxation),
parliamentarization, capitalization, and proletarianization. 25 Sidney Tarrow
argues that with these developments, flit was possible for workers, peasants,
artisans, clerks, writers, lawyers and aristocrats to march under the same
banners and confront the same opponents. These changes made possible
the coming of the national social movement. "26 Social movements and in-
terest groups indeed developed as part of the public sphere associated with
mass political regimes, based on the rise of mass media on the one hand
and on the extensions of civil and political freedoms on the other hand.
With linguistic and economic homogenization within national frontiers,
monetary and political unification, and with the construction of mass po-
litical regimes slowly expanding citizenship, national communities pro-
gressively became the prevalent pattern of social identification and com-
munication. Business and industrial sectors, social classes, corporations,
and professional unions became organized on a national scale, within the

framework imposed by liberal capitalism for the constitution of interest
groups and their interactions. The parliamentary state also became the
source of legislation organizing the status of interests and their relations
with the state. Collective rights such as freedom of association, the right for
unions to organize, the right to establish professional orders, as well as the
rights to strike and demonstrate, and later the legal foundations for collec-
tive bargaining, have been defined, conceived, and legitimized by national
legislationsY With a more complex social structure and a greater density of
interactions, interests' mobilization therefore took a more permanent and
institutionalized character in industrial society.28 Finally, the welfare-state,
through fiscal redistribution and social policies, provided interest groups af-
fected by public subsidies and regulations-who frequently draw on the
state for their own resources-with motives for mobilization. Mobilization
became less systematically protest-based and violent more civilized in the
perspective of Norbert Elias,29 as a result of cooperation between the state
and organized groups in the conduct of public policy.
From this historical perspective, interests' mobilization is definitely part
of a large process of state-building. The complex machinery of the welfare-
state can be seen as the set of institutional devices incrementally and inter-
actively elaborated to cope with conflicts of interests among social groups,
and between social groups and the state. Such institutional arrangements
were progressively built as an accumulation of political compromises, and
with significant historical and national variations, forged the frame of na-
tion-states and then welfare states. The institutional development of the
state therefore largely responded to as much as it motivated interests' mo-
bilizations. Beyond institutional developments, collective action was also
crucial in the making of mass political culture and of the public sphere con-
stitutive of European democracies.
As a key component of the democratic polity, collective action also affects
the integration of political regimes. The degree of integration of democratic
regimes depends on their institutional capacity to regulate tensions among
different interests by delivering compromises acceptable to parties involved
in conflicts, and to accommodate a high level of government intervention
in social life while maintaining respect for individual and collective free-
doms. Democratic integration defined in this way is closely related to the
capacity of public policy to match citizens' preferences. Nevertheless, be-
yond citizens' satisfaction with government outputs and processes, demo-
cratic integration also refers to the degree of cooperation and identification
established through representative government among different segments
of society (e.g., different regions, ethnic groups, or social classes), as well as
between individuals or groups and political elites and institutions. Al-
though the term integration was widely used by functionalism in sociology
14 Introduction
and political science, we do not think of social conflict as an anomaly, nor

as a consequence of poor performances of political regimes. But we ac-
knowledge that political institutions and public policies vary in their ca-
pacity to cope with conflicts of interests among different groups and to es-
tablish foundations for social justice, and that this in tum affects social and
political cohesion. In view of the intensification of protest, decline in elec-
toral mobilization and trust in government, we argue that political integra-
tion has been declining over the last decades in European countries.
EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY
At the interface between governments on the one hand and social conflicts
on the other hand, the regime of interests' mobilization and intermediation
is fundamental for the performances of representative governments, for
their ability to make sense of political preferences and to contain protest
within admitted norms of participation. The development of EU institu-
tions and public policies has obviously generated significant political
changes, in particular with the mobilization of interests as we study them
in this book. European integration affects social and political interactions
at three distinct levels: territorial, with the enlargement of their framework
and perimeters; relational, with the transformation of actors and networks
engaged in defining and allocating political resources; and finally, cognitive,
with the emergence of new values, ideas, or justifications of the social order
and its transformations (such as peace in Europe, market efficiency, human
rights, the European social model, or subsidiarity and proportionality in
government intervention). National states' capacity for political integration
is at stake, with each of these processes affecting territoriality, distributive
policies ensuring social cohesion, and the collective representation of a
common destiny-a historic project-at the foundations of the political
community. We may think that interests' mobilization at the EU level fol-
lows the same pattern of integration that it did at the national level during
previous periods, and that national relative disintegration is a logical side
effect of European political integration. But we also need to consider that
tensions in interests intermediation at the national level result from the EU
general policy process, without being compensated by a dynamic of demo-
cratic integration at the EU level.
This book analyzes collective action at the EU level in different policy ar-
eas with the intention to disentangle this issue. The political development
of the EU is part of the general process briefly depicted above. However
three main characteristics need to be specified. First, the EU is not a state,
and is not at this stage engaged in a process of state-building similar to the
one historically followed by European countries. The international or post-
national structure of the Ell institutions therefore affects interests' mobi-

lizations, and the Ell and national political processes should be, as much
as possible, considered in relation to each other rather than separately. The
task is challenging, as interactions are indeed complex. But European poli-
tics is not made of single national democracies just topped with an inde-
pendent Ell system. European democracy is nowadays made of the interac-
tions between national political systems and the Ell institutions, as part of
a largely common polity. Second, governance at the Ell level implied the
development of an interest group intermediation system and of protests at
the European level, which we consider as part of the same political config-
uration. Although this perspective is rarely adopted by the literature, we
think that bridging this gap is necessary to characterize the European polity
as such, as well as to estimate the dynamics of European democracy. Finally,
the political stability of European countries, as well as the requirements set
for Ell membership, preclude in the short term the perspective of move-
ments aiming at fundamental constitutional changes. Although the issue of
the Ell Constitution motivated some forms of mobilization, they do not
compare with the most massive movements related to democratic transi-
tions, particularly with the movements of former communist countries in
Eastern and Central Europe. Collective action as we conceive it here in the
European context deals with the orientation of public policy without con-
testing the constitutional foundations of European regimes.
METHODOLOGY OF THE BOOK
Collective action at the European level varies according to sectors and in-
terests considered. Obviously, the promotion of business interests in Brus-
sels differs from mobilizations by farmers or by the unemployed. Which
groups gain privileged access to the Ell institutions? Which repertoires of
collective action are used by the different categories of interests? Is the Ell a
beneficial institutional terrain for new political issues? How does collective
action at the Ell level impact on the power relations among interests and
cleavage structures at the domestic level?
The analysis presented in this book draws on several years of empirical
fieldwork, and makes use of different types of methodologies and data sets.
We combine two levels of comparative analysis. The first dimension of
comparison is cross-national, and characterizes collective action and inter-
ests' intermediation both at the national and at the Ell level. In doing so we
use quantitative data about membership and behavior of organized groups,
primarily derived from the World Values Survey (WVS) and from informa-
tion provided by the European Commission (EC). We also develop several
qualitative typologies to characterize collective action regimes and interests'
16 Introduction
representation at the national and EU level. As the state is the major insti-
tutional anchorage of most political processes, the characterization of these
regimes at the national level is obviously crucial in a comparative politics
perspective. However, processes aggregated at such a macro level hardly cap-
ture the details of interactions developed within numerous policy subsys-
tems, and definitely miss major dynamics of public policy such as decen-
tralization and transnationalization, equally decisive when European
integration is considered. This first level of analysis is therefore supple-
mented with the cross-sectional comparison of a number of policy issues.
We included regulative (social dialogue, women's rights, immigration, and
environment), distributive (unemployment and social cohesion), and con-
stitutive (the drafting of the EU Constitutional Treaty and the regulation of
lobbying) policies. Each of them is apprehended as a longitudinal case
study intended to trace back the career of issues, to identify the major
episodes and patterns of collective action, and finally to relate interests' mo-
bilization to the changes in the structure and intensity of social cleavages.
The time frame adopted for these case studies covers the period
1984-2006, from the making of the single market to the ratification process
of the EU Constitution, with some variations due to specific policy devel-
opments. Existing data for such a number of issues, over such a long period,
for all of EU member states, is very fragmented. We conducted fieldwork in
Brussels or in the member states, primarily to collect interviews with key
policy stakeholders among interest groups, social movements and EU insti-
tutions. These interviews were mainly conducted among actors involved
with the social dialogue, including: the Union of Industrial and Employers'
Confederations of Europe (UNICE),30 the European Trade Union Confed-
eration (ETUC), the European Centre for Enterprises with Public Participa-
tion and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest (CEEP), and repre-
sentatives of interests engaged in regional policy (DG Regional Policy,
Committee of Regions [COR], different local governments), unemploy-
ment (unions and social movements), immigration (voluntary associa-
tions), and regulation of lobbying (members of the EP and different ser-
vices). We also directly observed a few collective action episodes, in
particular one of the early meetings of COR soon after its establishment in
1993, the European marches of the unemployed in Cologne in 1999 and in
Lisbon in 2000, and the European Social Forum in Bobigny (France) in
2004. We supplement these data by making use of studies published in the
literature, particularly in areas we did not directly investigate (environment
and women's rights), and use statistical data collected to characterize
changes in cleavages' structures. We trust that the combination of these dif-
ferent sources offers a new insight on the relations between collective action
and public policy in the context of European integration.
BOOK OUTLINE
Chapter 1 reviews the literature in order to specify an adequate perspective

to approach collective action in its relation to European integration. We
generally define collective action as the organization, promotion, and de-
fense of social interests. We develop a comparative framework based on the
notion of collective action regimes, and on the analysis of interactions be-
tween interests' mobilization and public policy. Finally, we indicate how
European integration is likely to impact on collective action through the de-
velopment of its multi-tier political system.
Chapter 2 adopts a comparative perspective on social membership and
protest behaviors within European countries, mapping variations in na-
tional civil societies and their transformations. Whether and when civil so-
ciety is indeed organized and capable of influence in Europe is the object of
this chapter. We specifically focus on its impact in shaping political behav-
iors. We use both intra-European and extra-European comparisons to ex-
plore this issue. We then turn with chapter 3 to the specific effects of EU in-
stitutions on political mobilization processes. The most direct incidence of
integration on collective action is exerted by the development of EU insti-
tutions and public policies. We consider the processes of group formation
and mobilization related to EU policies, as well as the targets and access of
organized interests to EU institutions.
The following chapters are devoted to a series of policy case studies as-
sessing the transformations of interests' mobilizations in a cross-sectional
perspective. Chapter 4 starts with the mobilization of business interests and
unions around key policy issues of the single market and of the EU social
dialogue. We specifically consider the Europeanization of industrial rela-
tions and their possible convergence. Chapter 5 analyzes mobilization from
the unemployed and its impact at the EU level. Unemployment remains a
matter for individual member states, but in 1997 the EU adopted a Euro-
pean employment strategy intending to harmonize national practices and
to favor access to jobs. Unemployment and job insecurity continue to gen-
erate increasing dissatisfaction among European citizens, as demonstrated
by the rise in protest votes and movements by the unemployed themselves.
We show that, more vulnerable than its member states, the EU bears the
brunt of this discontent. Chapter 6 then looks at cohesion policy and at the
mobilization of territorial interests. Probably the most striking feature of
European integration rests with the removal of multi-secular borders estab-
lished between member states. We therefore analyze how the EU cohesion
policy motivated the mobilization of territorial interests, and how it af-
fected the very long-term process of territorial integration around nation-
state institutions. Chapter 7 then reviews the main features of collective
18 Introduction
action and public policies in the areas of the environment women's rights,
and migrants' rights. As the EU institutions have been formed more recently
than national states, decision-making is likely to be less crowded and they
may therefore be more receptive to new policy issues. Our analysis shows
that EU institutions are structurally selective in the promotion of new
rights, supporting much more environment and women's rights than mi-
grants' ones, and that interests' mobilizations are still largely dependent on
domestic politics and national contexts.
Chapter 8 and 9 follow a slightly different orientation, as they are de-
voted to constitutive policies. Chapter 8 presents a study about interests'
mobilization around the (interrupted) constitutional process of the EU. We
more specifically analyze interests' mobilization regarding the values of the
EU, the social dimension, and relations between citizens and EU institu-
tions. We also consider how alter-European movements developed on this
occasion. Chapter 9 analyzes, with the codification of lobbying activities,
how the issue of interests' representation has been built as an issue and
dealt with by the EU institutions. We show that related controversies reveal
the tensions between competing models of interests' representation around
the EC and the EP, how they relate to the development of political repre-
sentation at the EU level, and how discrepancies in national practices have
so far restricted the development of transparency at the EU level. Finally, we
conclude the volume by summarizing our findings, presenting a model that
explains the different patterns of Europeanization of collective action, and
discussing their implications for European democracy.
NOTES
1. As of June 5, 2007, eighteen member states have ratified the draft Constitu-
tional Treaty.
2. Alan Butt Philip, Pressure Groups in the European Community, London: Univer-
sity Association for Contemporary European Studies, 1985.
3. Commission of the European Communities. Directory of Interest Groups, Lux-
embourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1996.
4. CONECCS, "Consultation, the European Commission and Civil Society,"
ec.europa.eu/civiLsociety/coneccs/index_en.htm (accessed 15 April 2006). During
the recent period, the architecture of the database followed substantial changes that
are analyzed in chapter 9, devoted to the codification oflobbying activities.
5. See in particular Mark N. Franklin, ed., Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Elec-
toral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2004.
6. Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability:
The Stabilization of European Electorates 1885-1985, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1990.
7. Russell J. Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Ad-
vanced Industrial Democracies, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, 1996; Hans-
Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
8. Terry Nichols Clark, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Michael Rempel, "The De-
clining Political Significance of Social Class," International Sociology, 8, no. 3 (1993):
293-316; Paul Nieuwbeerta, "The Democratic Class Struggle in Postwar Societies:
Traditional Class Voting in Twenty Countries, 1945-1990," in The Breakdown of
Class Politics: A Debate on Post-Industrial Stratification, ed. Terry Nichols Clark and
Seymour Martin Lipset, Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 200},
121-36.
9. Dalton, Flanagan, and Beck, working on a sample of eighteen western coun-
tries, recorded a fragmentation of party electorates since the 1960s (Russell J. Dal-
ton, Scott C. Flanagan, and Paul Allen Beck, Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial
Democracies. Realignment or Dealignment? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1984,9). For a group of twelve European countries, Laver and Schofield showed that
the number of parties in governmental coalitions tended to increase during the two
periods of 1945-1971 and 1971-1987 (Michael Laver and Norman Schofield, Mul-
tiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1990, 148). This development also relates to the growing percentage of ma-
joritarian coalition executives when compared to single party or minority govern-
ments (Ruud Koole and Peter Maier, "Political Data in 1992," European Journal of Po-
litical Research, 24, no. 4 [December 1993]: 364; Richard S. Katz and Ruud Kook
"Political Data in 1997," European Journal of Political Research, 34, no. 3-4 [Decem-
ber 1993]: 331). Finally, big cities in developed countries also follow a significant
trend toward fragmentation of partisan systems and executive coalitions (Oscar
Gabriel and Vincent Hoffman-Martinot, Democraties Urbaines: L'etat de la democratie
territoriale dans les grandes villes de 15 pays industrialises, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000).
10. Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen, "Party Membership in Twenty European
Democracies, 1980-2000," Party Politics, 7, no. 1 (2001): 5-21; Russell J. Dalton
and Martin P. Wattenberg, eds., Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced
Industrial Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
11. Jeremy Richardson and Grant A. Jordan, Governing under Pressure: The Policy
Process in a Post-Parliamentary Democracy, Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979.
12. The fact is confirmed by the data systematically gathered by Laver and
Schofield between 1945 and 1987 (Laver and Schofield, Multiparty Government, 148).
13. International Labour Organisation, World Labour Report 1997-98: Industrial
Relations, Democracy and Social Stability, Geneva: International Labour Organisation,
1997. Due to the late transition to democracy, in Spain union membership started
from a low 8% in 1980 to reach 17% in 2004, with important regional variations.
14. Joachim Schild, "La participation politique: Evolutions temporelles et dif-
ferences par pays," in Les enquetes Eurobarometres: Analyse comparee des donnees socio-
politiques, ed. Pierre Brechon and Bruno Cautres, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998, 159-74.
15. European Industrial Relations Observatory On-line, "Trade-Union Member-
ship 1993-2003," www.eiro.eurofound.ie/2004/03/update/tn0403105u.html (ac-
cessed 15 April 2007).
20 Introduction
16. Conseil d'Etat, Rapport Public 2000: Les associations et la Loi de 1901, cent ans
apres, Paris: La Documentation fran<;aise, 2000.
17. Jeremy Richardson, "The Market for Political Activism: Interest Groups as a
Challenge to Political Parties," West European Politics, 18, no. 1 (1995): 116-39.
18. Bernard Wessels, "Organizing Capacity of Societies and Modernity," in Private
Groups and Public Life: Social Participation, Voluntary Associations and Political Involve-
ment in Representative Democracies, ed. Jan W. van Deth, London: Routedge, 1997.
19. Russel J. Dalton, Citizen Politics, 67-85.
20. Richard Topf, "Beyond Electoral Participation," in Citizens and the State,
52-92.
21. For France, see in particular Charles Tilly, The Contentious French, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
22. Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles
Among Western Publics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
23. Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publish-
ers,2004.
24. Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1995.
25. Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004, 25.
26. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement. Social Movements and Contentious Politics,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 (1st ed. 1994),42.
27. Charles S. Maier, '''Fictious Bonds ... of Wealth and Law': On the Theory and
Practice of Interest Representation," in Organizing Interests in Western Europe, ed.
Suzanne Berger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981,27-62.
28. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, New York: The Free Press,
1947.
29. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process. Vol. 2: State Formation and Civilization, Ox-
ford: Blackwell, 1982.
30. In January 2007, UNICE changed its name to BusinessEurope.
1
Approaching Collective Action
The term "collective action" is used primarily by economists, sociologists,

and political scientists to address a wide range of issues. Our approach is sit-
uated at the crossroads of the three major research areas of interest group
politics, social movements, and public policy analysis offering complemen-
tary, although not fully articulated, perspectives. This chapter reviews some
of the major developments in the literature in order to specify and justify
an adequate perspective to approach collective action and its relation to Eu-
ropean integration. We first consider how the politics of interests has been
apprehended by social sciences through the different theories developed in
this respect in Europe and in the United States. We argue that, beyond the
organization of interests, more attention should currently be devoted to
their influence on policy performances. We also review the literature on so-
cial movements and its competing paradigms, and defend an integrative ap-
proach, combining rather than opposing the effect of different factors. We
define collective action as the organization, promotion and defense of so-
cial interests, among which interest group (lobbying) and social movement
(protest) activities are the main polar patterns of the same behavioral con-
tinuum. We then make use of these developments to develop a comparative
framework to apprehend collective action in Europe, based on the notion
of collective action regimes. We also envisage how collective action interacts
with public policy, in particular which forms of interests' mobilizations are
more likely to be active at different stages of the policy process. We finally
indicate in the conclusion how European integration may impact on col-
lective action through the development of its multi-tier political system.
21
22 Chapter 1
THE POLITICS OF ORGANIZED INTERESTS
The first of the approaches we borrow from deals with the politics of inter-
ests, referring to the access of interests to political institutions and to the
impact of public policy on the structure and distribution of resources
among various groups or segments of society. This perspective was estab-
lished, on the one hand, with "the group approach" by scholars of Ameri-
can politics developing the classical foundations of the pluralist theory, 1
and, on the other hand, by Marxist scholars, from Marx himself in his most
political writings to A. Gramsci, N. Poulantzas and B. Moore when they an-
alyzed the interplay between the class structure of society and changes in
political institutions brought with revolutions. The definition of groups, be
they pressure or interest groups, social classes, or dominant groups, largely
depends on the perspective favored by the analysis. Collective action here
relates to the capacity of social interests to organize themselves in order to
act and access political influence.
For a long time, pluralist theories competed with elitist and Marxist in-
terpretations of power in society. 2 The Logic of Collective Action, published by
Mancur Olson in 1965,3 devastated the major premises associated with this
debate. In showing that shared interests do not ipso facto allow individuals
to act collectively, it ruined by the same token the Marxist assumption that
social classes are "natural" historical actors, as well as the liberal argument
according to which in a democratic polity the influences of various interest
groups tend to balance each other. Although these propositions are sketchy
shortcuts not doing justice to the nuances of elaborated theories, they were
common arguments at the time and to a large extent were the cornerstones
of these approaches. Olson convincingly argued that collective action is not
primarily dependent on the intensity of interests, but rather on the structure
of interactions and on the capacity of groups to provide individuals with in-
centives for mobilization. In doing so he developed a common methodol-
ogy for approaching the politics of interests, and for explaining its empiri-
cal variations. As a result, the next generation of scholars more precisely
focused on the organization of interests and the term "organized interests"
or "organized groups" took over the previous terminology of pressure
groups, interest groups, or social classes in many publications. 4
Another major development in the literature on interest group politics
was provided with the concept of neo-corporatism, referring to the degree
of organization of labor and business interests, and to their capacity to es-
tablish political compromises sustaining public policy.s Scholars of neo-
corporatism accomplished a major step forward in comparative politics.
They showed that pluralism was not the only pattern of interests interme-
diation to be found within democracies, and that interest group systems
could not be understood as the mere product of variations in class struc-
Approaching Collective Action 23
tures on the one hand, or in constitutional arrangements on the other

hand. They integrated welfare systems, not only as policy outputs, but as in-
stitutional arrangements resulting from bargaining between competing so-
cial interests and founding the legitimacy of relations between the state and
society.
Thanks to these analytical breakthroughs, and to the many empirical test-
ing and theoretical controversies they introduced, we undoubtedly have a
much better understanding of the differences in the organization of inter-
ests according to policy areas and national contexts than was the case some
forty years ago. Nevertheless the literature in the last two decades accumu-
lated empirical studies without reaching comparable innovations in theory
building. 6 Most studies over the period indeed focused on the organization
of specific interests and on their capacity to overcome collective action
dilemmas, or alternatively on the structure and change of interest group sys-
tems, revolving around their degree of pluralism in the United States, as op-
posed to neo-corporatism in Europe. 7 Theoretical innovation seems to have
moved to adjacent fields of research. The policy networks 8 and the varieties
of capitalism approaches,9 as well as studies of agenda setting,lO have
brought some refinement to the typologies of interactions among stake-
holders in public policy and to their contextualization. Policy is in the vast
majority of cases considered through its processes such as decision and im-
plementation, and in a more limited number of studies through its outputs
such as regulation, legislation, budgets, and institution building. But few re-
search designs precisely consider the influence of interest group behavior in
integrating an empirical estimation of policy performances.!!
We are aware of the difficulties associated with this perspective. Policy
performances are indeed difficult to characterize, as their measurement in-
volves problems of criteria selection and data collection. Social changes are
also difficult to interpret as direct outcomes of public policy, as many con-
textual factors usually interact with government interventions. Moreover,
public policy more frequently appears as an iterative process of interaction
than as a one-shot game. Performances are therefore difficult to consider if
policy never reaches termination. Finally, assessing the distribution of re-
sources among various categories of interests also entails some conceptual
difficulties. We do not underestimate these problems nor claim to solve
them here, nor do we conduct a full policy evaluation for all issues consid-
ered. Nevertheless, broad policy performances, rather than specific out-
comes, can in many cases be characterized by the discrepancy between pol-
icy values and objectives, such as securing economic growth, fighting
poverty or developing education, on the one hand, and the state of related
features in society apprehended through indicators such as Cross Domestic
Product (CDP), the percentage of people with an income below a mini-
mum standard, or the literacy rate within the population, on the other
24 Chapter 1
hand. We do not apprehend performance in strictly quantitative terms, but

rather as the quality of public policy, understood as its capacity to regulate
and moderate political conflicts. By policy performance we therefore refer,
beyond the level of satisfaction obtained by organized groups engaged in
the policy process, to the impact of public policy on the structure and in-
tensity of cleavages among interests involved. Making sense of policy per-
formance requires a combination of comparative (do different policy set-
tings yield different performances?) with longitudinal (is policy
performance declining or improving over time?) perspectives, and both will
be used whenever possible. We believe that a better understanding of the re-
lation between the involvement of organized groups in public policy and
the changing structure of interests is needed to increase both the scientific
and policy relevance of the study of interest group politics.
UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
The second research tradition we borrow from is the sociology of social

movements. This perspective makes use of the notions of resources mobi-
lization, political opportunity structures (POS), frame analysis, and defin-
ing a well-structured and cohesive field of study. 12 We briefly introduce the
developments of these concepts in the following pages.
The resources mobilization paradigm initially developed in the United
States, in parallel with the civic rights movement, and as a reaction to psy-
cho-sociological interpretations of collective action and their emphasis on
individual subjectivity-particularly on the feeling of injustice-in explain-
ing mobilization. Rather, political entrepreneurs and organizations are con-
sidered as key factors for the initiation and success of social movements.
Building on the economic approach of M. Olson, J. McCarthy and M. N.
Zald developed the most elaborated version of this paradigm,13 stressing
the role of organizational structures, selective incentives, and individual
strategies to obtain material or non-material benefits from participation to
collective action.
This paradigm nowadays offers a wider range of perspectives, integrating
new sociological dimensions. It provided a better understanding of the role
of leaders and of the economy of organizations in mobilization processes.
It also revealed the diversity of individual motivations for collective action,
and how they relate to social solidarity and identity. A. Oberschall 14 made
a decisive contribution in analyzing organizations as providing both iden-
tity and social integration to their members. According to his analysis, so-
cial movements develop among highly organized groups with a high level
of solidarity, but weakly integrated to the society as a whole. C. Tilly also re-
newed and expanded the paradigm in considering interests, organizations,
and strategies as part of a historical analysis of protest movements and po-

litical integration. 15 Organized groups are then conceived as sites and as
processes developing social identities, without assuming a direct equiva-
lence between social movements and specific organizations. Social groups
are more able to promote their interests when participation is voluntary,
and based on a strong sense of identity.
Although the strict economist assumptions of the approach are relaxed in
most contemporary studies, the resources mobilization paradigm estab-
lished a seminal framework for approaching collective action and imposed
the consideration of interest group organization as a contingent process to
be explained rather than as a natural property of mobilization.
While mobilization of resources is focused on the internal characteristics
of the organization, making such characteristics central to any explanation,
the political opportunity structure (POS) approach underscores institu-
tional and political variables more or less favorable to social movements.
Peter Eisinger was the first scholar to use this concept to compare the levels
and forms of protest by African Americans in forty-three cities. 16 Two dif-
ferent schools of thought exist within this paradigm. Herbert Kitschelt 17
and Hanspeter KriesP8 initially proposed a fairly static conception, postu-
lating the permanence of political systems-seen, incidentally, as strictly
national-whose properties very largely determine the possible appearance
of social movements and their forms of action. H. Kriesi particularly stresses
the importance of cleavages, mainly derived from party systems, which
channel the claims made by social movements. According to this point of
view, strong states, centralized and relatively unfavorable to protest groups,
have few social movements; but when they do exist, the latter are often rad-
ical and confrontational. On the other hand, states that are more open and
decentralized tolerate and encourage mobilization, generally in a participa-
tory mode. This vision of things allowed for major progress in how com-
parative politics outlines the typologies of national models, but has shown
itself ill-equipped to take account of interactions between structures and ac-
tion: it tends to overestimate the weight of strictly political variables, while
ignoring the specific dynamics of social movements and their capacity not
only to influence but also to shape institutions.
A second, more dynamic and diachronic line of thought gradually devel-
oped by Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly, and Sidney Tarrow relativized the
structural character of these opportunities, allowing weighing up not only
the importance of institutional incentives and thus the continuity of certain
protest behaviors, but also the different factors for change in the level and
patterns of mobilization. The struggles and activity of the groups concerned
are brought back to the core of the analysis of social movements. For Tar-
row, then, POS are "consistent but not necessarily formal, permanent, or
national signals to social or political actors which either encourage or
26 Chapter 1
discourage them to use their internal resources to form social move-

ments."19 In a now classic and much used interpretation, the author iden-
tifies four categories: the degree of openness or closeness of the politico-in-
stitutional system; the relative level of stability of political alignments; the
presence or absence of allies within the political elites; and the existence of
internal divisions. 20 These elements have widely been adapted and further
specified. McAdam, for example, includes the authorities' propensity for re-
pression as a key factor in mobilization. 21 Other scholars insist even more
on the fluidity of collective action situations, preferring-significantly-to
speak of windows of opportunity.22
These extensions honed analysis by taking account of both the dynamic
and the variety of the opportunity structures, the latter frequently unfolded
on several interrelated levels-national, but also infranational or suprana-
tional. The research of M. Keck and K. Sikkink23 also showed that opportu-
nities for collective action are deployed within an increasingly interactive
and transnationalized space. These developments also lead to recognition
of numerous categories of opportunities, varying in political character, de-
gree of institutionalization, and accessibility to actors. Over the last few
years the concept has been considerably extended by its application to the
field oflaw or by the incorporation of cultural, economic, and even gender-
based dimensions. At the same time as its explanatory capacity was speci-
fied, its domain of validity has also been restricted, especially with regard
to the situation of ill-integrated groups, whose mobilization motivations
are rooted in very specific social conditions rather than in the openness of
political institutions, from which they remain anyway distanced.
The analysis of pas oscillates permanently between a strictly political
vision-rigorous but certainly too narrow-and a much broader view that
runs the risk of diluting the concept to the point where we can no longer be
really sure of what distinguishes it from the simple notion of context. In any
event, this paradigm has led researchers to use greater rigor in specifying the
variables making up the environment of social movements, and to conceive
of their relationship in a dynamic or historical perspective. Here again, Tar-
row conceptualized a major theoretical move by sketching a theory of cycles
of protest,24 later refined with the notion of "periods."
This point of view has also been criticized and complemented by a set of
approaches putting special emphasis on the identity, symbolic, and cultural
dimensions-created via action-of social movements. Drawing largely on
ethnomethodology and interactionism, and especially the work of Erving
Coffman, the approach known as frame analysis focuses on the fight for
meaning among a host of individual and collective actors engaged in a con-
tinuous process of justification so as to further their cause. Under this per-
spective, the formulation of a political issue is always the outcome of compe-
tition between different operators in relatively specific arenas, in which
systems of arguments are developed and confronted. These operations in-

volve not only actors from the social movement itself, but also such potential
adversaries as political elites, and the media, whose role in democratic soci-
eties is becoming more and more decisive. The dynamic of mobilization de-
pends on processes of adjustment and alignment that gradually take place be-
tween individuals' beliefs and values, on the one hand, and the activity and
ideology of the organizations making up the movement on the other hand.
These constantly evolving mechanisms are complex, and all the more explicit
when they operate in under-institutionalized policy spaces. The school of
thought triggered with the work of David Snow et al. without doubt provided
one of the most developed analyses of these phenomena, with its identifica-
tion of four key processes of collective action as frame bridging, amplifica-
tion, extension, and transformation. 25 The stake for actors involved consists
of describing a situation as a problem, reaching a diagnosis, neutralizing ad-
versaries and finally, trying to impose a master frame specific to a protestation
cycle. The "resonance" of the cognitive frame explains the capacity for the so-
cial movement to structure itself for political action.
This approach takes into account the rivalries of competing interests in
the construction of protest events and, more generally, in the promotion of
public issues. It emphasizes the cognitive dimensions of individual motives
as shaped by specific cultural and historical contexts, and in a micro-socio-
logical perspective it throws light on the improvised, often recycled charac-
ter of discourses and ranges of action that Snow tends to see as conscious
strategic adaptations. This instrumentalist reading has been much criti-
cized, notably by scholars such as A. Melucci and A. Pizzorno for whom
identity, irreducible to a mere assessment of actors' interests, is a key ele-
ment of social movements. 26 Likewise, criticism has been directed at the
sometimes large-scale use of potentially tautologous propositions-the res-
onance of a frame is explained by the existence of a social movement, which
is itself explained by the resonance of a frame-and the tendency to exces-
sive homogenization of the representations at work within a given move-
ment. All in all, however, this paradigm usefully supplements the mobi-
lization of resources and POS approaches by setting the cognitive work of
actors at the heart of the analysis. It works better for highlighting the sin-
gularity of social movements through monographs than for revealing their
shared characteristics, and therefore has not been systematically used for in-
ternational comparisons so far.
Originating from distinct schools of thought, these approaches are all
means to explore different facets of the same phenomenon. Spurred on
mainly by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly,27 the study of social movements has
striven over the last few years to better articulate these lines of thought,
while polishing its analytical tools. Without totally disappearing, the clas-
sic form of social movements, with the labor movement as its historical
28 Chapter 1
archetype, became less central. The continuum in the repertoires of collec-

tive action, from revolutions to less radical mobilizations not necessarily
aimed at political leaders, is often emphasized in recent analysis. In certain
cases only the sequence and result of actions make it possible to describe
the nature of the process. The "contentious politics" concept explicitly
makes this connection by pointing to a very large range of phenomena con-
sidered as manifestations of the same family of objects. The concept pre-
supposes two dimensions: "( 1) it involves contention: the making of in-
terest-entailing claims on others; and (2) at least one party to the
interaction (including third parties) is a government."28 As Jack Goldstone
stresses, on the one hand it broadens the field of analysis considerably and
no doubt excessively by not specifying who is making the claim, while on
the other it limits the field drastically by excluding situations in which a
government is not involved in one form or another.29 Goldstone then
adopts an approach in many respects counter to the one he criticizes, spec-
ifying the instigator of the action-necessarily a group in his view of
things-but not the target. Thus he defines "contentious collective action"
as "any sustained effort at making claims on a society, or on other social ac-
tors, by a cooperating group (or groups) of individuals that provokes re-
sistance."3o While adopting a different perspective, Paul Burnstein also ar-
gues in favor of a very broad conception of collective action, in order to take
account of the increasingly tangled character of its modalities, refusing to
distinguish between interest groups and social movements on the grounds
that both have the shared intention of influencing public policy.31
These debates have been particularly fruitful, especially with regard to the
recent shifts in participation marked by a significant broadening of the
repertoires in use, the emergence of new protest movements, the densifica-
tion of policy networks, and the complex overlap of territories where the
mobilization of interests unfolds.
PLURALISM, CORPORATISM, AND PROTEST:

COLLECTIVE ACTION REGIMES
On this basis, our perspective conceives collective action as interactive be-

haviors of engagement, mobilization, representation, and negotiation by
which social interests are constituted and their influence on public policy is
exerted. It therefore groups a whole range of behaviors from individual and
collective actors, mixing or alternating identification with social transac-
tion, cooperation with conflict, and participation with bargaining. Govern-
mental actors mayor may not be directly involved in these interactions, as
long as public policy, in its current or expected state of affairs, is addressed.
The social dimension of collective action contrasts with more specifically
political forms of mobilization such as voting, party membership, and elec-

toral campaigning, directly oriented toward the selection of political lead-
ers and access to political positions. Social interests may significantly vary
with their degree of concentration and the size of groups involved, with the
material or ethical nature of their goals, with the type of benefits they seek
to produce, with the scope of their objectives, and with their private or pub-
lic status. The repertoires of interests' promotion and the interpretative
framing of issues eventually define the way in which mobilization enters
the political arena.
By regime of collective action, we refer to the combined institutional, po-
litical, sociological, and cognitive elements shaping the forms and intensity
of collective action. We assume that configurations of collective action are
not infinite, and that these interacting factors tend to cluster in relatively
regular patterns defining three types of regimes: pluralist, corporatist, and
protest-based. We first consider in turn each of these different factors.
In line with the resources mobilization perspective, the first variable to be
considered is the organizational capacity for collective action. Quite obviously,
different groups such as large private public monopolies, workers in de-
clining industrial sectors, migrant populations, or handicapped persons do
not benefit from equal capacities to promote or defend their interests. These
capacities are based on financial, legal, and cognitive (the degree of infor-
mation and know-how accumulated) resources. Collective action requires
that individuals share a minimally common representation of the public
good and of its relation to (their own) particular interests. From a dynamic
perspective, interests are not strictly defined by structural properties. They
are continuously produced by the activities of political enterprises develop-
ing mobilization frames and collective organization. They are also con-
stantly recomposed by social changes exogenous to the organization of in-
terests as such. However, when confronted with public decision-making (or
with the lack of it), the possibility of collective action largely depends on re-
lations between individuals and groups potentially concerned, and on cul-
tural representations to which they give rise.
In Olson's economist terminology, interests more or less approach the
ideal type of a public good. At the level of the actor,32 the interest may be
strictly public in the case of a "pure" public good, when the benefits asso-
ciated with its achievements are non-separable (for example, general legis-
lations such as those regarding civic liberties benefit, at least in principle, all
citizens without exception). At the opposite end, the interest may be strictly
private when benefits associated with it are strictly separable (a firm ob-
taining a special exemption in carrying out a regulation, or a grant from the
government). Finally, in an intermediary position, the interest may corre-
spond to a "club" good when there is a mechanism allowing for the bene-
ficiaries to be selected (for example, when a redistributive policy is selective
30 Chapter 1
rather than universal, or when a fiscal advantage is reserved for a particular

set of professions). As the separability of benefits acts as an incentive to col-
lective action by solving the free-rider problem encountered in pure public
goods provision, the type of interests tends to interact with the structure of
groups. Interests defined as separable goods favor a variety of specific and
numerous organized groups, while public goods are associated with large
groups often remaining latent. When collective action is developed in rela-
tion to club goods, it relies on rather large and well-structured groups. Di-
rect interactions among group members at a community level largely facil-
itate collective action. This naturally does not hinder mobilizations for
universal causes, such as those in the field of human rights or environmen-
tal protection. Mobilizations based on political convictions involve a con-
cept of the common good in the largest possible sense. But these ethical
convictions are usually promoted by active minorities much more restricted
than large groups effectively concerned by these issues. The achievement of
the common good or of public interest defined in these terms therefore
largely depends on the emergence of moral entrepreneurs and on their ca-
pacity to organize in a sufficiently concentrated manner to allow for com-
munication and coordination.
The effect of the organizational structure of interests on collective action
depends on whether it is concentrated, segmented, or diffuse. Within a con-
centrated structure, collective action is supported by hierarchical relations
of information and authority within a limited number of large and well-or-
ganized groups. Such a situation is more likely to correspond to interests
defined as club goods, and collective action is likely to be strongly institu-
tionalized in such a context. Within a segmented structure, collective action
is facilitated by the specificity of interests and by direct interactions among
individuals, but remains highly decentralized, leading to difficulties of co-
ordination and of continuity in engagements among numerous groups. Fi-
nally, within a more diffuse structure, collective action must, in order to
emerge, establish the possibility of communication, motivate cooperative
behaviors, invent some forms of coordination, and finally, sustain the
movement for its duration. Collective action is more difficult, therefore
likely to be more occasional and less institutionalized, and yield more erup-
tive forms of conflict. Interests do not mechanically drive mobilization,
they only operate by means of such various organizational capacity.
The second category of factors is the structure of political opportunities and
threats, or the set of political conditions playing as incentives or negatively
deterring collective action. We distinguish between institutional opportuni-
ties, with the competencies and accessibility of political institutions in the
domain under consideration; policy opportunities or threats, or in other
words the orientation of public policy and its evolutionary perspectives,
that may favor or threaten interests; and finally, media opportunities, de-
fined by their degree of receptiveness and aperture to the issues involved,

and by the level of publicity or, in contrast, of confidentiality of the situa-
tion. We therefore adopt a more extensive view than the classical pas ap-
proach, while at the same time we specify the different categories of oppor-
tunities and threats. Inclusion of the media is in our view justified-and .
needed-by their role in issue framing and in setting governmental agen-
das. They frequently publicize controversies related to issues that do not
find an easy access to public authorities. But they do not intervene only as
critical sites for cognitive framing processes. They also actively provide op-
portunities or threats deeply affecting the influence of the different parties
involved. Depending on their level of political and financial independence,
the media are more or less free, and keen, to report scandals. On the other
hand, as cultural organizations, they are also more or less receptive to dif-
ferent types of interests and causes. Finally, the media activity itself (peri-
odic reports) technically provides opportunities for policy stakeholders, for
instance when the media cover social issues or governmental meetings.
The structural nature of these opportunities needs to be discussed, as
they remain, like interests, in constant transformation. Some political op-
portunities have a longer duration than mobilizations. For instance, elec-
tions lead to the selection of a new government, which plays as a policy
opportunity (or constraint) for interest groups for the duration of the leg-
islature. Similarly the possible adoption of a Constitution for the EU
would alter institutional opportunities offered to organized interests for a
long period of time. Within situations of collective action, opportunities
and threats are given and exogenous components. Institutional opportu-
nities are definitely more stabilized than policy and media ones, but none
of them can be considered as fixed. Their structural property does not
merely lie with their permanence, but with the fact that their dynamics of
changes result in specific flux that occasionally combine in opportunity
windows for collective action. Policy entrepreneurs (activists of social
movements, interests representatives, bureaucrats, or political leaders ) can
seize these windows of opportunities. They can also try to create or alter
media, policy, and sometimes institutional opportunities. But they cannot
control the way complex processes of change in these three different areas
combine together.
The repertoire is a crucial dimension of the regime, as it channels the ulti-
mate behavioral expression of collective action. The conflict-based repertoire
includes mass demonstrations and the actions of small groups of activists,
be they violent, confrontational, or peaceful; the use of petitions; and pub-
lic questioning of authorities such as blockades or sit-ins. The pressure reper-
toire employs methods such as the persuasion and influence techniques of
lobbying on a more or less confidential level (contacting, information shar-
ing, elaboration, and diffusion of leaflets) or communicative (organization
32 Chapter 1
of seminars or public relations campaigns) and, increasingly on a more

confrontational level, legal action. Finally, the cooptative repertoire encom-
passes organized groups that can integrate within formal consultation struc-
tures and establish long-term cooperation with political authorities, thus
institutionalizing their participation in the elaboration and implementa-
tion of public policy.
Lastly, the cognitive framing of interest mobilization also determines col-
lective action. Cognitive framing should be understood as the building of a
relatively common and prevalent view of the cause, of the issues involved,
and of the appropriate means to promote it. The construction of the cogni-
tive frame relies on the selection and prioritization among competing rep-
resentations and controversies. It may alternatively be dominated by polit-
ical actors and arguments when it relates to the status and legitimacy of
interests, bureaucratic ones when specific designs and means of public pol-
icy are at stake, and public when public opinion is targeted in the interac-
tion between interests and public policymaking. Figure 1.1 sets out the
main relationships between these variables. 33
Opportunities Repertoires:
and Threats: Pressure
Institutional Cooptation
Policy Conflict
Media-based
1
Organizational
x 11
/
Mobilization
Behaviours
Capacity: Cognitive
Concentrated Framing:
Segmented Political
Diffuse Bureaucratic
Public
Figure 1.1. Structuring Collective Action

The structure of political opportunities and threats primarily contributes

to define interests at stake through the public potentially affected by public
policy. It also orients the repertoire of collective action, more likely to be
based on conflict when interests are infringed upon by policymaking, and
more willingly corporatist when policies are strongly institutionalized. Fi-
nally, it also plays a part in the selection of the mobilization frame, de-
pending on if such framing occurs within the core of the institutional set-
ting (bureaucratic framing), if it is negotiated at the margins (political
framing), or if the process remains predominantly social and external to po-
litical institutions (public framing).
The repertoires of collective action are obviously dependent on organiza-
tional capacities. Lobbying requires financial resources more easily avail-
able for multinational corporations than, for example, for victims of natu-
ral disasters. Further, the recourse to protest is easier for well-organized
social groups with large memberships than for small groups with restricted
resources. However, these repertoires are also incorporated within the
knowledge and know-how accumulated by such groups, and part of their
traditions, cultures, and identities. Organizational capacities thus playas a
selective filter for the use of these different repertoires. These are also
strongly constrained by the opportunity structure. When the policy and in-
stitutional components of the structure are unfavorable to interests, collec-
tive action will tend towards protest, especially if media opportunities for
targeting public opinion are available. Symmetrically, a favorable opportu-
nity structure at the institutional and policy level encourages groups' in-
volvement in pluralist or corporatist initiatives, without necessarily calling
for publicity. Finally, the cognitive framing of the situation also contributes
to the selection of the repertoire. Unions, for instance, know to alternatively
use conflict, cooptation, or legal action, depending on the way they inter-
pret the issue they are facing. The repertoires are not mechanically selected
by the state of the environment, but built and activated by the social fram-
ing of the situation. Finally, the cognitive framing of collective action is, in
turn, shaped by the interaction between the opportunity structure and the
activation of the selected repertoires. This interaction gives collective action
more or less publicity and locates it at the core or at the periphery of the in-
stitutional setting.
The relations considered above suggest some patterns of co-variation and
complementarities between the different dimensions of collective action. Such
regularities discriminate three ideal-typical regimes of collective action.
The pluralist regime is defined by favorable policy opportunities, offering
interests endowed with significant capacities the possibility to engage in
regular forms of political exchange, or in other words, to negotiate the terms
of their relation with political authorities through public policy. The plu-
ralist regime associates numerous and often competing interest groups
34 Chapter 1
Table 1.1. Three Regimes of Collective Action in Europe
Pluralist Regime Corporatist Regime Protest Regime

Opportunities Policy Institutional Media
and Threats
Organizational Segmented Concentrated Diffuse
Capacities Capacity for Capacity for Potential capacity
punctuated stabilized for agenda
political political setting or
exchange exchange vetoing
Cognitive Political framing Bureaucratic framing Public opinion
Framing framing
Repertoire Lobbying, Cooptation, Mass mobilization,
Legal action Consultation, Questioning of
Co-management of public authorities,
public policy Publicization
acknowledged as legitimate in promoting specific interests, and therefore

presenting segmented organizational capacities for collective action. The
cognitive framing is political in this case, in the sense that its stake is to de-
fine the relationship of particular interests to the common good. The reper-
toire is predominantly composed of lobbying or legal action. The norma-
tive and empirical references of this model are dearly the liberal political
system of the United States and, in Europe, the United Kingdom.
The corporatist regime develops when opportunities are deeply institu-
tionalized by the legal definition of competencies in the realm of public
policy, and coupled with institutional decision-making arrangements in-
vested by interest groups. These groups are most often occupational inter-
est groups, but may sometimes pursue a broader perspective, like in the case
of neo-corporatism where they touch upon general issues of social and eco-
nomic governance. Private interests are weakly legitimate if they do not join
a more collective structure of definition and representation of interests. The
concentrated structure of interests allows them to enter into stabilized
forms of political exchange through their cooptation within policy com-
munities, sometimes leading to co-management of public policy. The cog-
nitive framing tends to be predominantly bureaucratic, poorly publicized,
and more concentrated upon the instruments than upon the ends of pub-
lic policy. The neo-corporatist organization of interests in the Scandinavian
social-democratic regimes dearly exemplifies the case.
Finally, in the protest regime of collective action, unfavorable policy and
institutional opportunities may be partially compensated for by the open-
ing of windows of opportunity for the mobilization of interests using me-
dia activity. The diffuse structure of interests and essentially endogenous
character of resources make it difficult to establish enduring forms of polit-
ical exchange. The repertoire is one of opposition to decisions through mass

mobilization, questioning of public authorities, and targeting of public
opinion by means of enlarged publicity. Collective action is then frequently
confrontational, eruptive and cyclical, exploring the weaknesses of political
authorities such as the proximity of elections, public disorder generating
public discontent, and exposure of leaders in international events. Recur-
rent patterns of protest in France and Italy probably come the closest to the
ideal type.
Although we use national examples to illustrate this typology, single
countries clearly exhibit hybrid rather than pure regimes of collective ac-
tion. This is also true of polar cases presented here: the UK is sometimes
shattered by urban riots, while France also displays strong corporatist
arrangements at the sector level. Regimes of collective action are all present
in combined or alternate forms in European states. However, each pattern
of collective action is not equally active within each country, and we will try
to map these variations.
PUBLIC POLICY AND THE MOBILIZATION OF INTERESTS
In the long period, the organization of interests on the one hand, and state
building on the other hand, are indeed the two sides of the same process
whereby social conflicts are mediated through political institutions. In a
shorter time-frame, day-to-day interactions between collective action and
public policy are the main dynamics generating institutional change. How-
ever, the mobilization of interests can make use of different channels to ac-
cess political influence and impact on different stages of the policy process.
This is what we consider in this section.
The mobilization of interests around representative government makes
use of three main channels formed by competitive party-based elections,
bureaucratic venues where organized groups are more or less formally as-
sociated with the elaboration and the carrying out of policies, and the ur-
ban or media scene where popular discontent is exposed. Conventional
(voting and contacting) and non-conventional (protest and violence) forms
of participation have often been distinguished in the analysis of political
behavior. However, protest activities can be codified and built in traditions
(for example, marches on Labor day), while voting may contest the very
fundaments of the political order and convey a sometimes virulent criticism
of parliamentary democracy (with populist or extreme right votes). This dis-
tinction is therefore not very relevant in our view. It is more appropriate to
conceive the different streams of political mobilization as rather specific,
following distinctive patterns of communication and institutionalization,
and related to different stages of the policy process. Elections allow citizens
36 Chapter 1
to select those who are to govern them, more or less directly according to
the parliamentary or presidential form of the regime and to the type of bal-
lot. In doing so they usually express broad policy preferences, as policy op-
tions are compressed by and linked to party labels, to candidates' personal-
ities or to a combination of the two. The participation of organized groups
in the ordinary practice of policymaking, nowadays increasingly combined
with public opinion polls, enables governments to design and to try out
their policies. In the short term, governments usually seek to avoid the
worst political pitfalls in pursuing their objectives, primarily a protest large
enough to impose the withdrawal of a bill, the resignation of a minister, or
the calling of early elections. Interactions obviously exist between these
three mobilization processes. Figure 1.2 analyzes their impact on the cog-
nitive framing and institutional shaping of public policy.
Forms of Collective Actors Policy Framing Policy Shaping

Mobilization
Agenda Setting:
Electoral
Mobilization
---. Governmental
Networks ----. Government
Programs ----. Policy Domains,
Policy Goals,
(Executives) Parliamentary
Debates Sequences and
Timing of
Reforms
Identification and
Prioritization of
Policy Alternatives,
Listing and
Interest
Groups
---. Networks
(Bureaucratic ----. Sector-based
Policy Frames ----. Selection of
Policy
Mobilization and
Professional) Instruments
Decision:
Preparati on,
/ Publicization,
Social
Movements
---. Activists
Networks ----. Mobilization
Frames Implementation:
~
(Technical Legal,
and Protests
and Social) Budgetary,
Administrative
Figure 1.2. Interests Mobilization and Policymaking

Firstly, considering collective actors involved in the policy process, politi-

cal parties often historically derive from a split between interest groups and
more specific political enterprises. This is often the case between trade
unions and left-wing parties, agricultural organizations and agrarian par-
ties, and between environmental associations and green parties in particu-
lar. When the proximity between the two types of organizations is more
pronounced, they gain a greater capacity for mobilization in a situation of
opposition. On the other hand, access to governmental responsibility in-
duces tensions between the executive and organized groups or social move-
ments. Green parties probably best exemplify this tendency in the contem-
porary context, but this also holds true for leftist parties confronted with
growing dissatisfaction from employees and wage-earners' unions.
Relations can also link interest groups to more spontaneous or eruptive
mobilizations. Indeed, conflict situations are crucial for groups to forge
their capacity for mobilization and their own resources. Long-term involve-
ment in public policy networks nevertheless develops proximity with polit-
ical power, and commits organizations to institutional arrangements and
bargaining equilibriums established with state bureaucracies and compet-
ing interests. This bureaucratization and cartelization34 of collective action
may cut organizations off from their social basis and from resources ensur-
ing their autonomy. In such situations, they run at risk of being outflanked
by more radical mobilizations, free of engagement in the political compro-
mises reached by public policy. Paradoxically, the over-institutionalization
of interest groups participation in public policy may therefore motivate a
renewal of protest-based collective action, frequently observed in the case
studies we retained.
The cognitive frame of public policy refers to the controversies associated
with the different issues addressed and with the justifications legitimacy of
its objectives, instruments, and outcomes. It constitutes the general para-
digm of public policy-the different evaluation and operational schemes
through which it is interpreted by actors in selecting and orienting their be-
havior. This cognitive frame is made of a conjunction of several elements:
governmental projects derived from party platforms, parliamentary debates,
sector-specific policy frames, and the interpretative frameworks of social
movements or protest mobilizations. During the same policy period, party
programs are initially elaborated for electoral campaigns, taking into ac-
count the saliency of issues and previous contentious mobilizations. They
orient programs through the selection of policy domains, the timing of re-
form, and the definition of general principles for government intervention.
Parliamentary debates are more technical as governmental projects have
been processed into more detailed legislative proposals. As the legislative
process is decisive in the normative development of public policy, parlia-
mentary debates are crucial for policymaking process, as public opinion
38 Chapter 1
and interest groups can still enter the picture through the media or lobby-
ing, while many options will be sealed once the law will be passed, or al-
ternatively rejected.
When public policy has to be embodied through administrative rules and
procedures, it is easy to conceive that actors, values, and instruments widely
vary across sectors such as anti-trust regulation, farming subsidies or child-
care policy. Technical formalization is largely assumed by public policy net-
works using sector-specific frames,35 and relying on professional and bu-
reaucratic expertise, usually without much pUblicity. Interest groups and
state bureaucracies are most active at this detailed level of policymaking.
They are particularly influential in the selection of alternatives and instru-
ments in policy programs, through the drafting and implementation of leg-
islation and regulations. They sometimes act as veto players during the im-
plementation phase.
Finally, the cognitive frame of protest mobilization, if any, is largely set
through the media, reaching a usually large audience, and relates to public pol-
icy in two ways. It may coincide, at least in part, when governmental programs
take into consideration proposals made by previous protests (legislations on
abortion following feminist mobilizations, or the withdrawal of infrastructure
projects such as the French canal connecting the Rhone to the Rhine in 1997).
Alternatively, the divergence between policymaking and collective action
frames can nourish mobilization and lead to conflicts. The closure of mining
sites in the UK under Margaret Thatcher, and more recently reforms of pension
systems in France, Germany, and Italy, led to severe confrontations between
unions and governments. In seeking to enlarge protest and get public opinion
support, mobilization aims for wide publicity to challenge the proposed pol-
icy frame and pressure the government for change.
Governments' policy initiatives are at the core of agenda setting. They se-
lect the areas, sequences and rhythms of public intervention. Largely con-
trolling the legislative process, they master the timing and the terms in
which public policies are endowed with a normative framework. Sector-
based policy frames are further called upon in the elaboration and selection
of alternatives relevant in the decision. Their influence on policy-shaping is,
therefore, equally very important, but relates more to the choice of options
and to the selection of policy instruments. Finally, protest mobilizations
usually intervene to prevent or to block the implementation of a decision,
and more occasionally to bring an issue on the agenda or to provoke gov-
ernment intervention.
This framework illustrates the intimate interactions between public pol-
icy and interests' mobilization. Different types of interests' organization
and activity impact at different stages of policy framing and policy shaping.
Conversely, the development of the policy process induces and structures
different patterns of interests' mobilization. Over the long period, the his-
torical development of democratic regimes, including liberal political insti-

tutions, partisan systems, and welfare state policies provided for the basic
mechanisms of institutionalization of social conflicts within the industrial
societies of Western Europe. The changes associated with European integra-
tion, both in institutional and policy terms, necessarily affects collective ac-
tion in European societies.
CONCLUSION: COLLECTIVE
ACTION IN AN EXPANDING POLITY
Collective action in Europe now develops within a multi-leveled political

space that offers not only multiple points of access for interests, but also the
possibility of different patterns of coalitions and different types of interac-
tion between institutions and groups. It is specifically this dimension to
which we now turn.
One of the most direct effects of European integration has been to add an
institutional layer to the existing structure of the member states. As a result,
policymaking unfolds in a multi-level political structure, depicted by the lit-
erature on multi-level governance. 36 This of course has tremendous impli-
cations for interest groups and social movements. This European political
system can be thought of as a double-tier structure (at least) of opportuni-
ties and threats at the national and EU levels. Both levels can offer favorable
or unfavorable venues to interests, therefore multiplying the patterns of re-
lations between interests and political institutions.
This structure of opportunities and threats can firstly be convergent at
both levels. The weight of national institutions at the European level logi-
cally implies that the most influential interests within member states
should also tend to be so at the European level. Interests confronted with
unfavorable national opportunity structures should, as a general rule, have
little chance of being heard at a higher level. The largest number of config-
urations should, therefore, follow these patterns of cumulative inclusion
and cumulative exclusion. A curious paradox can be found in the fact that
collective action is the least costly and the most efficient for the most in-
fluential interests, and thus, more easily developed on the basis of rational
expectations. On the other hand, when collective action is most necessary
for the defense of interests, it is also most costly and least efficient, and
therefore, less likely to occur. This asymmetry offering winners a "bonus,"
as opposed to the liberal conception of pluralism as a fair equilibrium
among interests, is equally active within national systems. But it is ampli-
fied at the European level by the two levels on which interests have to be ar-
ticulated, raising the costs of collective action. Redundancies of the oppor-
tunity structure increase asymmetries of influence among interests.
40 Chapter 1
Does this mean that the European political system simply accentuates
unequal access to influence among interests existing in the member states?
To address this question, we need to consider intermediary configurations
where opportunity structures have divergent rather than convergent effects.
In the first case, the opportunity structure is favorable at the European level
and unfavorable at the national level. This situation corresponds, if mobi-
lization occurs, to a bypassing of the state to obtain additional resources or
some kind of arbitration by European institutions. In the second interme-
diary case, the opportunity structure is unfavorable at the European level
and favorable at the national level. The situation is thus one of a coalition
between interest groups and national institutions, resisting or opposing Eu-
ropean authorities. The cost of collective action is less than in the preceding
case, as the mobilization structure is more accessible and as favorable na-
tional authorities constitute a powerful link to European institutions. With
the enlargement of their competencies, the latter have an increasingly direct
effect on interest groups. The building of anti-European coalitions is more
and more tempting from this point of view for groups hampered or hurt by
European integration. But it is also less and less efficient, as the institutional
deepening of integration, in particular the extension of qualified majority
voting (QMV) , reduces the vetoing capacities of the member states. By
means of what mechanisms does the Europeanization of collective action
take place? How does it affect democratic integration within the member
states and at the EU level? These are the questions addressed in the follow-
ing chapters.
NOTES
1. These early developments can be found in Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Gov-
ernment, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908; David B. Truman, The Govern-
mental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.
2. The most classical references of this debate are Floyd Hunter, Community Power
Structure, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953; Charles Wright
Mills, The Power Elite, New York: Oxford University Press, 1956; Elmer Eric
Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1960; Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City, New
Haven, Cf: Yale University Press, 1961.
3. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of
Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
4. In particular Terry M. Moe, The Organization of Interests: Incentives and the In-
ternal Dynamics of Political Interest Groups, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980;
Suzanne Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge
5. Philippe C. Schmitter, "Still the Century of Corporatism?" Review of Politics,

36, no. 1 (1974): 85-131; Philippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch, eds.,
Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979.
6. We build and expand here on the literature review established for American
politics by Frank R. Baumgartner and Beth L. Leech, Basic Interests: The Importance of
Groups in Politics and Political Science, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998;
See also Mark Petracca, ed., The Politics of Interests: Interest Groups Transformed, Boul-
der, co: Westview Press, 1992.
7. For the United States, Jack L. Walker, Mobilizing Interest Groups in America,
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991; Virginia Gray and David Lowery, The
Population Ecology of Interest Representation: Lobbying Communities in the American
States, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996; Frank R. Baumgartner, Beth
L. Leech, Basic Interests, 100-19. For Europe, Philippe C. Schmitter and Wolfgang
Streeck, "From National Corporatism to Transnational Pluralism: Organized Inter-
ests in the Single European Market," Politics and Society, 19, no. 2 (1991): 133-64;
Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson, eds., Lobbying in the European Community, Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1993; Justin Greenwood, Representing Interests in the
European Union, London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997; Richard Balme, Didier Cha-
banet, and Vincent Wright, eds., L'action collective en Europe: Collective Action in Eu-
rope, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2002.
8. Grant A. Jordan and Klaus Schubert, "A Preliminary Ordering of Policy Net-
works Labels," European Journal of Political Research, 21, no. 1-2 (1992): 7-27; John
P. Heinz, Edward O. Laumann, Robert L. Nelson, and Robert H. Salisbury, The Hol-
low Core: Private Interests in National Policy-Making, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
9. Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, eds., Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional
Foundations of Comparative Advantages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Vivien
A. Schmidt, The Futures of European Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002.
10. John W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policy, Boston: Little,
Brown, 1984; Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in
American Politics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.
11. A notable exception is Philippe C. Schmitter, "Interest Intermediation and
Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe and North America," in Or-
ganizing Interests in Western Europe, ed. Suzanne Berger, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1981, 287-330.
12. A synthesis and a theoretical integration of this literature was initially pro-
posed by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, "Toward an Integrated
Perspective on Social Movements and Revolution," in Comparative Politics: Rational-
ity, Culture and Structure, ed. Mark I. Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997, 142-73.
13. John McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, "Resource Mobilization and Social Move-
ments: A Partial Theory," American Journal of Sociology, 82, no. 6 (1977): 1212-41.
14. Anthony Oberschall, Social Conflicts and Social Movements, Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973.
42 Chapter 1
15. Among a very dense bibliography, d. Charles Tilly, Social Movements,

1768-2004, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004.
16. Peter Eisinger, "The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities,"
American Political Science Review, 67, no. 1 (1973): 11-28.
17. Herbert Kitschelt, "Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest:
Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, 16,
no. 1 (1986): 57-85.
18. Hanspeter Kriesi, Ruud Koopmans, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Marco
Giugni, The Politics of New Social Movements in Western Europe, Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 1995.
19. Sidney Tarrow, "States and Opportunities: The Political Structuring of Social
Movements," in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities,
Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, ed. Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and
Mayer N. Zald, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996,54.
20. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 (1st ed. 1994),85-89.
21. Doug McAdam, The Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
22. John Keeler, "Opening the Window for Reform: Mandates, Crises, and Extra-
ordinary Policy Making," Comparative Political Studies, 25, no. 4 (1993): 433-86.
23. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders. Advocacy Net-
works in International Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
24. Sidney Tarrow, "Cycle of Collective Action: Between Movements of Madness
and the Repertoire of Contention," in Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, ed.
Mark Traugott, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995,89-116.
25. David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford JI., Steven K. Worden, and Robert. D. Ben-
ford, "Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participa-
tion," American Sociological Review, vol. 51, no. 4 (1986): 464-81.
26. Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Alessandro Pizzorno, "Political Ex-
change and Collective Identity in Industrial Conflict," in The Resurgence of Class Con-
flict in Western Europe since 1968, ed. Colin Crouch and Alessandro Pizzorno, New
York: Holmes &. Meier, 1978, 277-98.
27. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
28. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, "To Map Contentious Pol-
itics," Mobilization, 1, no. 1 (1996): 17.
29. John Goldstone, "Social Movements or Revolutions? On the Evolution and
Outcomes of Collective Action," in From Contention to Democracy, ed. Marco Giugni,
Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly, Lanham, MD: Rowman &. Littlefield, 1998, 126.
30. John Goldstone, "Social Movements or Revolutions?" 126.
31. Paul Burnstein, "Social Movements and Public Policy," in How Social Move-
ments Matter, ed. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999, 3-21.
32. The actor may be an individual, an organized group, or an institution with-
out affecting the reasoning.
33. We only include here relationships that are endogenous to the model. Ex-
ogenous factors may intervene such as the impact of the economy on groups' orga-
nizational capacities, of cultural change on the cognitive framing, or shocks desta-
bilizing the political opportunity structure (an unexpected change in government
for instance). We nevertheless focus the analysis on the interaction between these
different factors, as we concentrate on the relational dynamics between interests and
the political system.
34. We borrow and expand the term from Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair,
"Changing Models of Party Organisation and Party Democracy: The Emergence of
the Cartel Party," Party Politics, 1, no. 1 (1995): 5-29.
35. See Paul A. Sabatier and Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, eds., Policy Change and
Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993.
36. Gary Marks, Fritz Scharpf, Philippe Schmitter, and Wolfgang Streeck, Gover-
nance in the European Union, London: Sage, 1996.
2
Collective Action and
Civil Society in Europe
Following Emile Durkheim, modern societies can be characterized by their

complex social relations resting on a high level of organizational density
and on extensive and diversified group membership. As a French republi-
can of the early twentieth century, Durkheim stood quite far from early
group theorists such as J. Bentham, J. S. Mill, or Alexis de Tocqueville, in ad-
vocating the role of the state and corporatist arrangements in social cohe-
sion. Nevertheless his vision of modernization as the intensification of so-
cial relations and the development of complex patterns of solidarity among
individuals and groups strongly echoes theories of liberalism. Indeed, the
development of liberal political institutions, of representative forms of gov-
ernment, and later on of welfare-state systems, was the outcome of conflicts
among competing social groups and elites at the core of this modernization
process. Although the concept of civil society was forged as part of political
liberalism, and is primarily understood as a feature of English-speaking
democracies, it also refers to the more universal process of social modern-
ization, to the extension and diversification of social membership, and to
the freedom and capacity of individuals to join organizations and to act col-
lectively. Simply defined, civil society is made of groups and organizations
distinct from the state and the market, where membership remains volun-
tary. It mainly groups nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), organiza-
tions from the third sector, independent unions, political parties, profes-
sional organizations, churches and religious associations, organizations
active with charity and solidarity, health care, culture and education, sports
and recreation, environment protection, and promotion of rights.
45
46 Chapter 2
Both the distinctiveness and the cohesion of civil society remain relative.
While independence from the state excludes public bureaucracies and agen-
cies from the definition, trade unions, political parties, and religious or-
ganizations need to obtain legal recognition from the state, and frequently
benefit from government subsidies. On the other hand, independence from
the market excludes firms and organizations most directly involved with
economic activities. But professional organizations and unions are closely
linked to market activities. Similarly, civic interests promotion involves per-
manent organizations, offices, staff members, and campaigns all coming at
a financial cost. Civil society clearly does not operate in an economic vac-
uum. Moreover, membership in civil society's organizations is frequently
supported by specific incentives. In authoritarian regimes, party member-
ship and enrolment in satellite organizations (unions and youth move-
ments) are critical for access to jobs, housing, or social benefits. Member-
ship in that case is imposed by political constraints. In democratic regimes,
group membership is less directly related to state power and influence. But
the dynamics of participation in organized groups are also largely depen-
dent on the economics of public goods provision. When the government
provides free (or cheap) access to public facilities such as libraries, schools,
and swimming pools, the incentive to establish or to join "clubs" giving ac-
cess to such services is less effective than when this is not the case. Similarly,
direct provision of welfare services and labor protection by the state reduces
incentives for participation in welfare organizations and unions. Sponta-
neous collective action problems of cooperation and coordination there-
fore interact with the involvement of the state in social and economic ac-
tivities. As social interests differ in their capacity for collective action, these
problems also raise the issue of the representativeness of civil society or-
ganizations. Organized groups do not necessarily "represent" the issues
they address nor their constituencies without any bias, and do not reflect
"society" as a whole. Finally, although civil society may occasionally act in
a coordinated manner, for example, in some situations of political transi-
tions, it usually remains a network of loosely bound and sometimes com-
peting organizations characteristic of pluralistic interests systems. Civil so-
ciety must therefore be conceived as a set of organizations where
membership is based on consent, and oriented towards non-profit activi-
ties, capable of questioning and challenging government or private firms'
decisions, and whose representativeness and capacity for collective action,
always in the making, cannot be taken for granted. Whether and when civil
society is indeed organized and capable of influence and mobilization in
Europe is the focus of this chapter. We use both intra-European and extra-
European comparisons to explore this issue.
As developed in chapter I, the actual features of civil society are largely
dependent on the structuring of interests' representation at the national
Collective Action and Civil Society in Europe 47
level. On the one hand, we may think of civil society as more or less ad-
vanced on the same path of development through differentiation from state
and market institutions. On the other hand, the combined effects of polit-
ical culture and political institutions result in different and maybe alterna-
tive expressions of civil societies in European countries. We conceive the fol-
lowing analysis as an ecological approach, a characterization of collective
action "milieus" considered at the national level. We assume that, with na-
tional contexts offering specific combinations of cultural and institutional
features to the development of collective action, countries matter. We also
anticipate that patterns of associations between these characteristics are in
limited numbers, and that regularities found among institutional comple-
mentarities define a few national types of collective action regimes, possi-
bly along the lines of the pluralist, corporatist and protest models suggested
in chapter 1.
We first analyze variations in civil society density, assessed through the
extensiveness of individual group membership, across European countries.
Two dimensions particularly crucial to the organizational as well as ideo-
logical structuring of society are then considered, first with religious mem-
bership and the issue of secularization, and second with labor movements
and the degree of unionization. We then try to characterize structure and
change in civil society in discussing the issues of pluralism versus corpo-
ratism, and "new" versus "old" politics. The comparison is expanded to as-
sess protest behaviors and repertoires across European countries. We then
try to infer the respective influence of civil society, socio-economic features,
and institutions on protest behaviors in Europe.
Classical studies of political behavior have shown that different forms of
participation tend to be cumulative and to cluster together, while some na-
tional political cultures appear clearly more participative than others.1 We
intend to check if this is still the case, or if some form of convergence can
be observed between European countries. We also expect that civil society
density generally favors political participation, while it also limits most
confrontational forms of protest to the benefit of more consensual forms of
public policymaking. If this proves to be true, civil society organization
would indeed act in the perspective defined by Robert Putnam as a form of
social capital, enabling participation while moderating potentialities for
political conflict, hence favoring institutional performances of European
democracies. 2
CIVIL SOCIETY DENSITY
To estimate the state of organizational membership and civil society in Eu-

rope, we mainly rely upon data borrowed from the different waves of the
48 Chapter 2
World Values Surveys (WVS) between 1981 and 2000. 3 The WVS systemati-
cally include a series of questions on membership in different types of vol-
untary organizations, bringing precious indications about the density and
forms of social membership across time and space. 4 We first consider the
overall density of group membership, before turning to variations by cate-
gories of membership and to the structure of civil society. The density of
civil society in European countries is assessed through a total score that
sums up percentages of membership in the different categories of organiza-
tions for each country. The bar chart in figure 2.1 displays these total mem-
bership scores for European countries with data available from the
1999-2000 wave of the WVS. Canada, Japan, Russia, and the United States
are used as reference points in the comparative analysis. s
The first comparative perspective provided by these data lies with the re-
markable difference between Europe and North America. Convergent with
the classical observations of A. de Tocqueville and with the early analysis of
G. Almond and S. Verba,6 the highest score for membership in social or-
ganizations is to be found in the United States, significantly ahead of
Canada. Considering differences in population size, Europe as a whole can-
not compare with the United States, as most countries display much lower
scores of civic membership. None of the most populated European coun-
tries (Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, or Turkey) presents a
high level of civil society density. Only a few countries such as the Nether-
lands, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland (not surveyed in the
1999-2000 wave), and to a lesser extent Finland and Denmark approach
levels of density comparable to North America. The vast majority of Eu-
rope's population lives in a social environment where civil society is far less
organized. European English-speaking countries-Ireland and the UK-are
no exceptions to the European situation and do not come close to the
United States or Canada. The second interesting feature of these data is that
there is no homogeneity in the density of European civil societies. Individ-
ual membership to at least one organization ranges from 7.8% in Turkey to
more than 95% in Sweden. A large variance still holds when the area con-
sidered is restricted to western Europe, or to countries with a longstanding
membership in the EU. Although we do not explore them here in detail,
subnational regional variations are also significant, as claimed by R. Put-
nam 7 in the case of Italy. While Spain overall scores low with southern Eu-
ropean countries, the Basque Country for instance displays a high score of
total membership.s
Such territorial variations, however, do not mean that European civil so-
ciety is totally atomized. Rather, four different areas with relative homo-
geneity can be distinguished. Nordic countries present a distinctively high
density of civil society. Central continental Europe displays high (Nether-
lands and Switzerland) to medium (Belgium, Luxemburg, Austria, Slovenia,
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FR DE IT NL LlJ BE OB IE DK OR ES PT AT FI 8E PL CZ SK HU 81 U LV EE MTBO ROTR HR RU US CA JP IS
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Figure 2.1. Civil Society Density, 2000
Source: Data from World Values Survey, www.worldvaluessurvey.org.
50 Chapter 2
Czech Republic, and Slovakia) density. Germany used to be part of that group
in previous surveys, but recorded much lower scores in the 2000 wave, closer
to other large European countries. Ireland and Greece can be considered as
close to this group. A third group is made of Italy, Spain and Portugal, Malta,
France, the UK, recently joined by Germany. All large western European states
are part of that group with rather low civil society density. Finally, the Baltic
states, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and applicant countries (Turkey
and Croatia) all display low levels of group membership.
Variations across European countries are therefore quite significant. But
they also tend to define clusters according to cultural areas and historical
trajectories. All countries with a high density of civil society are predomi-
nantly Protestant. All countries from southern Europe (with the exception
of Greece) and most post-communist countries similarly display low levels
of civic membership (as exemplified by Russia, but with the exceptions of
Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic). More remarkable, Europe of
the Rhine and the urban network identified by Stein Rokkan as the engine
of capitalist development, and as the impediment to state-building in cen-
tral Europe, systematically show rather high levels of civil society density,
apparently rooted in long-term cultural trends. 9 Patterns of civic engage-
ment are territorialized through the dynamic interactions between social
cleavages and political culture. To explore the impact of cleavages on the
structuring of civil society, we consider two key dimensions of social mem-
bership, firstly with religious organizations and secondly with unions and
professional organizations.
EUROPE OF RELIGIONS
As forms of social membership and participation tend to be cumulative

rather than exclusive, belonging to religious communities is likely to impact
on civil society development. If civil society is considered as part of the
foundation of democratic polities, including religious organizations can be
disputable. Indeed, churches often resisted the early establishment of de-
mocracy in Europe, and contemporary Islamist movements clearly oppose
it. Critics of communitarianism precisely contest the danger of groups fo-
cusing on their own activities and identities, without participating in the
public sphere and in the definition of the common good. The theoretical
contribution of religious groups to modern forms of public space and civic
engagement is therefore quite ambivalent.
The data reveals a number of interesting features with regard to this de-
bate. Membership in religious organizations is not, in contradiction with
the critics of communitarianism, an impediment to other forms of civic en-
gagement. Quite the opposite, participation in religious organizations is
strongly correlated with total membership in civil society at the country

level (r = 0.875 with the data and sample considered). This means that
countries where the overall density of civil society is high are those with
high levels of religious membership. It could be argued that religion intro-
duces a bias in the comparative characterization of civil society, and in par-
ticular that the strength of religious organizations in the United States leads
to an overestimate of other types of membership. The strength of the corre-
lation, however, does not support this view. When religion is excluded, the
general comparative pattern of civil society across countries remains very
similar. Technically, including or excluding religion does not make a differ-
ence in assessing variations in civil society density.
Social and political institutions in Europe historically developed through
a process of differentiation from religious institutions, culminating in the
rigid separation between states and churches in some cases. However reli-
gion often remains an important part of social and political identities in
Catholic countries such as Italy, Ireland, or Poland, in Protestant countries
from northern Europe where state and nation building were closely associ-
ated with the Reformation, and increasingly for Muslim countries, or Mus-
lim minorities living in other countries. The secularization process affecting
European societies in the long run therefore materialized in significantly
different patterns of interaction between religion and politics. Religious
membership and religious groups impact differently on the structuring of
contemporary societies and on political mobilization in different countries.
Religion encompasses a number of aspects ranging from institutional de-
velopments, doctrines and ideologies, individual beliefs and attitudes, to
collective behaviors. We consider here membership in religious organiza-
tions as an indicator of the importance of religion in the organizational
structure of society, and attendance to religious offices as an indicator of re-
ligious behavior. Both dimensions allow us to characterize the degree and
form of secularization of societies.
In the vast majority of countries, secularization of society-measured
through the percentage of respondents who declare themselves as belong-
ing to churches or religious groups (on the vertical axis of the graph in fig-
ure 2.2)-largely prevails. Most people in most countries fit this situation,
and do not declare belonging to any religious group. Nevertheless religion
still structures social behaviors, as in most countries only a minority of re-
spondents declare never attending religious offices (horizontal axis).
The bottom-right part of the graph shows the most secularized societies
of France, Great Britain, the Czech Republic (and Russia). On the opposite
top-left part of the picture is the United States, where most people belong
to religious groups and attend offices. The United States clearly stands in a
distinctive position from European and non-European countries (such as
Japan, as well as India or Philippines, not shown on the graph) in this
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respect. In the top-right part of the graph are found Sweden and Iceland,
and at some distance Finland and the Netherlands, where membership in
religious organizations is comparatively high, despite low or very low levels
of office attendance. In these societies from Northern Europe, religious or-
ganizations still contribute to the structuring of civic communities, despite
advanced overall secularization of social behavior. The situation corre-
sponds to the case of "belonging without believing" depicted by the sociol-
ogy of religion. The opposite, on the bottom-left part of the picture, in a
number of countries such as Poland, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Malta,
Croatia, Romania, (and Japan), religious rituals remain important for a vast
majority of the population, whereas organizational membership is low. Re-
ligion is both a cultural and institutional phenomenon, without much in-
fluencing the formation of civic groups. Trajectories of secularization
among European countries appear therefore quite diversified. 10
Several other features are worth noticing. The level of secularization
seems more advanced in Protestant countries (mean score for "never attend
religious office" is 35.6%) than in Catholic (27.2%) or Orthodox (24%)
countries. Turkey, the only Muslim case in the sample, displays a level of of-
fice attendance neighboring the Protestant average (32.1 %), and a pattern
of secularization close to Slovenia, Latvia, Spain, or Luxembourg. In no way
does it appear as an outlier in the figure. 11 Post-communist countries all dis-
play low levels of religious group memberships, but in a number of them
office attendance can be quite high, especially in Poland, Romania, and
Croatia. Finally, Great Britain appears among the core of European secular-
ized countries, at odds with the United States on this dimension.
Overall, civil society density is higher in Protestant countries (66% belong
to at least one organization) than in Catholic (48%) or Orthodox (32%) coun-
tries, and than in Turkey (7.6%).12 This does not mean that religion as such de-
termines the development of civil society, as we noted that secularization is
also more advanced in Protestant countries than in others. Rather, it indicates
that the development of social relations in countries where reformation was
historically active left an organizational and cultural legacy favorable to civil
society, still persistent today despite a general trend to secularization. This re-
sult fits with the long-term perspective on civic culture and social capital of R.
Putnam, where the capacity for collective action is rooted in the accumulation
of social trust, cultural values, and organizational skills, tracing back to the
early stages of social modernization, and dependent on the trajectory followed
by countries or communities to engage in this process.
ORGANIZED LABOR
Again, union membership as recorded by the WVS is particularly important

in countries from Northern Europe (Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway,
54 Chapter 2
Finland) with up to 62% of respondents declaring membership in Sweden

in 1999. On the opposite end of the spectrum, union membership is par-
ticularly low (below 10%) in France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain, Portu-
gal, Greece, Malta, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
Countries from the Benelux, Austria, Ireland, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech
Republic, and Poland display median values ranging from 10 to 25% of
membership. The situation is therefore highly contrasted, as a few countries
where unions developed means to motivate membership through access to
unemployment insurance or other services indeed present situations of
strength for organized labor. Nevertheless, none of the most populated
countries in the EU enter this category. Alternative data based on reports by
unions themselves show interesting trends for the period 1993-2003.1 3 Ag-
gregate union membership fell by around a sixth over the period, due to
massive losses in central and eastern European countries, and significant
losses in countries with high numbers of union members such as Germany
and the UK.
Due to important cross-national variations, union density, understood as
union membership as a proportion of the eligible workforce,14 is uneasy to
assess. The structure of organized labor also largely varies from situations of
absolute concentration, where a single union represents virtually all union
members, and the more general competitive situation where members are
spread over different organizations. Using the European Industrial Rela-
tions Observatory On-Line data,IS we found no significant correlation be-
tween union density and membership concentration (r = -0.388). The neg-
ative sign is worth noticing. It means that, contrary to the neo-corporatist
argument about organizational centralization and collective action, in con-
temporary labor mobilizations the extent of membership and union cen-
tralization are basically unrelated. Countries where a single trade union
center has a monopoly (Austria, Latvia, Slovakia), or strong hegemony
(Bulgaria, Germany, the UK, and to a lesser extent the Netherlands and
Greece), display medium or low levels of membership. Although concen-
tration can definitely be an advantage for coordination of collective action,
limited organizational choice may also deter membership. Organized labor
in these countries is in a situation of weak monopoly. On the other hand,
neo-corporatist countries of Scandinavia, combining high levels of mem-
bership, display relatively more competitive forms of organization. Union
membership tends to be high in situations of limited pluralism rather than
monopoly. Interestingly, Romania shows an isolated pattern of strong
membership and extreme organizational diversity. Many countries such as
Spain, Portugal, Estonia, and France, are in a situation of weak pluralism.
Limited pluralism prevailing over absolute centralization nevertheless
corresponds to a variety of situations. In some countries, a handful of
unions compete in seeking to mobilize employees on initial political or re-
ligious grounds. In central and eastern Europe, the main cleavage naturally
opposes new movements toward organizations inherited from the socialist
regime. In western and southern Europe, Catholic versus secular and Marx-
ist versus non-Marxist cleavages are still important in designing organiza-
tional delineations. Another situation tends to prevail when unions are pri-
marily organized along professional lines and group categories or workers
or wage earners according to their status. Scandinavian countries follow this
pattern with separate organizations for blue collars, white collars, profes-
sional, educational, and managerial staff. Both the structure and dynamics
of organized labor are therefore quite diversified across European countries.
Functional patterns seem to progressively take over ideological and politi-
cal cleavages in labor mobilization.
Data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and De-
velopment (OECD) largely fit with the picture presented above. I6 They re-
veal that union density is also strongly correlated to the percentage of wage
earners covered by collective agreements (r = 0.500). Both measures define
the extent and form oflabor protection (figure 2.3). European countries are
not distinctive for their level of union density as such, as this varies from
high to low levels in Europe, and many countries with low union density
are indeed European. Rather, European countries are clearly distinctive for
their high level of working population covered by collective agreements, ir-
respective of union density. A number of countries in the bottom-right part
of the graph such as France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, and
Italy, provide extensive collective agreements to wage earners with much
lower membership than in Scandinavia. At the other end, the United States,
Canada, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand, despite levels of union
membership comparable to Europe, only provide collective agreements to
a minority of wage earners. Therefore it is the degree and pattern of labor
protection, rather than union membership, that is distinctively European.
STRUCTURE AND CHANGE IN EUROPEAN CIVIL SOCIETIES
The vast literature on cleavages in European societies largely documents the

fact that political institutions, party systems, and interests intermediation
systems have been shaped by combined influences involving a variety of
factors including industrialization, urbanization, secularization, states and
nations building, political culture development, and coalitions formation
among parties, interest groups, and social movements. I7 Accordingly, rea-
sons converge to suggest that there is not one but several patterns of civil
society in Europe. The scope, structure, and formation process of civil soci-
ety is likely to vary across countries. In particular, we may think of the clas-
sical oppositions between labor and religious organizations on the one
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hand, and between neo-corporatist and pluralist modes of interests repre-

sentation on the other hand. More generally, different types of groups such
as unions, churches, environmentalists, or youth movements are likely to
be more or less active in different countries according to the political cul-
ture and to the national structuring of cleavages. It is therefore important to
consider co-variations and possible clustering among membership types at
the country level. Two issues are specifically scrutinized in the following
section: pluralist versus corporatist organization of interests, and "old" ver-
sus "new" issues in social mobilization.
Consider first the debate between corporatism and pluralism in inter-
preting the structure of interests in Europe. A pluralist line of interpreta-
tion underscores membership in a diversity of social organizations, com-
petition, and possibly balance of political influence among interest
groups. A neo-corporatist argument would on the other hand stress the
prevalence of industrial relations and class cleavages in politics, the exten-
sive membership in labor organizations, and concentration of significant
interest groups. What can be observed from this point of view? WVS data
for the 1999 wave in the twenty-five countries of the EU reveal that mem-
bership types are, with but a few exceptions, all strongly correlated with
each other at the country level. This fits more with the idea of a continuum
in development than with the argument of alternative patterns of civil so-
ciety of equal density. Membership in religious organizations is positively
and significantly correlated with membership in social welfare (r = 0.743),
education and arts (r = 0.580), labor unions (r = 0.761), political parties
(r = 0.660), and environment protection groups (r = 0.414). The same is
true for all kinds of groups, meaning that there is no case for opposing a
civil society structured by religious organizations to a more industrial and
secular type favoring labor, and that the two patterns are more comple-
mentary than in opposition. Likely, it also means that for the vast major-
ity of countries, the level of union membership tends to correspond to the
degree of participation in other groups, and that overall pluralism tends to
prevail over corporatism. Neo-corporatist arrangements, offering particu-
larly developed union density and organization, are to be found nested in
pluralist societies with particularly active civil societies. From a dynamic
perspective, it is worth noticing that for the period 1981-1997, union
membership was the only category not correlated with the others. Mobi-
lization around industrial relations was largely independent of participa-
tion in other types of groups and cleavages during this period. However
this was not the case any more in 1999, and the streamlining of unionism
within other social organizations suggests both a declining saliency of in-
dustrial conflicts in social organization, and an increasingly pluralistic
structure of interests.
58 Chapter 2
Figure 2.4 maps variations in the structure of civil society in European

countries with a few comparative reference points, crossing union mem-
bership with those to all other categories of groups. The figure clearly re-
veals the general continuum in the positions of countries along the two di-
mensions, but also a few significant patterns. Again, Scandinavia and
Nordic countries, particularly Sweden and Iceland and to a lesser extent
Denmark and Finland, are distinctive in presenting a high level of mem-
bership both in unions and in other organizations. These countries come
close to the model of neo-corporatism depicted by the literature, and clearly
stand out of the cluster grouping most other countries. In the bottom-right
part of the figure, the Netherlands stand closer to the United States than to
Scandinavia as an intense pluralist case with a very strong civil society and
a medium union membership, while Canada lies somewhere in between
the United States and most European counties. On the extreme left part of
the figure are countries with particularly low density of civil society. Some
of them nevertheless display comparatively high levels of union member-
ship, all of them emerging from post-communist transitions such as Be-
larus, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Latvia. Post-communist countries, par-
ticularly non-EU members, tend to retain some organizational legacy from
their former socialist structure. Although once extensive membership to
state-controlled organizations collapsed, and despite rapid changes, corpo-
ratist union membership in some industrial sectors can remain important.
With the exception of Scandinavian countries and of Finland, member
states of the EU form a rather homogeneous group, more pluralist than cor-
poratist. All "large" countries such as France, Italy, the UK, Germany, Spain,
and Poland present low development of civil society in both dimensions
compared with Scandinavia or North America.
Finally, we also consider the "new politics" hypothesis in analyzing the
structure of civil society. The hypothesis suggests that new issues such as en-
vironment protection, gender equality, or human rights are taking over
"old" issues such as welfare, employment, and security in structuring poli-
tics. If this is the case, at least some countries should display high levels of
mobilization in corresponding groups, not related to more traditional
membership in unions and religious organizations. As a result, the new pol-
itics hypothesis also suggests that political involvement would shift from
political parties to social movement organizations. Can we find confirma-
tion of these hypotheses in the structuring of civil society in European
countries?
We first considered the former aspect by looking at correlations between
group memberships related to new issues and more traditional ones in EU-
25 countries. Membership in development and human rights organizations
is positively correlated with involvement on all traditional issues like wel-
fare services, health organizations, religious groups, labor unions, and pro-
•,
-•
60 Chapter 2
fessional associations. The same applies to membership in environment

protection groups, except that it is not significantly related to labor union
membership. Participation in women's rights organizations and peace
movements remains correlated with welfare, health, and professional asso-
ciations. But both of them are unrelated to religious groups as well as to
union membership. Social participation on environment protection, gen-
der equality, and peace appear independent from union membership and,
for the two latter, from religious membership. But this is not the case for de-
velopment and human rights, and all new issues remain related to partici-
pation in welfare, health, and professional organizations. There is no nega-
tive relation or strict independence between membership on old and new
issues at the country level.
Regarding shifting involvement from political parties to new social move-
ments' organizations, the new politics hypothesis is clearly not supported
by the data, as there is a positive and strong correlation between member-
ship in all new issues groups and political parties (ranging from 0.579 with
peace movements to 0.632 for women's rights).
These elements suggest that contemporary patterns of social membership
and civil societies have resulted from long-term processes of nation-build-
ing, industrialization, and secularization for the main part. They also show
that they largely remain country specific, and that most recent trends are
more ambiguous to depict. The development of cultural liberalism and
post-materialism among younger generations and the advent of new polit-
ical issues supplemented rather than substituted for older cleavages and
group affiliations. As a result, the structure of interest group systems became
more pluralistic. Traditional organizations like political parties, labor
unions, and religious groups may have gone through massive losses in
membership. But countertendencies also exist, and some countries indeed
displayed increases in union and church membership over the most recent
period. Social organizations related to new issues also attract new members
from younger generations, while the development of access to education
and communication technologies make individuals more autonomous
from formal group belonging. As a result, social membership becomes
more complex, more fluid, and less community based. But it could hardly
be argued that European social capital is eroding on the basis of the data
analyzed here.
MAPPING PROTEST AND ITS REPERTOIRES
Are national cultures more or less favorable to political protest? Figure 2.5
shows that protest behavior is more evenly spread across European coun-
tries than membership in civil society. It is nevertheless higher in northern
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Figure 2.5 Protest Behaviors 1999
62 Chapter 2
and western Europe (as well as in the United States and Canada), while
lower in southern and eastern Europe (as well as in Japan). Moreover,
protest activities are not exclusive from each other, but rather tend to be cor-
related with each other.
However there are differences in the use of different repertoires in differ-
ent countries. Petitioning is the most widely used activity and follows the
general pattern indicated. But joining boycotts is more specific to Northern
Europe and North America. On the opposite end, demonstrating is more
frequent in southern and eastern Europe, and significantly less used in Eng-
lish-speaking countries. Joining strikes is less frequent in Germany, Austria,
Finland, and in a significant number of new member states.
Figure 2.6 shows the position of countries along two selected repertoires of
collective action, signing petitions on the one hand, considered as a non-con-
frontational type of protest, and attending lawful demonstrations, considered
as more challenging for public authorities, on the other hand. The two vari-
ables are significantly correlated (r = 0.506), as they are with other types of
protest. Sweden and countries from continental western Europe combine high
levels of both demonstrations and petitioning. Great Britain, the United States
and Canada, but also Ireland, Austria, Finland, Iceland, Slovakia (and Japan)
comparatively make a less frequent use of demonstrations. Countries with
comparatively low levels of protest in the bottom left part of the picture are for-
mer communist countries and Spain, Portugal, and Turkey.
Referring to our earlier discussion about a continuum versus alternative
patterns of political mobilization, this picture is quite eloquent. It is true
that English-speaking countries appear less confrontational in their use of
protest repertoires than continental western Europe, usually more inclined
to the use of demonstrations. The top-left quadrant of the figure, with Great
Britain as the main outlier figuring a predominantly civilized pattern of
protest behavior, can be distinguished from the top-right one, more mixed
in the use of repertoires with Greece as a prominent case, and from the
bottom-left quadrant where participation in protest activities remains low.
Three distinctive patterns can indeed be depicted in the data. Nevertheless,
it should be noted that the bottom-right quadrant remains empty, and that
no case of countries where protest is purely confrontational could be found.
Most importantly, confrontational and non-confrontational types of
protest are significantly and positively correlated, and therefore repertoires
of protest are more cumulative than exclusive of each other.
CIVIL SOCIElY AND PROTEST BEHAVIOR
Political behavior is closely dependent on the social context in which it de-

velops, and particularly on the organizational structure of society framing
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64 Chapter 2
group memberships, political ideologies, and social conflicts. There are two
alternative ways to consider the relation between protest and civil society.
On the one hand, civil society provides a key element of mobilization struc-
tures, and is likely to facilitate protest movements when they are to emerge
in reaction to public decision-making or to force initiative on the policy
agenda. On the other hand, the development of civil society, rooted in ex-
tensive social membership in a large number of active organized groups,
also impacts on the different stages of the policymaking process. Groups'
involvement helps to anticipate potential conflicts and to identify veto
points, to select appropriate and acceptable policy alternatives, and to reach
consensual decisions. In this perspective, civil society, in channeling pro-
active political mobilization, tends to reduce the potential for conflicts and
reactive protests.
This relation between civil society and protest varies with the different se-
quences of the policy cycle, and with the integration of organized groups to
the decision process. For instance, labor movements were more likely to
make use of violent protests in revolutionary movements prior to the de-
velopment of welfare policies than in contemporary advanced welfare states
where union politics are largely integrated to state policymaking. Similarly,
cross-country variations, linked to the uneven development of civil society,
are likely to be significant, and to yield rather different national policy
styles.
Key findings revealed by the data set used here are the following. Civil so-
ciety density is positively correlated with most forms of participation at the
country level: electoral turnout (r = 0.453 with the average in national elec-
tions 1974-2004); overall protest (r = 0.696); petitioning (r = 0.711); boy-
cotts (r = 0.807), and demonstrations (r = 0.378). However it is not corre-
lated with strikes and building occupations, more specifically characteristic
of industrial conflicts. With respect to the two potential effects of civil soci-
ety identified above, mobilization of protest versus consensus building in
policymaking, the following comments can be addressed.
1. Social membership through a dense network of civic organizations is

indeed a key component of collective action in providing organiza-
tional capacity for mobilization. Activists are more active and more
successful in persuading others to protest when membership is more
extensive.
2. Social membership in civil society organizations mainly favors non-
confrontational modes of participation such as voting, petitioning,
and boycotts. Its effect is less sensitive on demonstrations. It has no
impact on strikes or building occupations.
3. Social movements' mobilization is more a supplement than an alter-
native to electoral mobilization. Electoral mobilization is stronger
when protest (r = 0.572) and party membership (r = -0.622) are

higher.
4. The level of industrial conflicts (strikes) is independent from the over-
all density of civil society.
5. The level of industrial conflicts is independent from the extent of
union membership. Union membership has no impact on the partic-
ipation in strikes or in any other type of protest. The net mobilization
capacity of unions in 2000 seems close to zero. The frequency of par-
ticipation in strikes, building occupations, demonstrations, petitions
and boycotts is similar in countries with high and low union mem-
bership.
6. The same is true of political parties. While party membership favors
turnout in elections (see above), its impact on protest is not signifi-
cant.
Figure 2.7 shows the strength of the correlation between civil society den-
sity and protest behavior, here assessed through participation in demon-
strations, and the position of countries along the two dimensions. While
participative societies of the United States, Northern Europe, and the
Netherlands can be contrasted with more apathetic societies of southern
and eastern Europe, a significant number of countries (France, Germany,
Italy, Belgium, and Greece) display high levels of protest activities despite
rather low social membership. In such cases civil society is less organized,
has less input in the policymaking process, and correspondingly, protest is
more reactive, more eruptive, and more frequently confrontational.
SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL

FOUNDATIONS OF COLLECTIVE ACTION
We consider in this section the impact of different sets of variables derived

from alternative and complementary theoretical perspectives. On the one
hand, resources' mobilization theory underscored differences in access and
effective use of resources to explain variations in collective action. In this
perspective education, wealth, social capital, and community structures are
likely to favor involvement in protest as part of a wider range of political be-
havior. From a comparative angle, wealthy countries that provide extensive
access to education and high standards of living to their citizens are likely
to be particularly favorable sites for contention. Along the line of Olson's
argument, it may also be thOUght that size matters, and that interactions are
more difficult to coordinate in large national communities than in smaller
ones. We explore this hypothesis using country indicators of GDP per
capita, Human Development Index (HDI), and total population. IS
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Table 2.1 shows that if country size estimated by total population does
not significantly matter, both CDP per capita (r = 0.583) and human de-
velopment (r = 0.778) exert very significant effects. The larger impact of
HDI compared to CDP per capita shows that education and standards of
living captured through life expectancy add a specific influence to income
alone. As a general trend, collective action engages individuals when knowl-
edge, money, and time are available and provide capacities for protest.
On the other hand, a currently widely accepted critics' perspective of the
mobilization of resources states that "objective" static resources cannot be
sufficient to explain collective action. Rather, from A. de Tocqueville to Ted
Curr 19 and more recent advocates of framing theory, a long tradition
stresses the dynamics of subjectivity as the key factor of collective action de-
velopment. Although quantitative data are not always easy to match with
such perspectives, a series of indicators are definitely worth considering. To
take into account the dynamics rather than the overall level in living con-
ditions, we first consider changes in CDP (annual growth rates
1990-2002). Low levels of economic growth are detrimental to employ-
ment and limit capacities for accumulation as well as redistribution. We hy-
pothesize that among rich countries, citizens are affected by marginal
Table 2.1. Correlation Table between Protest and Socio-economic Indicators

Total Protest Population COPper HOI
Score 1999 2002 Capita 2002 2002
Total Protest Pearson 0.237 0.583(**) 0.778(**)
Score 1999 Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.234 0.001 0.000
N 27 27 27 27
Population Pearson 0.237 1 -0.053 -0.018
2002 Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.234 0.778 0.924
N 27 31 31 31
GDP per Pearson 0.583(**) -0.053 1 0.805(**)
Capita 2002 Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.001 0.778 0.000
N 27 31 31 31
HDI2002 Pearson 0.778(**) -0.018 0.805(**)
Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 0.924 0.000
N 27 31 31 31
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Sample: EU-2S plus applicant countries and Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland whenever data is available.
Source: United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2004, New York: United Na-
tions Development Program, 2004.
68 Chapter 2
trends in unemployment and revenues, and in this sense particularly sensi-

tive to politico-economic cycles. Social conflicts are therefore more likely to
emerge within countries with low rather than high growth in CDP. In the
same perspective, social inequality, more than income or human develop-
ment, is also a possible source of political protest. We consider three differ-
ent potential impacts of inequality: the overall extent of income and rev-
enues inequalities measured through aCini coefficient,20 the Human
Poverty Index (HPI) measuring social exclusion for a limited number of
countries,21 and the preference for equality among citizens.22
Table 2.2 shows that none of the indicators retained is significant. Over-
all protest is not affected by the average growth rate, or by the different mea-
sures of inequality we selected. Moreover, coefficients suggest a negative,
rather than the expected positive, relation between inequality and protest.
The data does not provide support for the hypothesis of collective action
Table 2.2. Correlation Table for Protest, Growth, and Inequality

Total Annual Equality
Protest Growth Above
Score Rate Inequality HPI Freedom
1999 1990-2002 (Gini) 2002 (%)
Total Pearson 1.000 0.056 -0.138 -0.267 -0.079

Protest Correlation
Score 1999 Sig. (2-tailed) 0.787 0.503 0.401 0.707
N 27 26 26 12 25
Annual Pearson 0.056 1.000 0.044 0.420 0.172
Growth Correlation
Rate Sig. (2-tailed) 0.787 0.825 0.153 0.421
1990-2002 N 26 30 28 13 24
Inequality Pearson -0.138 0.044 1 0.674(*) 0.161
(Gini) Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.503 0.825 0.011 0.454
N 26 28 29 13 24
HPI2002 Pearson -0.267 0.420 0.674(*) 1.000 0.207
Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.401 0.153 0.011 0.519
N 12 13 13 13 12
Equality Pearson -0.079 0.172 0.161 0.207 1.000
Above Correlation
Freedom Sig. (2-tailed) 0.707 0.421 0.454 0.519
(%) N 25 24 24 12 25
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Sources: Data from United Nations Development Programs. Human Development Report 2004, New York:
United Nations Development Program, 2004; World Values Survey (1999-2000), www.worldvaluessurvey.org
(accessed 25 June 2005).
rooted in changing living conditions, the extent of inequalities, or social

preferences for equality.
Finally, we consider the effect of institutional variables generally grouped
under the broad category of the POS. Access to the political system is more
or less favored by different institutional designs considered through a num-
ber of features. We already noticed that civil society density favors political
participation in general and protest in particular. Due to the proximity of
decision-making and coordination, state decentralization is expected to fa-
cilitate collective action. Majoritarian electoral rule and executive domi-
nance in the policy process are likely to nourish reactive protest from social
movements, while proportional rule, the use of referendums as an element
of direct democracy, and judicial review, in limiting the room for executive
maneuvering, are more likely to temper the potential for political protest.
Table 2.3 presents results obtained with a number of selected indicators.
It is worth noticing that protest is highly correlated with civil society den-
sity, and to a lesser extent to the level of autonomy devoted to local gov-
ernment within the political system, and to executive dominance in the leg-
islative process. In other words, collective action is more likely when the
government can act with a limited control from the parliament, when civil
society is more organized, and state institutions more decentralized. Nei-
ther the electoral rule, the type and color of government (not figured in the
table), the use of referendums, the extent of constitutional review, nor con-
stitutional rigidity are significantly correlated. This set of results clearly gives
some support to the idea of mobilizing structure (the state of civil society),
and to the notions of threats (executive dominance) and opportunities (de-
centralization) as crucial elements in shaping collective action.
Despite difficulties due to the limited number of cases and multi-colin-
earity among independent variables, we used linear regression models to
estimate the respective influence of these different factors with a sample
composed of EU-25 member states, applicant countries, and non-EU
members from western Europe. Civil society density (r = 0.697) and HPI
(r = 0.77 8) are both correlated with protest. Although HPI has a stronger
effect on protest, it is significantly correlated with local autonomy (r =
0.557). We therefore used civil society density in the equation. The results
presented in table 2.4 indicate that when considered simultaneously, the
effects of local autonomy and executive dominance are nearly canceled. In
other words, institutional factors do not make a difference when consid-
ered at the same level of civil society density. From a theoretical perspec-
tive, institutional opportunities (decentralization) or threats (executive
dominance) exert a limited influence on the general level of protest at the
country level. Their effect is indeed eclipsed by the strong impact of re-
sources (HDI) and social structures (civil society density) as determinants
of mobilization processes.
Table 2.3. Correlation Table between Protest and Political Opportunities
Local Electoral Type of Constitutional Civil Society Total Protest
Autonomy ExLegBal Rule Government Referendums Review Density 2000 Score 1999
Local Pearson 1.000 -0.062 -0.423** 0.075 0.381 * 0.071 0.393* 0.369*
Autonomy Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.724 0.009 0.672 0.020 0.677 0.024 0.038
N 37 35 37 34 37 37 33 32
ExLegBal Pearson -0.062 1.000 0.191 0.506** 0.024 0.148 -0.155 -0.403*
Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.724 0.271 0.003 0.890 0.398 0.396 0.025
N 35 35 35 33 35 35 32 31
Electoral Pearson -0.423** 0.191 1.000 0.342* 0.060 0.038 -0.015 -0.237
Rule Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.009 0.271 0.048 0.725 0.825 0.936 0.191
N 37 35 37 34 37 37 33 32
Type of Pearson 0.075 0.506** 0.342* 1.000 0.047 0.166 0.038 -0.092
Government Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.672 0.003 0.048 0.790 0.348 0.840 0.637
N 34 33 34 34 34 34 30 29
Referendums Pearson 0.381 * 0.024 0.060 0.047 1.000 -0.329* -0.048 0.240
Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.020 0.890 0.725 0.790 0.047 0.790 0.186
N 37 35 37 34 37 37 33 32
Constitutional Pearson 0.071 0.148 0.038 0.166 -0.329* 1.000 0.238 0.215
Review Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.677 0.398 0.825 0.348 0.047 0.182 0.238
N 37 35 37 34 37 37 33 32
Civil Society Pearson 0.393* -0.155 -0.015 0.038 -0.048 0.238 1.000 0.696**
Density 2000 Correlation
Sig. (Hailed) 0.024 0.396 0.936 0.840 0.790 0.182 0.000
N 33 32 33 30 33 33 40 38
Total Protest Pearson 0.369* -0.403* -0.237 -0.092 0.240 0.215 0.696** 1.000
Score 1999 Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed) 0.038 0.Q25 0.191 0.637 0.186 0.238 0.000
N 32 31 32 29 32 32 38 39
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Sources: Data from Jaap Woldendorp, Hans Keman, and Ian Budge, Party Government in 48 Democracies (1945-7998): Composition, Duration, Personnel, London: Kluwer Aca-
demic Publishers, 2000; World Values Survey, www.worldvaluessurvey.org (accessed 25 June 2005).
Table 2.4. linear Regression of Protest with Executive Dominance, Civil Society
Density, and Local Autonomy
Unstandardized Standardized
Coefficients Coefficients Sig.
Model B Std. Error Beta
(Constant) 41.801 11.708 3.570 0.002
ExLegBal -16.676 8.418 -0.281 -1.981 0.060
Civil Society 0.317 0.073 0.625 4.365 0.000
Density 2000
Local Autonomy 3.073 3.965 0.113 0.775 0.447
Dependent Variable: Total Protest 1999-2000. Adjusted R-square = 0.528.
Sources: Data from jaap Woldendorp, Hans Keman, and Ian Budge, Party Government in 48 Democracies
(1945-1998): Composition, Duration, Personnel, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000; World Val-
ues Survey, www.worIdvaluessurvey.org.
CONCLUSION
This chapter analyzed the main comparative dimensions of civil society in

European countries. We showed that civil society widely differs in density
and structure with national contexts, following variations in patterns of sec-
ularization and labor organization. We also established that, despite the ex-
istence of distinctive patterns at the national level, the different forms of
both social membership and protest behavior are more cumulative than ex-
clusive. The typology of collective action regimes-pluralism, corporatism,
and protest-presented in chapter 1 is therefore a useful tool to map in-
flections within the same continuum rather than purely alternative patterns
of social mobilization. Moreover, the density of civil society favors, rather
than contains, the development of protest, as well as other types of politi-
cal participation. However, its influence is more effective on non-con-
frontational types of protest, and not sensitive to industrial conflicts. In this
respect, the organization of civil society acts as social capital, enabling,
channeling, and to a certain extent civilizing political mobilization.
Considering the influence of different factors on the level of protest, we
found some support for the resources mobilization perspective with the
strong impacts of the level of CDP and HDI. Various indicators of changes
in living conditions, the extent of inequalities and social exclusion, and
preferences for equality proved insignificant. Although more research
would be needed on this issue, the contrast with the strong effect of CDP
and HDI gives more support to an integrationist perspective, where partici-
pation is mainly dependent on social capacity, than to the prevalence of so-
cial conflicts in explaining protest movements. Finally, institutions do mat-
ter, as significant correlations can be found between the level of protest and
72 Chapter 2
the dominance of the executive in the policy process on the one hand, and
with the degree of decentralization of the state on the other hand. However,
their effect is not significant when considered simultaneously with the one
exerted by CDP or HDI. The influence of institutional opportunities and
potential threats matters far less than resources and mobilization structures
for collective action. National cultures and collective action regimes have
been affected by European integration, both with the introduction of new
issues on the political agenda, and with their varying capacity to react to EU
public policies at the domestic level as well as in Brussels. The next chapter
considers the mobilization of interests around European institutions.
NOTES
1. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and
Democracy in Five Nations, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989 (1st ed. 1963); Sidney
Verba, Norman H. Nie, and Jae-On Kim, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven-
Nations Comparison, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978; Russell J. Dalton,
Citizens Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies,
Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1996.
2. Robert Putnam, Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Nanetti, Making Democracy
Work: Civic Traditions in Modem Civic Italy, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993.
3. Information and data from the World Values Survey can be accessed through
the website www.worldvaluessurvey.org (accessed 15 April 2007).
4. Wording of the question for the 1999-2002 wave was the following:
Please look carefully at the following list of voluntary organizations and activities and say
which, if any, do you belong to:
• Social welfare services for elderly, handicapped or deprived people

• Religious or church organizations
• Education, arts, music or cultural activities
• Labor unions
• Political parties or groups
• Local community action on issues like poverty, employment, housing, racial equal-
ity
• Third world development or human rights
• Conservation, environment, animal rights groups
• Professional associations
• Youth work (e.g., scouts, guides, youth clubs, etc.)
• Sports and recreation
• Women's groups
• Peace movements
• Voluntary organizations concerned with health
• Other groups
• Belong to none
5. Unless specified otherwise, we use in this chapter the last available data from
the 1999-2000 wave. We also conducted the same analysis with pooled data from
the different waves between 1981 and 1997, and obtained very similar results. We
also checked data of previous surveys for specific years, in particular when countries
were missing in the last wave, and considered other indicators of membership (per-
centage declaring belonging to at least one organization in particular).
6. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la democratie en Amerique, Paris: Robert Laffont,
1986; Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, Civic Culture.
7. Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti, Making Democracy Work.
8. See also Sjoerd Beugelsdijk and Ton van Schaik, "Participation in Civil Soci-
ety and European Regional Economic Growth," in The Cultural Diversity of European
Unity, ed. Wil Arts, Jacques Hagenaars, and Loek Halman, Leiden, Netherlands:
Brill, 2003, 119-46.
9. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Stein Rokkan, Building States and Nations, Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage, 1973.
10. Loek Halman and Veerle Draulans, "Religious Beliefs and Practices in Con-
temporary Europe," in European Values at the Turn of the Millennium, ed. Wil Arts and
Loek Halman, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2004, 283-316.
11. Nevertheless regional variations in Turkey are likely to be significant, and
probably not reflected in the survey result.
12. Differences of membership in religious groups as well as in other organiza-
tions across categories of countries defined through their dominant religion are sig-
nificant at .01 using a one-way ANOVA procedure.
13. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Condi-
tions, Trade Union Membership 1993-2003, www.eiro.eurfoun.eu.int (accessed 22
April 2007).
14. For methodology of measurement see International Labour Organisation,
"Technical Notes: Industrial Relations Indicators," World Labour Report, 1997-98,
www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2004/03/update/tn0403105u.html (accessed 22
April 2007).
15. European Industrial Relations Observatory On-line, "Trade-Union Member-
ship 1993-2003," www.eiro.eurofound.ie/2004/03/update/tn0403105u.html (ac-
16. Union density as measured by OECD based on data provided by unions and
reported to the eligible workforce is strongly correlated to union membership as-
sessed by the WVS through individual interviews (r = 0.797 with average union
membership score for waves 1981-1997). See OECD, OECD Employment Outlook
2004, Paris: OECD, 2004.
17. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performances in
Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999; Yves Meny and
Yves Surel, Politique comparee: Les democraties occidentales, Paris: Editions
Montchrestien, 2001.
18. Socio-economic data used here are from United Nations Development Pro-
gram, Human Development Report 2004, New York: United Nations Development
Program, 2004. We used alternative measures of collective action from the WVS as
dependent variables to check these relations, including specific measures of peti-
tioning, boycott, strikes, demonstrations, building occupations, and total protest
74 Chapter 2
score in 1999-2000, or average scores for similar variables over the period
1981-1997. Results presented only retain the total protest score for 1999-2000.
19. Ted R. Gun, Why Men Rebel, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.
20. The Gini index measures inequality over the entire distribution of income or
consumption. A score of 0 represents perfect equality, and a value of 100 perfect in-
equality (Source: United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report
2004, 188 sq.).
2l. HPI for selected high income OEeD countries includes life expectancy, access
and effectiveness of education, standard of living, and social exclusion (Source:
United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2004, 150 sq.).
22. Percentage of respondents claiming to value equality above freedom (Source:
WVS 1999-2000).
3
The Making of a Polity:
Interests' Mobilization
around European Institutions
Having characterized the different patterns of group membership and

protest behavior at the national level, we now turn to the effects of Euro-
pean integration on social and political mobilization processes. The most
direct incidence of integration is exerted by the development of the EU in-
stitutions and public policies, analyzed in this chapter. The state of collec-
tive action at the EU level has to be apprehended "from above," by consid-
ering the targets and access of organized interests to EU institutions, as well
as "from below," looking at the processes of group formation and social
mobilization related to European integration. This chapter first presents the
policy characteristics of the EU relevant to the understanding of the chang-
ing forms of collective action. We then turn to interests' mobilization with
the development of lobbying in Brussels, and with the question of the Eu-
ropeanization of protest, before reviewing the distribution of these mobi-
lizations among the different EU institutions.
POLICYMAKING IN A COMPLEX ENVIRONMENT
With the progress of European integration, particularly since the Single Eu-
ropean Act (SEA), public policy in Europe has been significantly trans-
formed by the diversification of its normative sources. The legal frame
where policymaking unfolds is no longer national, but takes on a European
space in which European Community law acquired precedence over the leg-
islations-and more arguably on constitutional orders-of the member
states. This picture is nonetheless complicated by the fact that European law
does not simply take over national norms through a substitution process.
75
76 Chapter 3
Rather it supplements and progressively transforms them by determining

the lines along which they develop. Although Community law legally im-
posed its supremacy, the situation is still one of normative pluralism, espe-
cially if one considers the case of member states with federal Constitutions.
Furthermore, the EU's competencies in different areas (environment, agri-
culture, competition, etc.) widely differ, yielding uneven interactions with
public policy networks. At the very heart of the European "institutional tri-
angle" (Commission, Council, Parliament), and within a single sector of
public policy, decisive regulations are very different across issues and are
technically specific. In addition, in comparison to the parliamentary
regimes of the member states, EU decision-making follows a higher degree
of separation of powers, offering more opportunities for vetoes (in particu-
lar, with the persistence of the unanimity rule in the Council in a significant
number of areas, with the co-decision procedure in the EP, and with the di-
rect access to the ECl, acting as entry points for interest groups and social
movements).
The political opportunities today offered to interests' mobilization in Eu-
rope is, therefore, extremely complex. It is distributed on several levels. The
"upper floor" of the Union is marked by a significant institutional disper-
sion, varying across policy areas, programs, and sometimes measures. This
feature underscores the weak integration of the territorial, sectoral, and in-
stitutional components of the European political system when compared to
national regimes, where they tend to coincide more easily. However, this
opportunity structure has been considerably reinforced and developed in
the aftermaths of the European revival of the 1980s. The competencies of
EU institutions were enlarged by the SEA and the Treaty of the EU in almost
all community domains, and later on in the second (Common Foreign and
Security Policy), and third (Justice and Home Affairs) pillars. The EU and
its member states are also represented by the Commission in the interna-
tional arenas where the liberalization of trade is negotiated-General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and then World Trade Organization
(WfO)-largely impacting on domestic socio-economic and political af-
fairs. Finally, from an institutional perspective, the Amsterdam Treaty
brought about a very sensitive extension of the QMV in the Council and of
the co-decision procedure in the EP, while the draft (constitutional treaty,
and later the Lisbon Treaty) proposed to use both of these procedures by
default in the legislative process.
Although member states clearly limited such a development in the dif-
ferent Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC) preparing for the institutional
reform, the extension of QMV and co-decision procedures incontestably
represent a progressive but significant development of supranational, as op-
posed to intergovernmental, mode of decision-making, offering new po-
tentials for interests' mobilization. Mobilization clearly varies according to
The Making of a Polity 77
policy sectors, issues involved, European institutions' prerogatives, cultural

framing, and organizational constraints to collective action of groups con-
sidered.!
BRUSSELS: THE EUROPEAN INTERESTS FAIR
The development of the interest group system in Brussels is documented by

the database we constructed on the basis of the directory established by the
EC.2 The data used here cover a population of 889 interest groups in Sep-
tember 2000. Using the database involves a few methodological considera-
tions. We have included transnational organizations such as Greenpeace or
Amnesty International, and Eurogroups-that is, federations and confeder-
ations of interests organized at the European level-without counting their
national members. Although national groups frequently engage in Euro-
pean politics by themselves, the database gives a picture of collective action
specifically organized at the European level. Interest groups can sponta-
neously register in the directory of the Commission, and although their de-
gree of activity and range of membership significantly vary, the inventory
can be thought as quasi-exhaustive at the time considered. As groups were
sometimes logically registered under several of the categories defined by the
Commission, it was necessary, in elaborating the typology used below, to
check for the coherence of the classification, correct errors, and avoid dou-
ble counts. Finally, this database can only give a picture of the final expres-
sion of interests organization at the European level, without considering its
history (fusions or ruptures, temporary freezing, or changes in locality,
composition, or status). Such a qualitative and longitudinal analysis re-
mains for the most part to be carried out.
lt may firstly be indicated that interests' mobilization in Brussels is as old
as the European Community's institutions. 3 The UNICE was created in
1958, following the initial business organizations established in the frame-
work of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC)
and the ECSC. The Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations in
the European Union (COPA) was established in 1958 within the prepara-
tion of the Common Agricultural Market. The CEEP was set up in 1961 and
the European Bureau of Consumers Unions (EBCU) in 1962. Although the
ETUC did not appear as such until 1973, its creation was the outcome of
more fragmented forms of trade union integration in Europe, particularly
the birth of regional organizations at the heart of the International Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) or the International Confedera-
tion of Christian Trade Unions (ICCTU). European integration also gave
rise in this way to a reconstitution of international unionism, the ETUC
in 1973 emerging to mobilize the great majority of social-democrats or
78 Chapter 3
autonomous union federations and those who had broken with the com-
munist World Union Federation (WUF). The French Confederation Generale
du Travail's (CCT) joining of the ETUC in 1999, after its disaffiliation from
the WUp, constitutes one of the last events in this realignment of cleavages
at the heart of the international trade union movement nourished by Euro-
pean integration. In a different domain, more recent in political develop-
ment, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) was created in 1974.
This early constitution of the European system of interests is corrobo-
rated by quantitative analysis. Half of Eurogroups existing today were cre-
ated before 1974. The rate at which they were set up closely follows the
progress of European integration.
Some of these groups have a long history. This, among others, is the case
of the Delegation for Europe (1843) or of the International Union of Pub-
lic Transport (1885). Intensive industrialization in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries motivated early forms of transnational cooperation be-
tween firms and organizations, particularly in order to favor technological
development and to deal with problems of standardization (for example,
the International Union of Electrical Energy Producers and Distributors was
initiated in 1925). However, the post-war era obviously saw the beginning
of the contemporary European interests system, with a significant growth
between 1945 and 1954 associated with the establishment of the ECSC. It
may be thought that the failure of the European Defense Community ex-
plains the decrease noted between 1954 and 1956, followed by the estab-
50~------------------------------------------------~
40
30
20
10
1843 1905 1919 1925 1930 1937 1946 1950 19541958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 198219861990 19941~
Date of Creation
Figure 3.1. Creation of Eurogroups by Year (frequencies)

lishment of the Common Market that led to the initial "big bang" from
1955 to 1962. The period of Gaulism and the "empty chair" crisis later co-
incided with the inauguration of a less active phase until the beginning of
the 1980s. From 1986 on, the Single Act produced a new explosion of Eu-
rogroups formation until 1992. The period following the Maastricht Treaty
was marked by a new settling down, interests' mobilization falling back to
its pre-Single Act rhythm. Overall, the curve points out two peaks with the
treaty of Rome and the SEA representing the two-pronged opportunity by
means of which the European system of interests was, for the main part,
constructed.
This picture should not overshadow the cumulative nature of this
process, more clearly readable in figure 3.2. The analysis supports an inter-
pretation in terms of POS, the investment of interests being much more no-
table during phases when European competencies were significantly ex-
panded, and when public decision-making has been more sensitive to
interests' activity. The diminishing rate of creation during the final phase
testifies both to the maturity gained by the interests' system, and to the in-
stitutional stagnation of integration, at least from the point of view of the
main internal policies relevant to organized groups.
1000
800
»
g
<l)
;:I
""e 600
>'-<
<l)
.:::
]'"
;:I
U
400
200
o
1843 1905 1919 1925 1930 1937 1946 1950 19541958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 19821986 1990 19941~
Year
Figure 3.2. Creation of Eurogroups by Year (cumulative frequencies)

80 Chapter 3
The localization of these Eurogroups is also revealing. The majority

(57.9%) are indeed located in Brussels. When this is not the case, they have
headquarters in capital cities or principal cities of member states that gen-
erally correspond to their domain of specialization. The predominance of
industrial or economic groups is reflected by their frequent situation, in de-
scending order, in either France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, but
also in Switzerland and, more rarely, in Luxembourg, Northern Italy, or
Spain. The Europe of the six is home to more than 87% of these groups,
93% if Great Britain is added. 4 Their geographical spread reflects European
socioe-conomic and political concentration. Brussels is also comparatively
becoming more and more attractive: it hosted 39% of the groups created
between 1951 and 1955, as compared to 67% of those established since
1992. This Brussels-based tropism is also the manifestation of European
political integration and its effects upon interest groupS.5
Who lobbies? This question may be answered by looking, first of all, at
the nature of groups present in Brussels. A first partition of the data shows
that the majority of Eurogroups (67%) is composed of business interests
(such as the Union of Professional Cereal Stockists in the EEC, the Euro-
pean Association of Carton Manufacturers, the European Agency of Public-
ity Agents, etc.). This first group largely outnumbers a very composite uni-
verse of public interests (23.4%), aimed at defending a public interest cause
40
30
%
20
10
Figure 3.3. Creation of Eurogroups by Sectors (%)

TIll! Milking of il Polity 81
(the Round Table of European Social Charity Associations, the Euro pean
Co-ordination of Friends of the Earth, the International Federation of Hu-
man Rights Leagues, etc.). Finally, a more restricted third category (9.6%)
groups professionals (such as lawyers, doctors, and nurses), the employers'
associations and professional interseaoral bodies, the organizations of
small and med ium enterprises, and th e employee unions (the Euro pean
Federation of Miners Unions, the Europea n Confederation of SME Associa-
tions, the European Association of Pilots, etc.).
The analysis of these data shows that quantitatively, economic interests
have a rather massive im pact in Brussels, ecl ipsing social interests or those
of a more political orientation. This is, no doubt, the consequence of the
path fo llowed by European integration, primarily focused upon the inter-
nal market. But the representation of public interests, represeming almost a
quarter of all interest groups, is nevertheless significant. A chronological
analysis also revea ls important tendencies. Indeed, the early creation of eco-
nomic groups was then fo llowed in a second phase by unions or profes-
sional organizations, and finally more recently by public inlerests. 6 Figu re
.3.4 well points out the contrasts in the sequencing of mobilization of the
different interests. Although business groups mobilized most during the pe-
riod of the Common Market and of the -Euro-sderosis w (1966-1983), it is,
;;
;g 100
U
I_Hem 1951 m1951-1955 _ 1956-1%5 B 1966-19&3 1ol19&4-1992I11Akr 1992 1

Figure 3.4. Creation of Eurogroups by Period
82 Chapter 3
on the contrary, during the establishment of the single market

(1984-1992) that public interests invested most dramatically in the Euro-
pean arena. The most recent period sees the difference between the two cat-
egories considerably reduced. The late-coming investment of public inter-
ests reveals the increasingly political dimension of integration with the
development of the EU's competencies, and speaks to the progressive affir-
mation of a European public sphere.
TOWARD A LIMITED EUROPEANIZATION OF PROTEST
Are we witnessing a development of protest related to European integra-

tion? The question is critical in apprehending the scope and nature of inte-
gration. From a classical supranational and neo-functional perspective, the
development of a central locus where policymaking initiates should corre-
spond to new political identifications, affiliations, and mobilizations. The
Europeanization of social movements and collective action would logically
be part of the new polity in the making. On the other hand, from a neo-re-
alist or intergovernmental perspective, the resilience of state structures and
the embedding of organized interests into national institutions would ham-
per the Europeanization of collective action, facing both political irrele-
vance and organizational difficulties. Protest, if any, would mainly occur at
the domestic level. In sum, the development of protest at the European
level is a precious indicator of integration as a more or less conflicting
process.
We rely here on quantitative analysis and databases systematically devel-
oped by scholars of collective action. The Europeanization of protest can be
considered both with the absolute numbers of events presenting at least
one European dimension-be it the issue, the institutional target, or the or-
ganizations involved-and in more relative terms, with the percentage of
European protest among the total of contentious events. Data analysis re-
veals evidence of a limited and late Europeanization. Dieter Ruche found
no Europeanization in the German case between 1950 and 1994. Results
cover transnational demonstrations as well as national protests linked to
European issues, and equally hold for general social conflicts and for those
specific to environment, a priori a domain relatively open to transnational-
ization. Marco Giugni and Florence Passys came to similar conclusions re-
garding immigrations policies, again a domain where transnational mobi-
lizations could intuitively be expected.
Other comparative research found contrasted tendencies; in particular
Uwe Reising found a moderate growth in Euro-protests between 1980 and
1995 in France and Germany, but a decline in Belgium. 9 D. Imig and S. Tar-
row lO presented results of a quantitative study relying on the most extensive
database, using a conservative definition of Euro-protests. They established

that after a decade of stagnation between 1984 and 1994, Euro-protests
went through a limited but significant growth over the last period with
available data (1994-1997). They also converged with other studies to un-
derscore the very large preponderance of exclusively national protest. Al-
most 95% of total European protest is indeed made up of purely domestic
contentious events.!!
These results first indicate that the massive mobilization of Brussels-
based interest groups, and the related Europeanization of public policy in
the member states, was not matched by a simply equivalent tendency in
protest-based action. Obstacles to the Europeanization of protest can be
traced with the deficiency in macro-structural and cultural conditions and,
in particular, with the lack of convergence between social networks, collec-
tive identities, and political opportunities for the emergence of collective ac-
tion. Four types of specific constraints can be identified: the preponderant
role of states and national governments in the European political process;
the complexity of European institutions and decision-making; the difficul-
ties of organization and coordination between fragmented movements, and
finally, the poorly structured European public opinion called upon by these
mobilizations.!2
Albeit rare, such political events may nevertheless have considerable
repercussions, as with the Renault-Vilvorde mobilization and the move-
ment of the unemployed in 1997, and reach an influence poorly appre-
hended by a quantitative behavioral approach. They can also correspond to
rather different situations. D. Imig and S. Tarrow distinguish different types
of transnational protest, among which are cooperative transnational ism
grouping individuals from different countries in a coordinated campaign
against a common adversary (for example, demonstrations against the ap-
proval of genetically modified foods), competitive transnationalism be-
tween actors from different countries (such as the 1994 conflict between
French and Spanish fishermen), and finally, collective European protests
specifically aimed at the institutions and policies of the EU, for instance the
farmers' protest against the CAP.
When repertoires are considered, the data presented by both D. Rucht
and D. Imig and S. Tarrow converge to establish that European protests less
frequently resort to violence against goods or persons than those that re-
main strictly national. On the contrary, European demonstrations more of-
ten use peaceful methods. European collective action also uses significantly
less strikes as a means for action than national mobilizations. Such a pro-
file for the repertoire of European contention deserves some explanation.
The small share of strikes within total European protest logically relates to
the institutional structure of policymaking, where the largest part of indus-
trial relations is still predominantly determined by national legislation
84 Chapter 3
(labor law and welfare) and politics (wage bargaining). The fact that Euro-
pean protest is less likely to be violent than national mobilization is in it-
self very significant, as it refutes the idea of a progressive intensification of
conflicts linked to European integration. Two main reasons for this may be
considered. On the one hand, there is the strategic concern of most inter-
ests' mobilizations to obtain the largest support from public opinion in Eu-
rope, especially in countries where relatively peaceful means of conflict res-
olution are the usual norm. On the other hand, European institutions,
when directly called upon, also seek to avoid violence for which they may
be held at least partly accountable, and which could fuel "anti-European"
feelings. For a long time, European protests were most often triggered by
specific policy orientations (particularly related to agriculture), without ac-
tually contesting the integration process itself. However, as the role of Eu-
ropean institutions became progressively more apparent, especially with
the completion of the single market and the adoption of the euro, the
motives of mobilizations increasingly enlarged along the lines of anti-
globalization protests. In this precise case, the clear identification of inter-
national institutions as adversaries, and the en bloc denouncement of the
market hegemony in the international political economy translates in effect
into much tougher clashes, such as those seen in Seattle in December 1999
for the wro meeting, in Prague on September 26, 2000, during the World
Bank/IMF summit, and dramatically in Genoa in July 2002.
Who protests? According to D. Imig and S. Tarrow's analysis, between
1984 and 1997, 82.1% of protests against the ED were organized by pro-
fessional groups. 13 At the heart of this category, farmers represent half of the
demonstrations considered, with this proportion seemingly on the rise. A
minority of non-professional interests, nevertheless, sees its proportion
doubling between 1993 and 1997, reaching 21.2%. Interests led to protest
against ED policy are mainly socio-professional groups affected by the eco-
nomic dimension of integration and its legal mechanisms. The CAP is the
main institutional incarnation of the major transformations conveyed by
the expansion of market economy, industrialization, and development of
services on the one hand, corresponding urbanization and rural depopula-
tion at the scale of the continent on the other hand. Such a movement,
widely amplified by the creation of the common market and European en-
largements, and nowadays by the development of free trade at the world
level, gave rise to the most Europeanized of social conflicts. Farmers' protest
frequency however does not follow a linear pattern, but tends to peak with
acute policy issues such as the reform of the CAP in 1992, or the bovine
spongiform encephalopathy crisis in 1996. 14 It must also be acknowledged
that the increase in non-professional protest indicates a politicization at the
European level on less socio-economic bases. IS
These elements, combined with the data we presented on lobbying, con-

verge to establish that the preponderance of business interests' mobiliza-
tion around European institutions, consistent with the trajectory followed
by integration, has recently somewhat diminished. On the whole, one may
identify a general tendency, over a long period, to the establishment of a
protest-based repertoire of collective action at the European level. However,
social movements and protest still remain national in massive proportions,
only conceding a limited increase in Europeanization during the second
half of the 1990s. The Europeanization of protest is belated when com-
pared to the mobilization of interest groups. It is limited in size and varies
according to sectors, with a very large dominance of farmers' mobilizations.
Finally, it takes on much less violent forms than national protest. Therefore,
two ideas must be refuted. The first one is the massive Europeanization of
protest-based collective action, as national protest is still largely prevalent.
The second one is the intrinsically conflicting nature of political integra-
tion, as the process developed, until the ratification of the Constitutional
Treaty, in the absence of any significant opposition by public opinions or
social movements. Europeanization appears as a continuous process by
means of which social conflicts existing in the member states are incre-
mentally transformed by the emergence of a supranational political level, as
well as by the development of interdependencies between interest groups
from different national societies.
PATHS OF ACCESS TO EUROPEAN INFLUENCE
We now more precisely consider the articulation of collective action with

the political mechanisms of the EU, and the different paths within its insti-
tutional architecture to access influence. The detailed analysis of interest
groups and lobbying provided noticeably by Justin Greenwood, Sonia
Mazey, and Jeremy Richardson showed that their deployment in Brussels
contributes to the development of public policy networks surrounding the
European bureaucracy and the extension of its competencies. 16 Confronted
with an issue, groups logically tend to search for access points to political
decision-making in order to promote or to protect their interests. Quite nat-
urally the European interests system therefore initially unfolded around the
Commission. The EC indeed plays a crucial role in the elaboration of EU
policies, in preparatory stages of major political projects (such as the SEA,
the single currency, or the enlargement), as well as in the implementation
of general policy orientations, with its capacity to initiate and draft legisla-
tion. Interest groups mostly intervene in this second phase, when specific
policy stakes take shape with expected consequences of detailed measures
86 Chapter 3
and programs. Moreover, the Commission has for a long time encouraged
various forms of dialogue and consultation, primarily to benefit from pro-
fessional and technical expertise in the economic and legal domains, as well
as to establish and expand its own political legitimacy. The development of
EU public policies largely explains the growth of lobbying in Brussels, es-
sentially aiming, as in the member states, at the bureaucracy.
The culture of dialogue progressively developed by the Commission led
to the formalization of these relations through a significant number of con-
sultative committees where organized interest groups take part. Cooptation
of sector-based interest groups occurs through the numerous working
groups surrounding the Commission. Most of them are chaired by the
Commission (more rarely by the Council), providing them with secretariat,
selecting their membership, and defining their agenda. The importance and
influence of these committees varies according to sector as a function of Eu-
ropean competencies, of the Commission's dependence on professional ex-
pertise, and of the organizational culture of Directorates General. They are
most numerous in the field of agriculture. Globally, the influence of advi-
sory committees is more limited than for expert committees, made up of
bureaucrats or professionals assigned by national governments. Although
their members do not officially represent governments, expert committees
are more systematically associated with the preparation of European legis-
lation and allow the Commission to better anticipate the reactions of na-
tional administrations. I?
In the complexity of European decision-making, the Commission has the
most central position as it both intervenes at the outset of the policy process
and remains present throughout its different phases. It is therefore crucial
for interest groups to identify their relevant interlocutors, and to establish
sufficiently good communication with them (by sitting on a consultative
body and/or through lobbying) to ensure that their point of view is taken
into account.
The Council of Ministers is also an important point of access to the decision-
making system. Indeed, it has considerable influence in initiating policy in
domains under negotiation in the intergovernmental process (such as the
harmonization oftaxation), and all significant legislation has to receive its
approval. Interest groups are less formally associated with its working
groups than with those of the Commission. They, nevertheless, make their
voices heard by lobbying national bureaucrats who participate in these
working groups, the national delegations at the Committee of Permanent
Representatives (COREPER) who prepare the Council's decisions, or na-
tional administrations in order to influence their policy position in the
Council. When deciding with the unanimity rule, the Council of Ministers
is both a very powerful veto player and a poorly efficient agenda setter in
the policy process. In other words, one vote is sufficient to stop a policy pro-
posal, while coalition building for policy initiatives, requiring unanimity

among all member states, is extremely difficult and restricted to issues of-
fering a very strong consensus.
Interest groups therefore tend to lobby the Council accordingly, persuad-
ing national representatives to oppose or to withdraw their veto to policy
proposals. For instance, during the nineties, U.S. stockbreeders' organiza-
tions lobbied the French Ministry of Agriculture in order to convince it to
withdraw its veto to the Commission's proposal to authorize hormone beef
imports to Europe. With the extension of QMV however, the vetoing capac-
ity of each member state has been reduced, and lobbying involves more
complex games of coalition building. With the end of the cold war and the
preparation of the 2004 enlargement, the Council has gained in influence
for political more than institutional reasons. Extension of QMV has there-
fore been accompanied by a regaining of initiative, and the Council seems
today to be more involved than the Commission in the definition of im-
portant political stakes. The COREPER, where the Council's votes are pre-
pared or where coalitions are established, as well as the working groups sur-
rounding it, are the target of growing solicitation.
The EP, for its part, long considered a powerless institution and fre-
quently associated with the democratic deficit of the EU, went through a
widening of its prerogatives under the SEA of 1986, the treaties of Maas-
tricht in 1992 and Amsterdam in 1997. This position was solidified in the
draft Constitutional Treaty in 2004. Extension of its competencies mainly
concerned the capacity to invest and censure the Commission, indeed indi-
rectly exerted with the resignation of the Jacques Santer's Commission in
1999, and the development of the co-decision procedure in the legislative
process. More secondarily, the resolutions or the EP, although not binding
for other EU institutions, influence the political climate of the European de-
cision-making milieu. Interest groups used this opportunity in order to step
up Parliament lobbying. IS The development of pressure politics around the
EP gave rise to an ongoing controversy on corruption among members of
the parliament and regulation of lobbying activities. 19 In some policy areas
such as the environment, effective legislative powers of the EP formalized
by co-decision led to a new organization within the Parliament with the cre-
ation of Committees and inter-groups. Social movements promoting pub-
lic interests or moral causes (e.g., defense of the environment, human
rights, women's rights) often find more easy access to European decision-
making than in the member states. They learned how to use the EP power
to issue resolutions to voice their concerns and indirectly influence the pol-
icy agenda. For example, a pro-active inter-group called "Equal Rights for
Lesbians and Gays" has been established within the Parliament. Following
the Roth report, it adopted a resolution inviting the Commission to present
a proposal of recommendation to guarantee homosexuals equal rights to
88 Chapter 3
marriage and parenthood as early as 1994, well before the question became
a public issue in most of the member states. Such an aperture to new pol-
icy causes relates to membership in the EP, the use of proportional rule for
European elections resulting in a strong representation of small parties and
new leaders, often originating from new social movements or active mi-
norities claiming for new rights. It also reflects the search for policy niches
for the EP, operating within a relatively saturated institutional environment,
and driven to seize opportunities for new policy initiatives.
Finally, the ECl also offers an access point to influence for interest groups.
An important institutional feature of the EU is to give individual citizens
the capacity to contest the legal conformity of a decision by seizing the ECl,
a possibility not available at the national level for most of member states.
The progressive affirmation of the Court in Luxembourg since the 1960s
created a whole stream of judicial action leading to the saturation of the
court administrative capacities. 20 It has notably been targeted by feminist
groups, environmental organizations and unions, but also employers, in or-
der to better promote their causes or defend their interests. As an illustra-
tion, and to pursue with the rights of homosexuals, the ECl was seized in
1996 with the Lisa Grant affair, an employee of a British railway company
contesting the refusal of her employer to allow her partner to benefit from
the same reduced fare as for heterosexual couples. 21 Such a trend of collec-
tive action increasingly resorting to judicial action is not specific to the EU,
but interacts with its development in the member states. It differs signifi-
cantly from lobbying, aiming to persuade or manipulate an interlocutor
through a confidential or restricted communication, and where dispute res-
olution usually remains contained, ad hoc and specific. Rather it seeks the
reparation of a damage caused by means of a contentious action arbitrated
by a third party, relatively exposed to public scrutiny, and where jurispru-
dence is sought to expand dispute resolution beyond the case considered.
Lobbying and legal action are, however, often combined and carried out
through the same consultancy offices. They represent the two main modes
of interaction of interests in a pluralist system, and their development at the
EU level is particularly significant with regard to the different regimes of
collective action we discussed in chapter 1.
Which institutions do protest mobilizations most often target? There are
no statistical data available on this subject, but several large tendencies are
outlined in available case studies. Firstly, farmers' mobilization, represent-
ing the largest proportion of all protest, are often organized during meet-
ings of the Council of Ministers preparing reforms of the CAP, the infamous
"agricultural marathons." This fits with the Council's role in a policy area
where the rule of unanimous decision-making prevails. The Council is also
targeted in the wake of the decision-making process, when the influence ex-
erted on the Commission, on the COREPER or on national administrations
has produced its effects, leaving several interests unsatisfied. It is then too
late at this stage to reverse the decision, and demonstrations aim in fact at
obtaining compensatory measures.
Another characteristic is the development of "counter-summits" during
the meetings of the European Council, when heads of states and govern-
ments meet two to three times a year in towns selected by the EU presi-
dency. The practice of counter-summits was inaugurated by the ETUC in the
1970s and was enlarged with the demonstrations against unemployment
and social exclusion, the most significant of which took place during the
Amsterdam summit of June 1997. Each European summit, such as in Nice
in December 2000, is therefore an opportunity for a more or less important
transnational mobilization, intended to mark the construction of a civil so-
ciety against opposing the economic laissez-faire of European integration,
now in liaison with anti-globalization movements such as those seen dur-
ing WTO meetings.
The Commission does not hold the same crucial position for protests as
it does for the action of interest groups. While lobbying is exerted during
bureaucratic phases of policy formulation, focused on specific bureaus or
decision-makers and rather continuous, protest takes place during specific
moments of the decision-making process, either for initiating policies when
the European Council is targeted, or for opposing their implementation
when the Council of Ministers is questioned. In the case of protest, the tar-
geting of European institutions is relatively diffuse. National governments
and EU authorities as a whole are called upon to intervene, and national
public opinions are alerted. Protest uses political events such as the Euro-
pean Councilor the Council of Ministers official meetings to publicize the
issues involved and to attempt to orient the policy agenda. They somehow
nest in the European decision-making process, benefiting from the media
publicity around its most political moments.
CONCLUSION
The institutional environment of collective action provided by European in-

tegration has been highly complex, increasing the difficulties for the organ-
ization of interests predominantly structured along national lines. Never-
theless, a whole system of interest representation at the EU level has
emerged, with the early establishment of European organizations (Eu-
rogroups) and the lobbying activities of business and professions. In a more
recent phase posterior to the Maastricht Treaty, groups promoting moral
causes or some forms of civic or public interest also increased their presence
in Brussels and their access to the EU system, while protest, albeit still pre-
dominantly national, seems increasingly Europeanized. The Commission,
90 Chapter 3
due to its role in the legislative process and policy formulation for issues re-
lated to the single market, has been the main target of interests' mobiliza-
tion, while institutional developments of the ED made the EP and ECJ in-
creasingly relevant points of access to influence. Overall, collective action at
the ED level involves more numerous and diversified interests around a
larger number of institutions, for increasingly political and publicized in-
teractions. The EU system of interests representation seems predominantly
pluralist, rather than corporatist or protest-based. It also progressively
evolved from its initial bureaucratic and corporatist pattern to become in-
creasingly politicized. Collective action as analyzed in this chapter therefore
contributed to the development of the ED as a polity. The following chap-
ters will use different sector-based case studies to depict these tendencies
and their underlying processes more precisely.
NOTES
1. Gary Marks and Doug McAdam, "Social Movement and the Changing Struc-
ture of Political Opportunity in the European Union," in Governance in the European
Union, ed. Gary Marks, Wolfgang Scharpf, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Wolfgang
Streeck, 95-120; Ian Bartle, "Transnational Interests in the European Union: Glob-
alization and Changing Organizations in Telecommunications and Electricity," Jour-
nal of Common Market Studies, 37, no. 3 (1999): 363-84.
2. This listing was accessible on the website of the Secretariat-General of the Eu-
ropean Commission in November 2002.
3. The phenomenon led to early research on the subject, particularly Jean Mey-
naud and Dusan Sidjanski, L'Europe des affaires: Role et structure des groupes, Paris:
Payot, 1967.
4. The picture presented here holds for the year 2000. Interest groups from new
member states entering the EU in 2004 have since then established representations
in Brussels, most frequently by joining existing federations.
5. These results converge with those obtained on the basis of older data by Justin
Greenwood, Representing Interests in the European Union, Basingstoke, UK: Macmil-
lan, 1997 and by Neil Fligstein and Jason McNichol, "The Institutional Terrain of
the European Union," in European Integration and Supra-National Governance, ed.
Wayne Sandholtz and Alec Stone Sweet, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998,
59-91.
6. The median year of creation for each of these three groups, indicating the year
in which half of them were already established, is respectively 1970, 1979, and
1984.
7. Dieter Rucht, "The EU as a Target of Political Mobilisation: Is There a Euro-
peanisation of Conflict?" in L'action collective en Europe: Collective Action in Europe, ed.
Richard Balme, Didier Chabanet, and Vincent Wright, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po,
2002, 163-94.
8. Marco Giugni and Florence Passy, "Le champ politique de l'immigration en

Europe: Opportunites, mobilisations et heritage de l'Etat national," in L'action col-
lective en Europe, 433-60.
9. Uwe Reising, "United in Opposition? A Cross-National Time-Series of Euro-
pean Protest in Three Selected Countries, 1980-1995," Journal of Conflict Resolution,
43, no. 3 (1999): 317-43.
10. Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow, eds., Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics
in an Emerging Polity, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
11. The study by Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow was based on an analysis of9,872
events identified by the dispatch of the Reuters International Press Agency between
1984 and 1998, and coded according to an automatic procedure. It presents the ad-
vantage of a homogeneous source whose processing and presentation of European
information is of a relatively constant nature. On the other hand, it suffers from an
identification procedure that is restricted to the title and first sentence of the dis-
patch. Furthermore, Reuters as an economic information agency may at the same
time overestimate the value of European information and omit more political in-
formation. D. Rucht, in contrast, uses two databases (Prodat and TEA) constituted
on the basis of German daily newspapers. Prodat covers a longer period, from 1950
to 1994, and gathers 13,201 cases of protest. Restricting the scope of investigation
to a national monograph allows for a more exhaustive picture of protest as recorded
in the media. However, the quantity of information to be processed imposes the se-
lection of the issues to be analyzed, the Monday and Thursday editions. Above all,
the processing of information by newspapers adapts to market constraints, such as
manufacturing costs, the need to include advertisement, and conjuncture often
guiding editorial policy. Both biases are less important in the case of press agencies.
It should be underlined that the tendency revealed by D. Imig and S. Tarrow in-
cludes the period 1994-1997, which is not taken into account by D. Rucht, and that
the results of both studies for the preceding periods are convergent.
12. Dieter Rucht, "The EU as a Target for Political Mobilisation."
13. Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow, "Mapping the Europeanization of Con-
tention: Evidence from a Quantitative Data Analysis," in Contentious Europeans,
38-40.
14. Evelyn Bush and Pete Simi, "European Farmers and their Protests," in Con-
tentious Europeans, 97-124.
15. Also see chapter 8 in this volume, on the drafting of the project for a Consti-
tutional Treaty.
16. Justin Greenwood, Interest Representation in the EU, Basingstoke, UK: Macmil-
lan, 2003; Sonia Mazey and Jeremy Richardson, eds., Lobbying in the European Com-
munity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; and "Interests," in Developments in
the European Union, ed. Laura Cram, Desmond Dinan, and Neill Nugent. London:
Macmillan, 1999, 105-29.
17. Neill Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European Union, Basingstoke,
UK: Macmillan, 2003, 129 sq. and 158 sq.
18. Beate Kohler-Koch, "Organized Interests in the EU and the European Parlia-
ment," in Lobbyisme, pluralisme et integration europeenne: Lobbying, Pluralism and
92 Chapter 3
European Integration, ed. Paul Henri Claeys, Corinne Gobin, Isabelle Smets, and Pas-
caline Winand, Brussels: European Interuniversity Press, 1998, 126-58.
19. On this point see chapter 9 of this volume.
20. Renaud Dehousse, The European Court of Justice, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan,
1998; Alec Stone Sweet, The Judicial Construction of Europe, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2004.
21. The Court dismissed the case arguing that European law refers to discrimina-
tion based on sex, not on sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian movements were dis-
appointed by the decision, perceived as regressive with regard to the jurisprudence
of the European Court of Human Rights, which is more liberal on the issue.
4
European Integration and
Varieties of Capitalism:
The Brussels Consensus
Probably more than any other question, the changing political economy in-
troduced with the single market and its impact on social issues has been at
the core of controversies about European integration since its origins. From
the ECSC to the single currency, each new step in European integration such
as the Common Market, the European monetary system, or the single mar-
ket raised the issues of the changing influence of capital and labor in Euro-
pean societies, and of the role of political institutions in major interests' in-
termediation.
From a theoretical perspective, most approaches stressed the role of eco-
nomic interest groups in European integration, either at the supranational
level (neo-functionalists) or at the domestic level (liberal intergovernmen-
talism). More importantly, as European integration took a predominantly
economic aspect with the single market, it regularly raised skepticism and
sometimes opposition on the ground that it would mainly follow a neo-lib-
eral inspiration, favoring the interests of large firms and capital to the detri-
ment of labor and smaller or less productive economic agents. The difficul-
ties to ratify the Maastricht Treaty and the rejection of the Constitutional
Treaty in 2005 originated in many sources, but massively referred to the de-
bate between the single market and Social Europe, and to the difficulties to
articulate economic integration with the preservation of national systems of
welfare. From a different perspective, the developmental path followed by
the EU may be congruent with, or alternatively a threat to, the different do-
mestic patterns of interests' intermediation and institutional accommoda-
tion of capitalism.
This chapter considers the evidence provided by the analysis of collective
action of business and labor at the EU level. Is European integration driven
93
94 Chapter 4
by major transnational business interests? Is Social Europe indeed residual

and social welfare within the member states undermined by European inte-
gration? How are industrial relations transformed by Europeanization? Is a
common European pattern of capitalism progressively emerging? To explore
these issues, we first describe the different worlds of European capitalism, or
the different patterns of institutional arrangements historically developed
within the member states to accommodate state-market interactions. We then
consider the mobilization and organization of business and labor interests at
the EU level, and the social dialogue. We finally discuss the issues of the Eu-
ropeanization of industrial relations and their possible convergence.
THE DIFFERENT WORLDS OF EUROPEAN CAPITALISM
A vast comparative literature has established that the market economy does
not follow one single and universal pattern, but that institutional arrange-
ments organizing state-market interactions display significant variations in
different countries. Inspired by the early work of Karl Polanyi,l this litera-
ture considers market economies as institutions socially constructed, and
focuses on different dimensions to explore their variations, primarily on in-
terests' representation and collective bargaining,2 the general pattern of
state intervention in the economy,3 or welfare regimes. 4 A few recent at-
tempts have been made to combine these different approaches. s Variables
to be considered are indeed numerous, ranging from market regulations to
wage bargaining and education systems. We focus on dimensions most
likely to affect interest groups' structure, preferences, and behavior with re-
gard to European integration. We borrow both from the "varieties of capi-
Table 4.1. The Different Worlds of European Capitalism
Key variables Liberal Continental Social-Democrat Mediterranean Central Europe
Social Structure Services Services Services Agriculture + Agriculture +

of the Economy Industry Industry
(% emt!lolment)
Public Spending Low to Medium low High except Medium low Low to medium
in GDP(%) medium to high Norway
low
Financial Sector Financial Banks Banks Banks Banks
markets
Labor Market Flexible Regulated Regulated + Regulated Flexible
Industrial Decentralized Contractual Extensive Contractual at Decentralized
Relations at the the sector
sector level level
Welfare Regime Beveridgian Bismarckian Beveridgian Bismarckian
restricted extensive extensive limited Mixed limited
European Integration and Varieties of Capitalism 95
talism" and from the "welfare-state regimes" approaches, adding our own
dimensions.
The political economy of the member states can first be characterized by
the social structure of their economy, considered through the share of total
employment by sector. 6 The share of employment in the primary sector
gives an estimate of the percentage of the population dependent on agri-
culture and of the level of urbanization of society, of the cost of industrial
labor with low qualifications, and of the domestic sensitivity to the CAP.
Among them, a few countries take advantage of the single market in bene-
fiting from a trade surplus in food and agricultural products (primarily
France, Ireland, and Denmark). Mediterranean countries, Ireland, countries
from central and eastern Europe, still have a higher share of the population
working in the primary sector with lower levels of productivity. They bene-
fit from the single market for specific products (such as fruits and vegeta-
bles, cattle breeding, fishing), but they also face severe competition and go
through intense phases of restructuring. Most European countries present a
high productivity coupled with a low proportion of the workforce in the
primary sector (S.O% for EU-2S, 3.8% for EU-IS). However large discrep-
ancies exist among nation states such as the UK (1.3%), Luxembourg, Swe-
den, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands on one side, and Poland
(17.6%), Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, Portugal, and Slovenia, on the other ex-
treme. Broadly speaking, employment in the primary sector increases and
productivity decreases when moving east or south, although regional varia-
tions remain important.
Considering industry, countries from eastern and central Europe all score
above the average (27.9% for EU-2S ; 27.1 % for EU-IS), reflecting their his-
torical transition from planned economies. Germany, Spain, Portugal, and
Italy also have a share of employment in industry higher than the mean. Fi-
nally, the highest share in employment in services is to be found in the UK,
Sweden, Denmark, Benelux countries, and France. The share of services in
the economy is less important in countries from southern and eastern Eu-
rope.
The social structure of national economies determines the composition
and size of major interests such as farmers, industrial workers, and the mid-
dle class, and their attitudes towards policies such as the CAP, competition
policy limiting state aids and encouraging industrial privatizations, or the
single market. It also impacts on the respective weight of these different
groups on domestic politics, and therefore on governmental strategies in
EU decision-making. This structure is obviously related to the level of GDP
output, but some patterns of national and regional variations emerge from
this picture. Two processes of substitution of industry to agriculture, and of
services to industry, coexist in the modernization path followed by Euro-
pean economies. The Netherlands and the UK are at the forefront of service
96 Chapter 4
economy. Belgium, Luxembourg, and France are close to this group, al-
though France still retains a comparatively large share of employment in
agriculture. Germany is rather close to the average profile for services, but
with the specificity of a large industrial sector and a low share in agriculture.
Countries from southern and eastern Europe are characterized by the im-
portance of their primary and secondary sectors. Greece is an interesting ex-
ception of limited industrialization with large agricultural and services sec-
tors, the latter related to tourism.
A second dimension to characterize the political economy of member
states lies with the importance of public expenditures in the economy. This
gives a general measure of the regulation of market economy by the state
through tax collection, distributive and redistributive policies, industrial
policies and public investment, public employment, and public services
such as education, welfare, and transports. The share of total expenditures
of public administrations in GDP in 2005 is 47.4% for EU-25 (47.6% in
EU-I5).? Again, significant discrepancies exist between European countries,
ranging from 56.4% in Sweden to 33.7% in Lithuania. Beside Sweden,
France, Denmark, and to a lesser extent Belgium, Finland, Hungary, and
Austria present the most regulated economies. Norway used to be part of
that group but has moved below the mean. On the other extreme, Lithua-
nia, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Spain, Slovakia, and Poland rely most directly
on market economy. All central and eastern countries, with the exception of
Hungary, are below the mean, while all Nordic countries, with the excep-
tion of Norway, are above the mean. Western European countries present
more contrasted cases. The UK (45.5%) and the Netherlands (45.7%) score
significantly lower than France (54.2%), but higher than Spain (38.2%) or
Ireland (34.5%). A number of processes, including the trimming of welfare
in northern Europe, the enlargements and the development path of pe-
ripheral countries, have changed the geopolitics of capitalism in Europe.
The UK is not any more isolated at the forefront of market economy. Nordic
countries have lost some of their distinctiveness, and southern or eastern
countries are often neighboring with old member states with regard to their
degree of state intervention.
The third characteristic of national patterns of market economies relates
to the structure and role of the financial sector. The vast literature on vari-
eties of capitalism contrasts two types of financial systems: a decentralized
system under the control of financial markets, with a large proportion of
firms listed on the stock market and mechanisms of "corporate governance"
vesting power in the hands of shareholders; or a centralized system under
the control of key financial institutions and banks that develop long-term
interactions with industrial firms. This feature is crucial to distinguish co-
ordinated market economies, where cross-participations between financial
and industrial firms favor long-term investments, from liberal market
economies where short-term profit is prevalent. 8 Centralized financial sys-

tems are more easily influenced by governments and integrated as part of
their industrial policies, while the difference in time perspective also im-
pacts on relations between firms and employees.
This typology has been developed on the basis of a limited number of
cases, mainly the United States and the United Kingdom on the liberal side,
as opposed to Germany and Japan on the coordinated side. France (some-
times defined as statist) and countries from continental Europe are usually
considered as coordinated types of economy. The distinction is indeed use-
ful to consider a predominantly financial capitalism in the English-speak-
ing countries, and a more regulated and production-oriented one on the
continent. However significant differences exist among countries relying on
the banking sector. Bruno Amable indicates that banks can be rather passive
when the ratio debt/GOP remains low (in Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and
Greece), or that foreign banks can be in a prominent position (in Finland,
Ireland, Norway, or Switzerland).9 The competitiveness and profitability of
the banking sector also vary a lot. Transitions in central and eastern Europe
in particular have been faced with difficulties in building their banking sec-
tors, and economic development mainly relied on foreign direct invest-
ment, foreign banks, and international financial institutions. It is difficult
in that case to think of institutional coordination between finance and in-
dustry at the national level. With some variations, Germany, Austria, France,
Italy, Spain, and Portugal fit with the model of coordinated capitalism on
the financial dimension.
The labor market in turn can be more or less regulated. Europe is of-
ten contrasted with the United States and with Asian economies with
this respect. Regulation of the labor market involves the legal protection
of employees such as minimum wages, working duration, maternity
leaves, the possibility of using non-permanent appointments and part-
time contracts, and conditions for lay-offs (justification, notice, and re-
dundancy payment). Guarantees offered to employees on regulated la-
bor markets impact on total labor costs, and can act as rigidities and
disincentives to staff recruitment in times of economic uncertainties.
Conversely, low levels of regulation would allow flexibility of the labor
market by easing decisions to recruit and to dismiss staff, and is consid-
ered as more favorable to employment, but at the cost of poorer working
conditions. Due to the imbrication of labor markets within a wide range
of economic and institutional parameters, empirical evidence of this re-
lation is only plausible however. 10 Again, based on the data on collective
agreements exposed in chapter 2, the situation among European coun-
tries is sharply contrasted between the UK, Ireland and countries from
central Europe on the one hand, and others where labor markets are sig-
nificantly more regulated.
98 Chapter 4
A fourth dimension to be considered is the pattern of industrial relations.

The concept of neo-corporatism was forged to capture both the degree of
organization of business and labor interests and the centralization of their
relations. The underlying theme in the neo-corporatist literature is that po-
litical compromises required by capitalist economies (social welfare versus
moderation in wage bargaining) are easier to elaborate and to enforce when
the organization of interests is more encompassing and more centralized.!!
However the concept fails to account for contemporary industrial relations
in most European countries. Combining union density with the percentage
of workers covered by collective agreements, figure 2.3 (in chapter 2) allows
us to distinguish three types of situations. In Scandinavian countries and
Belgium, industrial relations can be considered as extensive, with both en-
compassing union membership and a very high number of collective agree-
ments. Countries from continental and southern Europe display similar
levels of collective agreements, with low or medium union membership. In-
dustrial relations are contractual, collective bargaining being developed at
the sector level between unions and employers organizations. Finally in the
UK, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, both membership and cov-
erage by collective agreements is restricted, and industrial relations are de-
centralized, most often not to the advantage of wage earners.
Finally, a key distinction among European economies lies with the struc-
ture and extensiveness of the welfare state. The classical typology from
G0sta Esping-Andersen 12 distinguishes welfare regimes according to their
modes of financing (based on social contributions by employers and em-
ployees in Bismarckian, and on taxes in Beveridgian systems) and to the ex-
tension of rights (universal and extensive in social-democrat, specific in
conservative, and restricted in liberal regimes). The distribution of Euro-
pean countries along these different types is rather well known. However,
new member states from central Europe do not seem to have followed one
single path, but rather to have borrowed elements from the different mod-
els without defining a distinctive pattern.
The theory of "institutional complementarities"13 suggests that features
of national economies are not randomly distributed along one single con-
tinuum, from most statist to most market-oriented systems. Rather, they
tend to form clusters and therefore groups of countries with broadly simi-
lar institutional properties, as indicated in table 4.1. Liberal market
economies are best exemplified within the EU by the UK and its compara-
tively low level of employment in the primary sector, low level of public
spending, market-oriented financial sector, flexibility of the labor market
and decentralized industrial relations, and its liberal welfare regime. It is
clearly distinctive from a continental (indeed western European: France,
Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy) regu-
lated market economy, based on Bismarckian regimes of welfare, and from
social democrat countries (Finland, Sweden, and Denmark), where the

economy is even more regulated and based on universal types of welfare. In
turn, institutional features for countries from southern Europe (Spain, Por-
tugal and Greece, plus Cyprus and Malta since 2004) are quite distinctive
with a larger share of population in agriculture, and less extensive welfare
systems. New member states from central Europe (the Baltic states, Poland,
the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia) also form a rather dis-
tinct "world" of European capitalism, with large primary and secondary sec-
tors, a low level of regulation of their labor markets and limited welfare.
Variations among the southern and eastern European groups, however, re-
main important.
Interest groups have some broad social preferences regarding institutions.
But institutional complementarities at the national level exert different and
sometimes diverging effects on their policy expectations and preferences with
regard to European integration. Broadly speaking, business groups seek both
market extension and the containment of costs, including taxes and labor. But
some specific firms or industrial sectors in regulated national economies suf-
fer more from increased competition at home than they gain in access to new
markets. Moreover, "coordinated" varieties of capitalism rest on cooperative re-
lations between unions and employers, and between banks or financial insti-
tutions and industrial firms. Although continental governments pursuing
macro-economic objectives have been resolute promoters of European inte-
gration during the last two decades, typical business strategies in coordinated
economies were not always favored and sometimes hampered by the Ell com-
petition policy, particularly reluctant to cartel-type arrangements at the na-
tional level. In other words business preferences for European integration are
likely to be more intense in the most liberal countries and industrial sectors,
and more moderate in more regulated economies.
On the other hand, unions naturally favor the preservation of social
rights and benefits in extensive welfare systems of social-democrat regimes
and continental countries. They also support their expansion in less con-
solidated systems of the liberal, southern, and central European countries.
However, a median proposal in the range of social regulations is often seen
as regressive by countries with the most advanced welfare systems, therefore
not necessarily the most stringent proponents of Social Europe. At the same
time, the development of the Ell economic and social competences may
possibly weaken the influence of unions established through collective bar-
gaining at the domestic level. As a result, unions from the most regulated
economies (Scandinavia and western Europe) are not necessarily the most
stringent proponents of legislation at the Ell level, and compromises are of-
ten difficult to establish across countries. Precisely in this way, institutional
complementarities exert a path-dependent effect at the national level, and
limit the development of Social Europe.
100 Chapter 4
BUSINESS INTERESTS AND THE SINGLE MARKET
Big business interest groups massively present in Brussels were generally

supportive of the various stages of European integration from the Common
Market to the euro. They also dispose of resources necessary to develop ef-
fective lobbying strategies. Lobbying directed at the Commission is consid-
ered by large European enterprises to be the best strategy of influence. 14
During the 1980s and early 1990s, this point of access significantly in-
creased in importance to the detriment of national administrations and
governments, other European institutions, and even European industrial
organizations. This is an important point to assess the changing picture of
interests' representation. The relationship between enterprises and their Eu-
ropean organizations is indeed predominantly instrumental. The latter are
used by firms to gain access to influence in order to achieve particular in-
terests. In fact, while European institutions are directly targeted by multi-
national companies or transnational business organizations, national insti-
tutions are still solicited by firms in order to influence European
decision-making. A multi-level system is at play for economic agents, offer-
ing different points of access to the policy process. While European actors
tend to be more active during the agenda-setting phase, national channels
of mobilization are more frequently used during the implementation and
transposition of decisions.
Not surprisingly, the size of firms and the national pattern of business-
government relations affect lobbying strategies in Brussels. Small firms
from declining business sectors have few capacities to develop lobbying
strategies, at the EU even less than at the national level. When industrial 10-
cation is spatially concentrated, one of their few opportunities rests with in-
termediation provided by local political leaders. On the other hand, large
multinational companies benefit both from influential business associa-
tions and direct connections to national as well as EU bureaucracies. From
a comparative perspective, openly public and pro-active lobbying practices,
common in the Anglo-Saxon world of liberal capitalism, are much more
discreet and reactive in coordinated economies and in southern Europe. In-
deed large American, British, and Dutch companies like Shell, BP, ICI, and
Philips were the first to mobilize in such a way. They were later joined by
other European firms, amongst which French and German companies fig-
ure in good place.
The organizational pattern of business mobilization in Brussels went
through significant transformations. While the early consultation practices
favored by the Commission were predominantly corporatist, the prepara-
tion of the SEA favored a boom in individual lobbying practices by firms or
consultants. However, firms soon faced a rather crowded policy environ-
ment, as well as the necessity to build credible "policy profiles" in defend-
ing their cases in Brussels. Large firms actively joined issue- or sector-spe-
cific industrial forums like the Transport Network Round Table, or more
general European trade federations and industrial groupings like the Euro-
pean Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). Gradually, the more established
players were invited to participate in think-tank style policy forums such as
the Competitiveness Advisory Group (CAG) and the Bangerman forum on
competition and competitiveness. The CAG was influential in advising the
EU on economic policy priorities and competitiveness guidelines. Similarly,
the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue was set up in 1995 as a joint initiative
of the Commission and u.S. State Department.
The creation of these new forums, which included many of the ERT com-
mittee members, suggests the development of an inner core of policymak-
ers and the institutionalization of big business in the EU policy process. IS
"Forum politics" can indeed be understood as a form of restricted plural-
ism. Significantly, however, European business federations restructured
their membership to allow for the direct participation of large firms,16 so
that representation through European federations and direct access of large
firms to the policy process usually supplement each other. The exclusivity
of the policymaking process is therefore somewhat restricted.
Beyond the question of the degree of pluralism, the decisiveness of busi-
ness's influence in the EU policy process needs also to be considered. Is
there any causal relationship to be drawn between this mobilization of
business interests and the primarily economic, market-oriented character of
European policymaking? Is EU policy driven by the pressure of business
groups? To disentangle this issue, it may first be observed that EU compe-
tencies are precisely most developed and integration of decision-making
most advanced in the area of the single market. To properly assess the bias
in influence at the EU level, it should be noted that the number of business
groups and lobbying firms active in Brussels in a way simply responds to
this institutional characteristic. For economic agents, the achievement of
the Common Market and competition policy indeed directly affect condi-
tions for investment, production, and exchange. The EU's external com-
mercial policy has also gained in importance with liberalization of trade at
the global level, as exemplified by the mobilization of interests opposing
the increasing imports of Chinese textiles after January 2005 as part ofwrO
agreementsY Trade and market regulations therefore clearly involve deci-
sive issues for specific business interests. They use both pro-active or "push"
strategies in agenda setting (for instance U.S. farmers pressuring the Com-
mission to allow for EU imports of hormone beef), and reactive or "pull"
strategies in implementation phases (chocolate makers opposing a new la-
beling regulation detrimental to traditional producers).
Business interests may also be active in earlier stages of the decision
process. The initiative for a SEA, for instance, was supported by different
102 Chapter 4
business clubs and forums publicly campaigning for the project. IS They
were an important component of the advocacy coalition 19 articulated by
Jacques Delors, grouping national and EU decision-makers, for carrying for-
ward his proposal. The influence of business in the launching of the single
market resort more to converging visions and mutual persuasion between
top political and business elites than to pressure understood as bargaining,
blackmail, or manipulation. The European Monetary Union (EMU), for in-
stance, did not lead to active business mobilization even from the banking
sector. 20 One of the major reasons for this situation lies with the uncertainty
and long-term perspective of big political projects. Specific micro-economic
gains or losses are difficult to foresee when too many parameters are in-
volved, while the benefits of pressure politics in the pursuit of very broad
objectives are elusive, and remote from business operations. Moreover,
firms' preferences are not fixed and independent as assumed by interna-
tional political economy, but adaptive to the policy process and dependent
on the institutional environment. Therefore business-government relations
at the European level have to be considered from a dynamic perspective,
and the formation of their preferences should be understood as an interac-
tive process.
On the whole, it is difficult to understand the mobilization of business
interests on its own as the force pushing or driving economic integration.
Such a view does not account for the decisive and often contingent politi-
cal work carried out by European institutions and national governments. If
economic interests are effectively influential on European integration, it is
rather due to the conjunction of two processes. On the one hand, new po-
litical opportunities emerged with the expansion of European competen-
cies regarding trade, competition, and market regulation, principally to the
benefit of the Commission, in domains with potential outcomes sensitive
for business. When resources are available for lobbying, pressure politics
unsurprisingly became common practice in these areas. On the other hand,
the convergence of preferences between economic managers and leaders in
public offices during the 1980s built a broad consensus among European
elites. This consensus acknowledged the primacy of growth as a condition
of wealth, social, and political stability in the member states. It also identi-
fied liberalization of trade among the member states as well as between the
EU and the rest of the world as the main instrument to achieve this objec-
tive. The emergence of this consensus within decision-making milieus was
more decisive than business groups' activism as such to orient policymak-
ing and the direction followed by European integration. The UK, where a
significant movement campaigns for joining the euro, confirms both the
support of business to economic integration, and the contingency of its
preferences upon political conditions. The British business activism, how-
ever, remains an exception rather than the rule.
NEGOTIATING SOCIAL EUROPE
In contrast with the strength of economic integration, the weaknesses of So-

cial Europe are often underlined. Several explanations can be considered in
this regard: the ideological orientation of the promoters of European inte-
gration and their belief in free market economy, in line with the interna-
tional influence of business; the path-dependency of social policies, refer-
ring to the historical constraints imposed by their institutional
development within nation states;21 the asymmetry between negative inte-
gration in the economic sphere, where consensus to remove legal obstacles
to trade is comparatively easy to achieve, and positive integration which
would involve significant transfers of resources and competencies, particu-
larly regarding social policy;22 and finally, the segmentation of social inter-
ests in Europe and their embeddedness in the member states constraining
interests'mobilization. 23
Both in terms of budget and legislation, social policy constitutes a rela-
tively atrophied EU competence when compared to the single market, co-
hesion policy, and CAP. Are employees and their organizations really de-
prived of significant influence in European integration? Should
weaknesses of Social Europe be understood as a lack of mobilization of la-
bor? EU social legislation initially developed in three major areas: security
and sanitary regulations in the workplace; gender equality and anti-dis-
crimination measures; and employees' participation within firms. Some
crucial aspects of social policy such as welfare provisions, regulation of
union activities, or wages are still explicitly excluded from EU legislation.
Some progress was nevertheless accomplished in the last decade regarding
employment policies. 24
The making of the single market between 1985 and 1992 was coupled
with a number of social initiatives. J. Delors,25 as head of the Commission,
sought to consolidate the social dimension of the EU by encouraging ne-
gotiation between social partners. The Commission was faced with two ma-
jor obstacles in this enterprise: the institutional weakness of the ETUC, and
the reticence of employers' organizations to negotiate at the EU level. In this
context, two important initiatives were taken. On the one hand, the proce-
dure known as the "European social dialogue," according to which collec-
tive bargaining between social partners may substitute for the legislative
process, was instituted by the treaty of Maastricht. This essential institu-
tional change promoted collective bargaining at the core of the EU legal
framework. Five cross-industry framework agreements have been adopted
since 1992 on parental leave, part-time work, fixed-term contracts, tempo-
rary workers, and teleworking.
Although the number of agreements reached "at the top" remains lim-
ited, the social dialogue has gone through major developments at the
104 Chapter 4
sectoral level since 1998, when the Commission laid the foundations for a
reorganized sectoral social dialogue. Sectoral committees were created at
the joint request of social partners, and were ultimately approved by the
Commission on the basis of representativeness criteria. Three hundred and
fifty commitments of different types and scales (opinions and common po-
sitions, declarations, guidelines and codes of conduct, charters or agree-
ments as such), have been adopted through this procedure. Some of these
initiatives, such as the agreements concluded in the transport sector, have
led to Community directives. Many measures also deal with major themes
of common interest shared by several sectors, such as the liberalization of
services (postal services, electricity, transport, telecommunication), the con-
solidation of the internal market (banking, insurance, construction,
telecommunications), or strengthening of competitiveness (textiles, cloth-
ing, footwear, and leather). On the other hand, in September 1994, a di-
rective was adopted to impose the creation of European Work Councils
(EWe) for firms operating on a European scale, requiring firms to "inform
and consult" employees' representatives at least once a year.
The EU social dialogue stems from a long process initiated with the
CSEC, but only took form with the meetings of Val Duchesse, where na-
tional organization members of the ETUC, the CEEP, and UNICE first met
in 1985 to the invitation 00. Delors. A series of informal meetings was then
to be crucial in the institutional developments of EU social policy, in par-
ticular in the creation of EWC. Since 1989, the Council and the Commis-
sion have had to consult with social partners when they draft legislation on
social issues. Social partners can then decide to start a dialogue and to es-
tablish contractual relations, including agreements. If an agreement is
reached, it can be proposed to the Council for ratification and inclusion
within EU social legislation. Social dialogue is very significant from the in-
stitutional point of view, and its existence challenges the view claiming that
the EU is structurally biased to the detriment of social policy. Policymaking
is indeed negotiated between employers and employees' organizations, and
legislation based upon collective bargaining, out of reach and without any
intervention from the EP. The neo-corporatist reminiscence conveyed by the
social dialogue is therefore very apparent. Nevertheless, legal competences
of the EU on social issues are strictly limited, and the spill-over effect of eco-
nomic integration on social issues produced limited developments in terms
of public policy at the EU level.
Several factors contribute to explain this situation. Probably the most cru-
cial of these lies with the national path-dependency of welfare systems, and
with the anchorage of social policy institutions and stakeholders upon
member states' institutions. The social policy space is largely pre-empted by
national institutions, and EU initiatives are somewhat restricted by this sit-
uation. As a result, member states' governments are also keen to preserve
national political compromises and to defend their specific models of po-

litical economy, either to protect domestic social and political interests or
to promote the international competitiveness of their economies. This is
particularly apparent for Scandinavian countries and for the UK. The rene-
gotiation of the stability pact by France and Germany in 2004 is also illus-
trative of this process. Other limitations stem from social partners them-
selves. Differences in organization and political culture across unions in
Europe severely limit the capacities for collective action of the ETUC. As dis-
cussed in this book's introduction and chapter 2, unionization in member
states largely varies and generally went through sharp decline over the last
decades. The predominant social democrat and Christian democrat orien-
tation of membership in the ETUC has long been in opposition to more
openly communist unions such as the French CGT. Member states' unions
are reluctant to see collective bargaining at the EU level interfere with in-
dustrial relations at the national level. Tensions also exist between sectoral
and inter-professional unions about the relevant degree of unions' integra-
tion at the EU level. Finally, as European integration does not motivate
strong identifications, the EU does not provide a naturally significant frame
for labor protest and mobilizations. The ETUC attempts to develop and
demonstrate its capacity for collective action yielded only limited results.
The demonstration of some 70,000 protesters in Brussels on March 16,
1997, to oppose the closing of the Renault plant in Vilvorde was somewhat
an exception.
On the one hand, European social policies are far from reaching the char-
acteristics of a European welfare system, and seem to supplement the mak-
ing of the single market. It is naturally tempting to explain this reality by
the constraints of collective action in this sector. However, on the other
hand, it should be emphasized that, although limited to restricted domains,
collective bargaining at the European level finds the voice it has lost in most
member states and, by acting as a substitute for legislation in the elabora-
tion and implementation of public policies, it may be interpreted as a form
of sector-based neo-corporatism. 26 Moreover, if the motives of these agree-
ments are circumscribed by the treaties, they address issues directly inter-
fering with the flexibility oflabor markets and labor mobility, which are key
aspects of changing industrial relations. Although this does not turn around
the conditions of employment or labor law in the member states, unions
are clearly far from absent from the Eli policy process, and the Euro-
peanization of industrial relations responding to economic integration is
indeed managed through collective bargaining, at the sectoral more than at
the central level.
Limitations of social policy at the EU level also respond to the reluctance
of employers' organizations. The social dialogue procedure has nevertheless
progressively led the UNICE to accept entering into negotiations which it
106 Chapter 4
had for long avoided. Two reasons explain this change in strategy. On the
one hand, QMV was progressively introduced in the Council for social mat-
ters, putting an end to the effectiveness of systematic veto exercised by Great
Britain that protected European employers from any legislative risk. On the
other hand, sector-based employers' associations increasingly expressed
their willingness to enter into dialogue with unions at the EU level on spe-
cifIc issues. In this changing context, negotiations were finally accepted by
UNICE, leading to the reform of its statutes in order to reinforce its organi-
zational cohesion and decision-making capacity.27
The organizational deficiencies of the UNICE were quite instrumental in
its strategy to delay the development of contractual industrial relations at
the EU level. There is, indeed, an asymmetry between the logics of collec-
tive action by unions and by employers. Due to the interdependencies be-
tween the conditions for economic growth and political legitimacy, the in-
fluence of labor effectively depends on a strong capacity for representation
and mobilization, while the major interests of business tend to be carried
by the convergence of preferences between economic and political leaders.
Under these conditions, the deficit of organization of employers, in ham-
pering collective bargaining, is structurally favorable to business. It would
therefore be a mistake to think of business as more influential at the EU
level because of better organizational capacities than trade unions. The ad-
vantage of this asymmetry for employers, however, holds up to a certain
point only, when legislation directly threatens employers' interests. It is pre-
cisely by means of this mechanism that the UNICE, fearing that legislation
proposed by the Commission would be less favorable than the results of ne-
gotiation with the ETUC, accepted the latter.
In terms of protest, despite the difficulties presented above, the conse-
quences of mobilization on social issues are not negligible. The Renault-Vil-
vorde conflict gave rise to the establishment of a precedent in the consulta-
tion of the EWC for multinationals transferring employment within the
EU.28 The mobilization by the unemployed in Amsterdam in June 1997
contributed to the enlargement of the EU's competencies in social affairs,
the Amsterdam Treaty even including a Title dedicated to employment at
the European Summit. Although collective action in the realm of labor and
employment comes across significant organizational difficulties, it never-
theless reaches effective achievements. It should be stressed, however, that
the limits to its influence lie not so much in its internal constraints, or in
opposition from employers, than in the reluctance of national governments
to enlarge the social competencies of the EU, and therefore to the narrow
opportunity structure that it offers.
Overall, business-labor relations at the EU level present three major char-
acteristics. First, they clearly develop within a subsidiarity relationship and
supplement rather than substitute for welfare and industrial relations of the
member states. Second, in opening room for collective bargaining in deal-

ing with the transnationalization of economic relations, they broadly
avoided major confrontations and clashes between organized labor and
business interests. And third, by including major organizations within pre-
dominantly cooperative relations, they also tended to a cartelization of in-
terests' representation, where policy consensus at the top is loosely articu-
lated with increasingly decentralized industrial relations at the bottom.
THE INTEGRATION OF EUROPEAN CAPITALISMS
The full implications of Social Europe still need to be considered within the
member states, with the question of convergence of industrial relations and
European capitalism. Labour mobilization at the European level is often as-
sociated with the limited development of EU social policies. Such a view
can be misleading. Obstacles to collective action are real, but as indicated
above, did not prevent the institutionalization of collective bargaining
within EU public policies. Moreover, EU distributive policies are mostly car-
ried out through the cohesion policy, noticeably by use of the European So-
cial Fund. 29 Besides, weaknesses of positive integration on social issues are
coupled with quite advanced regulations contributing to transnational gov-
ernance of labor markets. In addressing the status of wage earners within
firms, relations between employers and employees, flexibility of employ-
ment contracts, gender differences in the work place, and conditions for de-
localizations of plants, the EU touches upon key aspects of industrial rela-
tions and production systems in the member states. This section considers
the possible impact of EU social policies on the Europeanization of indus-
trial relations, and more generally the integration of the different European
capitalisms.
The impact of EU social regulations and agreements reached through the
social dialogue is dependent upon national legislations and industrial sec-
tors considered. Convergence effects are more likely in poorer countries and
in less regulated industrial sectors. The agreement on parental leave, for in-
stance, was particularly effective in Ireland and Portugal, where such mea-
sures were unavailable in national legislations. More controversial conver-
gence effects may also appear when national and EU social legislations are
conflicting. For instance, in an often cited case, France was condemned by
the EU for its legislation prohibiting night-work for women in some activi-
ties considered particularly difficult. The issue was very revealing as it in-
volved abolishing labor regulations both protective and paternalistic. The
controversy came from the fact that it could be interpreted as regressive, as
demanding working conditions would be extended to more employees, or
as progressive from a gender perspective, as it abolished a differential treatment
108 Chapter 4
in labor regulations between men and women. It clearly substituted gender

equality in place of limiting difficult working conditions in French labor
law, as a result of EU legislation primacy.
EU social regulations focus on the most flexible, less regulated labor ac-
tivities, concerning primarily less protected segments of the workforce such
as young people, women, or migrant workers. Globally, agreements are by
far mostly signed at the level of industrial sectors.3D Beyond the limited
number of agreements engaging the ETUC and UNICE as such, the prolif-
eration of sector-based collective bargaining is worth noticing. Like in
member states, central collective bargaining is indeed limited and far from
the historical model of tripartism or neo-corporatism, and tends to decen-
tralize. But the transnationalization of industrial relations is supported by a
development of collective bargaining at the meso-level. Europeanization is
therefore significant, both in enlarging the space for collective bargaining
beyond national borders, and in supporting negotiations at the sector level
rather than at the firm level.
Moreover, the issues of convergence and integration on social issues have
been discussed for a long time with regard to enlargement, with industrial
organizations from candidate countries joining the ETUC, UNICE and
CEEP in the early 1990s. The incorporation of the acquis communautaires in-
volved important labor issues such as union rights, participation of em-
ployees within the firm, and labor mobility, and were key aspects of adhe-
sion negotiations and preparatory policy programs. EU-IS social
regulations had tremendous structuring effects on labor markets and social
legislations of new member states. At least from this perspective, the insti-
tutional impact of EU social policy has been very important.
The creation of EWC allowed these new entities to use existing provisions
to launch legal actions regarding employees' participation in industrial re-
structurings. 31 EWC serve as coordination devices for national unions and
enable them to present claims to firms' management, especially when
working time and flexibility are negotiated (such as in chemical, metallurgy,
food, and wood industries). In the case of Renault Vilvorde in 1997, the
EWC went before the European Court of Justice in an unsuccessful attempt
to halt the closing of the plant in Belgium. Soon after, the management of
Zanussi announced a restructuring in which the EWC was to be involved in
participating in the evaluation of the different units of the firm, before the
least productive site was selected for closure. Therefore, the effects of EWC
are at best quite ambiguous so far. 32 While they support employees' rights
to information and give their representatives a basis for legal action to con-
front firms' strategies, they also tend to engage unions in restructuring de-
cisions detrimental to some of their employees.
Looking at specific dimensions, significant differences do persist in the
social structure of national economies, especially between new member
states and others. The single market and the competition policy have a
tremendous impact on domestic agriculture and industry sectors, no longer
protected by national borders, regulations, and subsidies. The cohesion pol-
icy accompanies the process of development of a service economy of Euro-
pean scale, progressively eroding structural differences at the national level.
The aggregate level of regulation of the European economy remains at a
comparatively high level. Total national public administrations' expendi-
tures in 2005 represented 47.4% of GDP for EU-25. To put this in per-
spective, the public spending share of GDP has decreased from 55.4% in
1995 (for twenty-one EU countries where data is available).33 This decline
affected most countries, particularly Scandinavia, Spain, Ireland, the
Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Among
the few exceptions are Malta and Cyprus with a slight increase, and France,
the UK, Luxembourg, and Hungary, where the level of public spending re-
mained stable.
Was this curbing of public expenditures accomplished through signifi-
cant reduction in welfare? Considering overall welfare provision, social
benefits paid by governments were nearly stabilized at 16.1% of their GDP
in 2005 (against 16.8% in 1995 for EU-15). Countries follow significantly
different trajectories however. A number of them actually increased (Ger-
many, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Malta, and Portugal) or maintained their level
of social benefits (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Austria, the Czech Repub-
lic, and Slovenia). Reduction of social benefits mainly occurred in Denmark
and Scandinavia, in the UK and Ireland, in the Netherlands, Poland, and
Spain. Considering a longer period, growth of expenditure on social bene-
fits at constant prices in EU-12 countries constantly increased (2.6% annual
change for 1980-1985, 3.3% for 1985-1990, 4.4% for 1990-1993).34 Be-
tween 1992 and 2002, total expenditures on social protection per head of
population significantly increased (by about one-third in current terms) in
all EU-15 member states. 35 Despite opposite national trajectories, the gen-
eral picture therefore describes a stabilization of social expenditure at a
comparatively high level, and their significant decline in a number of coun-
tries where they were particularly high. Over the period 1995-2003, the
overall fiscal pressure within the member states remained stable, however
(40.3% of GDP in 2003).36 Savings in public expenditures were operated
through industrial policies of privatization, and through cost containment
in public management, rather than in aggregate welfare benefits' provision.
Relative gains generated were used to reduce public deficits rather than to
lower taxes.
This high level of public spending and social expenditure is also related
to income revenues. Due to high levels of unemployment and labor costs,
moderation prevails in European wage negotiations, and salaries minimally
follow inflation. They also tend to represent a smaller share of total revenue
110 Chapter 4
generated by the business sector. In the long run, income and wages in-
equalities have increased since the 1970s, particularly in countries with
lower levels of public spending.37 However convergent indicators (Gini co-
efficients and interval ratios) show that final income inequalities and
poverty rates tend to decrease since the 1990s, largely due to the distribu-
tive effects of social benefits,38 and despite strong variations in national sit-
uations. If inequalities did not massively increase over the last period, the
risk of poverty at the individual level became more diffuse within society
with the rise of single-parent families, less effective family solidarities, in-
creased labor instability, and less protective status for jobs. As a result, even
in societies where poverty indeed decreased, middle classes feel under the
possible threat of social exclusion associated with unemployment, and per-
ceive this situation as a failure of the welfare state to provide social security
to all.
Considering coordination of the market economy, the competition pol-
icy of the EU, the development of industrial privatizations at the national
level, reforms of domestic banking sectors and financial markets, and access
of European firms on foreign stock exchanges all contributed to a loosen-
ing of relations between banks and industrial firms on the continent, no-
ticeably in France. In Germany, tender offers on the stock market, tradi-
tionally "friendly" to preserve consensual relations among firms, evolved
toward more aggressive behaviors. Regarding labor markets, part-time work
and fixed-term contracts tended to expand, including in continental and so-
cial democrat systems, exposing employees to more precarious working
conditions, especially when the level of unemployment is considered. It
should be noted, however, that the UK introduced a minimum wage in
1999. There was no U-turn in institutional relations, and deep and decisive
differences across countries are still active and likely to persist. But gradual
changes in labor markets and financial sectors clearly followed a trend to-
ward economic liberalization.
In line with the evolution of public spending in GDP, reforms have been
pushed on governmental agendas to contain and adapt the financing of
welfare to growing social needs resulting from aging populations and ris-
ing unemployment. They commonly introduced contributions by services
users; developed the linkage between contributions and services; post-
poned the age for retirement and decreased the level of pensions; and re-
stricted duration of and access to unemployment benefits. They also some-
times introduced new welfare provision such as minimum revenue or
safety nets (in France and Portugal), universal health-care access, and in-
validity pensions for the elderly. Finally, they also progressively developed
private modes of individual financing for pensions and health care, and
supplemented social contributions with taxation to face new financial
needs in Bismarckian systems.
Nevertheless no single pattern of welfare emerged from these different re-

forms. 39 In liberal systems, the increased role of the market in social pro-
tection reinforced the comparative residual aspect of welfare. In Scandi-
navia, budgetary cuts were applied to welfare expenditures in the 1990s by
using more restrictive criteria for eligibility and less generous benefits. In
continental systems, changes have been less extensive and only amended
existing structures. The financing of welfare based on social contributions
induces high labor costs, and tends to be associated with high levels of
long-term unemployment and difficulties of access to the labor market for
young people.
As jobs creation remains difficult, governments use strategies to share ex-
isting jobs through reduction of working time (France), expansion of part-
time work (Netherlands), lowering the legal age for retirement (France or
Germany), and providing extensive access to higher education. The Bismar-
ckian assurance system at the core of continental European welfares leaves
employers' organizations and unions in a potential veto position in imple-
menting reforms. This political situation imposes severe tensions on conti-
nental European countries, as growing social needs generate increased so-
cial contributions to the detriment of the employment situation. In
southern Europe, a catching-up scenario brings social benefits in GDP close
to the levels of the continental model in Portugal, Italy, and Greece, while
Spain followed a divergent trajectory in reducing social expenditures. Coun-
tries from central and eastern Europe do not follow one single route either.
Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary moved towards to the conti-
nental model. Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria came closer to
Mediterranean countries, while Baltic States approached the liberal model
ofthe UK and Ireland. 40
Despite such policy developments, the institutional intermediation ofla-
bor and capital was somewhat revived in European countries during the
nineties through the attempts to establish social pacts.41 However neo-cor-
poratist arrangements have all been dismantled in the most emblematic
cases of Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Tentative social pacts at the
national level have been tried in a number of countries with or without a
neo-corporatist tradition. Many of them quickly aborted however. The of-
ten cited Dutch case, developed on the basis of the Wasenaar agreement of
1982, was successful in lowering unemployment by an extensive use of
part-time work and curbing public expenditures. It failed, however, to se-
cure adhesion to reforms and to avoid a severe political crisis culminating
with the referendum on the EU Constitution in 2005.
The recent developments of collective bargaining are decentralized at the
firm or sector level, and focus on productivity and flexibility (work duration
and contracts) rather than on distributive issues. 42 Wages are progressively
excluded from centralized bargaining, and negotiations at the firm level are
112 Chapter 4
usually conducted according to framework agreements established within

industrial sectors. Industrial relations tend therefore to be organized at the
meso-level, and are increasingly influenced by transnational regulations.
This competitive corporatism is predominantly oriented toward the search
for gains in productivity and labor costs, and sometimes co-exists with
more centralized negotiations on welfare reforms in Bismarckian systems,
aiming at containing or diminishing public expenditures, in line with the
EU stability pact. Nevertheless, distributive and productivity issues remain
disconnected, and welfare reforms are in most cases adopted amidst social
conflicts and protests as exemplified by France, Italy, Germany, or Belgium.
Overall, coordination of market economies at the national level, despite
significant variations, has been declining during the last two decades, and
substituted in most cases by competitive corporatism at the sector level.
CONCLUSION
The making of a common European social model is not the driving force
of integration. Social issues at the EU level remain compartmentalized and
to a large extent conditioned to norms established with the monetary, com-
petition, and trade policies of the EU. Despite significant developments in
unemployment policy,43 there is no formal mechanism establishing coop-
eration on revenues and redistribution at the EU level, nor binding coordi-
nation among the member states on these issues. Competition prevails
among different national patterns of market economies, and EU social poli-
cies remain at length from a supranational welfare system. At the EU level
as well as in the member states, distributive policies have been subjected to
supply-side economics, the expansion of trade and competitiveness to se-
cure growth, and the substitution of employment for income as the main
objective of social policy.
Should we then conclude that market freedom has ruled out social regu-
lation with European integration? To expect a welfare state at the EU level
and to explain its weaknesses by the influence of business and the correla-
tive poor mobilization of labor is not necessarily the right perspective on
this process. There is no European welfare as such because there is no Eu-
ropean state in the first place. The making of the single market and of the
EMU, despite the pressure put on public expenditures by the criteria of the
stability pact, did not lead to a dismantling of national welfare regimes, nei-
ther to a strong convergence of their institutional foundations. The arrange-
ments found in Brussels on social policy relate more to a "thin" compro-
mise among member states leaving welfare into their own hands, than to a
"thick" consensus at the top to convert Europe to neo-liberalism. Welfare
reforms have been progressive and limited in a number of cases, and de-
spite major changes in economic and industrial policies, the European
economy still remains highly regulated in a comparative perspective.
The European social model, and its own limitations, lies within the
member states. Due to the historical process of welfare state building and
its vested political and social interests, the different worlds of European cap-
italism are resilient to the process of integration, and regional variations re-
main significant. Competition among national economies has indeed in-
creased with the single market, as firms' localizations are not any more
constrained by internal trade barriers. This competition mainly serves the
convergence process of peripheral and small countries, offering firms lower
costs to gain access to the single market. It strongly hampers the develop-
ment of common social policies. The liberal type of capitalism exemplified
in Europe by Ireland and the UK exert significant pressures or attractions on
other member states. However, the continental model, lying somewhere in
between liberalism and social democracy, and due to its economic and po-
litical influence, is probably at the center of gravity of the whole system.
The "war of the worlds" of European capitalism has not turned into a
general victory of liberalism. Rather, it preserved important national differ-
ences in a common process of transformation. It also contributed to a rela-
tive fragmentation of these different worlds, which are not as distinctive
and homogeneous as they used to be. Scandinavia and most countries from
southern Europe came closer to the continental model, but Spain clearly
took a liberal route in the 1990s. The same applies to the Netherlands,
Poland, and the Baltic States, so that politics seem to take over geography
in European integration.
Social Europe is in search of common patterns of adaptation oflabor mar-
kets and social rights more than supranational provision of social benefits.
EU social regulations address key aspects of changing industrial relations, in
particular minimum social rights, the flexibility of labor markets, and in-
dustrial delocalization. They motivate only limited convergences among the
member states that are most advanced on social issues, but have been crucial
for the integration of more peripheral countries and their institutional de-
velopment. With EU social dialogue, collective bargaining found a position
it had often lost at the national level, and was to a certain extent revived
within the member states in more decentralized forms. Overall, the Euro-
pean economy is largely regulated, increasingly at the sector and EU level, to
the detriment of national patterns of coordination. This does not mean that
the European political economy has massively turned to "wild capitalism."
But the single market did not fulfill its promises of full employment, while
the maintenance of welfare systems coupled with the EU cohesion policy did
not prevent the development of the risk of social exclusion.
114 Chapter 4
NOTES
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European Market," Politics and Society, 19, no. 2 (1991): 133-64.
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tinuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University
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5. Bruno Amable, The Diversity of Modem Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University
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6. We rely here on data from European Commission, Employment in Europe 2005,
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12. Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.
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eties of Capitalism.
14. David Coen, "Business Interests and European Integration," in L'action collec-
tive en Europe: Collective Action in Europe, ed. Richard Balme, Didier Chabanet, and
Vincent Wright, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2002, 255-78.
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mentation and Integration, Washington, DC: Brookings, 1998.
22. Fritz Scharpf, Governing Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
23. Particularly, Svein S. Andersen and Kjell A. Eliassen, "Complex Policy-Mak-
ing: Lobbying the EC," in Making Policy in Europe: The Europeification of National Pol-
icy-Making, ed. Svein S. Andersen and Kjell A. Eliassen, London: Sage, 1993, 35-54.
24. See chapter 5.
25. Himself a former union activist.
26. Gerda Falkner, EU Social Policy in the 1990s: Towards a Corporatist Policy Com-
munity, London: Routledge, 1998.
27. Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet, "Dialogue social europeen et transfor-
mation des negociations collectives," Politique europeenne, 2, no. 4 (2001): 119-39.
28. Pierre Lefebure and Eric Lagneau, "Media Construction in the Dynamics of
Europrotest," in Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity, ed.
Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, 187-204.
29. See chapter 6.
30. European Commission, Industrial Relations in Europe 2000, Brussels: Euro-
pean Commission (Directorate General for Social Affairs), 2000.
31. Ann Branch, "The Impact of the European Union on the Trade Union Move-
ment," in L'action collective en Europe, 279-312.
32. Andrew Martin and George Ross, "Trade Union Organizing at the European
Level: The Dilemna of Borrowed Resources," in Contentious Europeans, 53-76.
33. Eurostat, Key Indicators.
34. European Commission, Social Protection in Europe, Brussels: European Com-
mission (Directorate General Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs),
1995,64.
35. Eurostat Yearbook, Europe in Figures, Luxembourg: Eurostat (Statistical Office
of the European Communities), 2005.
36. Eurostat, Structures of the Taxation Systems in the EU: 1995-2003, Luxembourg:
Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Communities), 2005.
37. OECD, "Wage-setting Institutions and Outcomes," 129 sq.
38. Michiel Ras, Evert Pommert, and Jean Marie Wildeboer Schut, Income on the
Move: Report on Income Distribution, Poverty and Redistribution, Brussels: European
Commission (Directorate General Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Af-
fairs), 2002; Eurostat, Key Indicators; Sarah Boucquerel and Pierre-Alain de Malleray,
L'Europe et la pauvrete: Quelles realites? Paris: Notes de la Fondation Robert Schuman,
2006.
39. Paul Pierson, ed., The New Politics of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2001; Rob S. Sykes, Bruno Palier, and Pauline Prior, eds., Globalization
and European Welfare States: Challenges and Changes, London: Palgrave, 200l.
40. Andre Cartapanis, Audrey Koulinsky, and Nadine Richez-Battesti, ''L'ho-
mogeneite sociale de I'Union Europeenne apres l'elargissement et la question des
116 Chapter 4
delocalisations" (paper presented at the international conference Les Nouvelles

Frontieres de l'Europe, Marrakech, 16-17 March 2005).
41. European Commission, Industrial Relations Developments in Europe 2004, Brus-
sels: European Commission, 2004.
42. Franz Taxler, "The Metamorphoses of Corporatism: From Classical to Lean
Patterns," European Journal of Political Research, 43, no. 4 (2004): 571-98.
43. See chapter 5.
5
The European Burden:
Unemployment and
Political Behavior
Since the mid-1970s Europe has been faced with mass unemployment it
has been unable to eradicate. While the policies implemented and the re-
sults obtained are highly specific and markedly variable from one country
to another, convergent changes point to a deterioration of job protection
and a decrease in unemployment benefits provided by governments. Un-
employment remains a competence of individual member states, but in
1997 the EU adopted a European employment strategy whose non-binding
provisions are intended to help harmonize national practices and to aid re-
turn to work. The influence of EU economic and monetary aims means that
integration of these policies, which in terms of countering unemployment
is subject to nationally specific situations, is somewhat indirect. For the
time being unemployment and job insecurity continue to generate increas-
ing dissatisfaction among European citizens, as demonstrated by the rise in
protest votes and the French "no" to the draft Constitutional Treaty. The un-
employed themselves are mobilizing, at both national and European levels,
to denounce restrictions on their benefit rights, but the movement has not
succeeded in achieving a politically stable existence. Being more vulnerable
than its member states, the EU bears the brunt of this discontent, even
though it is not directly responsible for it.
1WENTY MILLION UNEMPLOYED:

SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND lABOR INSTABILITY
At the end of 2004 almost twenty million people, representing 9% of the

workforce, were unemployed in the twenty-five countries of the enlarged
117
118 Chapter 5
EU. This total represents widely differing national situations: the highest
unemployment rates are those for Poland (18.8%) and Slovakia (18%),
with Spain and Lithuania lower down the scale (11%), and Ireland, the
Netherlands, the UK, Austria, and Luxembourg the least affected
(4.5%-4.8%).1 EU enlargement in May 2004 brought a moderate, across-
Europe rise of 0.9%; this is not a consequence of the act of joining, the sit-
uation having been stable in the ten new member countries since 2003.
Looking back further, to 1993, EU unemployment has actually fallen: the
2004 rate in the EU-25 is a percentage point lower than in the EU-15 in
1993.
This invalidates the idea that integration and membership to the EU is in
itself a cause of unemployment, even if the rate remains high. The major
considerations in Europe are, rather, continuing long-term unemploy-
ment-according to the OECD about half the jobseekers registered in the
EU have been out of work for at least a year, whereas the figure for the
United States is less than 10%-and increasing job instability. A distinction
must be made here between employment insecurity, measured here by the
number of people employed in March of a given year who find themselves
out of work in March of the following year-the figure has remained glob-
ally stable since the early 1980s-and employment instability, defined as the
fact of changing jobs, which has been showing a clear increase for more
than twenty years.
Table 5.1. Rates of Transition from Employment to Unemployment in Europe

(October 2000)
No job Same job Other job

Luxembourg 2.7 91.0 6.3
Belgium 2.3 86.2 11.5
Italy 4.6 85.0 lOA
Portugal 4.7 84.5 10.8
Netherlands 3.7 79.3 17.0
Denmark 4.0 79.3 16.7
Finland 4.4 83.5 12.2
France 5.5 84.8 9.6
Austria 5.2 84.8 10.0
Greece 5.7 84.6 9.7
Germany 7.0 80.7 12.3
United Kingdom 5.9 76.2 18.0
Ireland 7.6 73.8 18.6
Spain 8.9 70.2 20.9
Source: European Community Household Panel Survey (2000 and 2001), forum.europa.eu.intlirc/dsis/ech-
panellinfo/datalinformation.html (accessed 27 April 2007). Field: Private sector wage earners (data for
Sweden were not available).
The European Burden 119
Overall four groups can be identified in the EU-15: in relation to other

member countries Luxembourg, Belgium, and to a lesser extent Italy and
Portugal enjoy both greater stability and greater security; the Netherlands,
Denmark, and Finland have a relatively high level of employment security,
but greater instability; France, Austria and Greece are characterized by in-
termediate levels of both; and Germany, the UK, Ireland, and Spain com-
bine high instability with a fairly low level of security.
Almost everywhere in Europe, recourse to temporary work is on the rise,
and often markedly SO.2 Between 1985 and 2000 the percentage rose by 16
points in Spain (from 16% to 32%), 10 in France (from 4.5% to 14.5%),
7.5 in the Netherlands (from 6.5% to 14%), 7 in Portugal (from 14% to
21%),4 in Ireland (from 7% to 11%) and 3.5 in Germany (from 9.5% to
13%). Only Greece has seen a substantial, 6.5-point fall in temporary em-
ployment (from 21% to 13.5%). The countries in which these rises are the
highest are those where permanent employment is best protected. By con-
trast, in the UK, where labor legislation is weakly protective, there is very lit-
tle recourse to temporary work (-0.5 point for the period under considera-
tion, with a total of 6% in 2000).
Since the late 1980s we have been witnessing a broad trend towards eas-
ing of the regulations in countries where employment legislation was most
protective, notably Portugal, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, Ger-
many, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The great majority of countries have
opted for increasing workforce flexibility by expanding temporary work,
without substantially modifying the status of regular wage earners. Only
Portugal, Spain, and Slovakia have reformed both regular and temporary
employment, in each case with a reduction of the level of protection for
both. 3
This deterioration of employment protection in Europe goes hand in
hand with a splitting of the labor market, which means that wage earners
find it harder to find regular full-time employment, tending rather to alter-
nate periods of insecure jobs with periods of unemployment. The annual
rates of transition from temporary contracts4 to permanent jobs are ex-
tremely variable: in 1999 the figures were 10% in Portugal and 25% in
Spain and France, as against 45% in the UK, 50% in Belgium and 55% in
Austria, Ireland, and the Netherlands; Spain, Finland, Portugal, Greece, and
Italy fall between the two extremes. s The OEeD has created a global indi-
cator of the stringency of employment protection legislation,6 which high-
lights the significant disparity between national situations: in 2003 legisla-
tion was most permissive in the UK (1.1), followed by Ireland (1.3),
Denmark (1.8), Finland (2.1), Austria (2.2), the Netherlands (2.3), Italy
(2.4), Germany and Belgium (2.5), Sweden (2.6), France and Greece (2.9),
Spain (3.1), and Portugal (3.5). Thus the employment protection gap in the
EU is running at more than 1 to 3-a considerable difference.
120 Chapter 5
Given that employment policies were initially set during periods of eco-
nomic prosperity, member states have had to adjust to the rise of structural
unemployment, the inertia it imposes on national economies and the cost
of indemnities by developing quite different institutional designs. At the
same time, the EU has come up with a set of employment incentive mea-
sures providing a framework for national systems. The current situation,
then, is one of coexistence between ill-harmonized and mostly ineffectual
national anti-unemployment policies on the one hand, and a more inte-
grated European Employment Strategy (EES) that is failing to meet its goals
on the other.
(liN)EMPLOYMENT POLICIES AT DOMESTIC AND Eli LEVELS
While entitlement to unemployment benefits eroded throughout Europe,

the public expenditures spent on employment also decreased. The most re-
cent reforms indicate that eligibility for unemployment benefits is becoming
steadily more restricted. Comparatively speaking, benefits available to those
least established in the labor market have been cut back most. The duration
of benefit payment periods has been significantly reduced, even if marked
differences remain: in Belgium benefit is in theory paid for an unlimited pe-
riod? and in Denmark the jobless can receive benefits for four years. In the
UK and Italy, by contrast, payments generally cannot exceed six months.
Globally the percentage of those eligible in Europe shows marked dis-
parities: Belgium and the Netherlands are the leaders with around 75%,
while in Italy only 20% of the jobless receive benefits. The amounts paid
have also been revised downwards, but again with enormous national vari-
ations: current rates range from 40% of the base salary in Italy to 90% in
Denmark while the UK is at the bottom of the scale with a flat-rate weekly
payment of £54.65 for an unemployed person over age twenty-five.
Coercive measures concerning the jobless are also becoming more fre-
quent even if enforcement takes widely varying forms. More and more of-
ten, for example, sanctions can be invoked when a job-even part-time or
fixed-term-is turned down. In the UK after six months an unemployed per-
son must accept any job offered, of whatever kind and whatever the salary;
a refusal entails suspension of benefit payment. Similar regulations have re-
cently come into force in Germany and Denmark and in France comparable
legislation is currently under discussion. These measures are part of an in-
creasing trend toward return-to-work incentive policies, one of whose as-
pects-"workfare"-involves obliging the recipient of unemployment bene-
fit to undertake certain kinds of work in return. Between 1996 and 1998 the
rate of sanctions imposed on benefit recipients was very high in the United
States (57%) and Switzerland (38.5%), but lower in Norway (10.8%), the
UK (10.3%), and Finland (10.2%).8 Other studies indicate that these mea-
sures are spreading through Europe. 9 Sanctions can take the form of a re-
duction of benefit or of a temporary suspension of payment. More rarely sus-
pension can be definitive. In addition, there are cases of administrative
terminations for varying periods when certain prerequisites are not met. In
some countries this phenomenon is taking on considerable proportions. In
France, for example, sanctions remain extremely uncommon, affecting only
some 0.1 % of benefit recipients,IO but terminations are increasing exponen-
tially: 72,000 in 1995, 225,000 in 2000, and 335,000 in 2002.1 1
Efforts to counter unemployment point up highly variable levels of po-
litical will and interventionism. The amounts spent on the labor market in
EU countries do not reflect unemployment rates and reveal strategies that
are frequently divergent. To cite one example, over the period 1985-2002
the level of spending in Denmark the Netherlands, and Belgium was struc-
turally high while it was structurally low in the UK and Italy, even when un-
employment was high.I2 What is striking here is that in general countries
with the highest active spending are also those that have the most substan-
tial passive spending. 13 In other words, while some countries take a whole
range of steps to aid the unemployed, others devote very little money to the
issue and let market forces take their course. The EU currently offers the di-
ametrically opposed examples of Denmark and the UK with the former al-
lotting 5% of its GDP to employment and unemployment benefit as against
0.8% for the latter.
In the UK the toughening-up of eligibility conditions for unemployment
benefit means more and more people are drifting away from the labor mar-
ket and turning to social security, with its looser requirements: between
1992 and 2001, for instance, the number of persons claiming incapacity
benefit for long-term illness doubled to almost 2.8 million. Familiar not
only in the UK but also in the United States and increasingly so in the EU,
this situation thus simultaneously involves a fall in the unemployment
curve and a rise in social exclusion mechanisms. Faced with these problems,
most of which have their roots in the experience of unemployment EU
member states react with varying degrees of efficacy. As G0sta Esping-An-
dersen, Duncan Gallie, Anton Hemerijck and John Myles said:
Some countries, like Denmark Norway, France, and the Netherlands have ap-
parently won the battle insofar as disposable income inequalities have not
risen. This contrasts sharply with Britain and Germany where public redistrib-
ution has actually declined in tandem with rising market inequalities. In most
cases, the welfare state has only partially offset these trends. The "big picture"
puts into focus the menace of a polarized future society. Widening welfare gaps
are unlikely to be reversed without policy intervention, simply because the
driving forces are of a long-term, structural nature. This is why we encounter so
many pessimistic future scenarios. 14
122 Chapter 5
The poor results obtained with respect to employment have necessitated

improvement and convergence of these efforts within the European frame-
work. The "Delors white paper" of 1993 was a major step forward in this re-
spect and forms the basis of the approach. The "Essen Strategy" laid down
by the European Council in December 1994 enabled an initial creation of
common indicators and the setting up, in late 1996, of a permanent Em-
ployment and Labour Market Committee, whose task was to identifY best
practices. Most importantly, the treaty of Amsterdam introduced decisive
measures with its emphasis on employment as a priority issue. Thenceforth,
in the framework of a multilateral monitoring procedure, the EC and the
European Council proposed "guidelines" to each member state with a view
to preparing "national plans of action" subject to joint annual assessment
in a report on employment. In addition, European Council decision-mak-
ing in this field is facilitated by recourse to the qualified majority voting.
Drawn up at the Luxembourg employment summit in November 1997,
the EES offers an "open" (Le., non-binding) "coordination method," which
lays down the conditions for balance between EU agendas and measures
taken by member states. At the Lisbon summit in March 2000, the EU fi-
nally declared its ambition to become, by 2010, "the most competitive and
dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable
economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion."
With this in mind, a global employment rate of 70% has been announced
as the primary goal. However various assessments, notably the Employment
Taskforce report of November 2003, have been ringing alarm bells indicat-
ing that the EU will fail to achieve its goals. Such a failure has dramatic im-
plications for Europe's future in that it highlights the limitations of the in-
tegration mechanisms and casts doubt on the EU's capacity to provide itself
with an economy sufficiently competitive in comparison with those of
other world powers. Moreover, the political cost is extremely high given that
the building of Europe is evaluated by a majority of citizens in terms of the
EU's ability to resolve economic and social problems. By a cruel paradox,
then, at the very time when the EU was trying to equip itself with more ef-
ficient tools for social and political control-notably via the drawing up of
a constitution-the labor market flexibility it was promoting came under
attack and prevented the adoption of the envisaged regulatory measures.
This failure-at least in respect of the set goals-can be read in two con-
tradictory ways. For some commentators it is the outcome of the enduring
rigidities of the national labor markets and thus of insufficient application
of EU policy, while others see it as resulting from the implementation of
these policies and the subsequent undermining of the welfare states. How-
ever, whether one sees it as a cause for rejoicing or regret, the EU now pro-
vides a framework conducive to greater work flexibility, one that partially
explains the convergent trends towards development of national policies
of assistance and return to the workforce, mainly aimed at those most iso-
lated from the labor market: the retired, young people, women, and the
unemployed. When such policies bear fruit, the resultant rise in employ-
ment rates is accompanied by an increase in job instability and, often, in-
security.
The example of the northern European countries, and Denmark in par-
ticular, shows that labor market flexibility is compatible with quality sys-
tems of social protection and high wages. However, this instance applies to
specific socio-political contexts that are historically and culturally charac-
terized by extremely ambitious-and taxation-financed-policies of redis-
tribution, and is not readily imaginable in most other European countries.
This does not mean that the EU is seeking to dismantle its welfare state sys-
tems: rather, it is trying to reconcile the creation of a fluid, competitive Eu-
ropean labor market with a non-dissuasive level of social protection (see
chapter 4). This objective presupposes effective means of combating exclu-
sion, so as to forestall long-term unemployability for a sizeable fringe of the
population. Nonetheless, for the moment the EU is losing on both counts,
on the one hand because it is not meeting its employment goals, and on the
other because it is being held responsible for the deterioration of working
conditions in Europe. Further, it did not succeed in significantly reducing
the labor markets' structural disparities and in reviving, via a return to work,
a policy of strong growth. This is especially the case in such mainspring in-
tegration countries as Germany, France, and Italy.
MASS UNEMPLOYMENT AND VOTING BEHAVIOR
The widespread disquiet generated by unemployment and precariousness

have significant repercussions on electoral and political behavior. One of
the oldest and best-founded axioms of electoral sociology is that insuffi-
cient social integration-often the consequence of job loss-finds expres-
sion in a tendency to political withdrawal. Is Thus, throughout Europe the
unemployed are failing to vote in proportions well above the average. Em-
manuel Pierru calculated that in France, over the sequence represented by
the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2002, "the percentage of sys-
tematic abstentionists was 2.5 times as high among the unemployed as
among government workers, and 1.5 times as high as among private sector
holders of permanent employment contracts. "16 In addition, almost 30% of
the unemployed had not registered to voteY In every EU country, the con-
fidence of the unemployed in institutions and politicians is much lower
than that of the rest of the population. IS This deterioration of social rela-
tions is largely invisible, since it tends to find expression outside the polit-
ical field, but it is seriously eroding European democracies.
124 Chapter 5
The propensity to political apathy so clearly illustrated by the low level of

electoral participation among the unemployed relativizes the extent of their
vote for the far right. In France the level of penetration by the Front Na-
tional (FN) among the unemployed rose from 12% to 25% between the
two presidential elections of 1988 and 1995, and from 15% to 22% be-
tween the parliamentary elections of 1997 and 2002 (first round). It
reached 28% in the European elections of 1994, then 20% and 30% in the
first and second rounds of the presidential election of 2002.19 These figures
are high in terms of voter numbers, but much less so in relation to the
working population as a whole: in this context, and based on the presiden-
tial elections of 1995 and 2002, Pierru noticed that "the FN's voter range
falls between one unemployed person in 19 and one in 17."20 Far from re-
stricted to the most excluded segments of the population, populism is pros-
pering, partly because of a growing social disenchantment fed by the exac-
erbation of economic difficulties. In the UK, the European elections of June
2004 saw the British National Party receive 4.91% of the vote, as against
0.96% in 1999. Its highest scores were in the old industrial cities, which
have borne the brunt of the economic slump.21 At the same elections the
League of Polish Families, drawing on the groups most hostile to European
integration, drew 15.74% of the votes.
Overall, the far right finds its core vote in the social groups most vulner-
able to the dangers of the market economy: in Germany, Belgium, Den-
mark, France, Italy, Norway, and the Netherlands this core comprises 62%
to 80.6% manual and clerical workers.22 For the greater part, then, this vot-
ing pattern points up the sense of helplessness of the working classes-
much more than simply that of the unemployed-as they turn towards po-
litical groups with inward-looking nationalistic platforms. It is not
necessarily, however, an expression of racism, xenophobia, or anti-Semi-
tism. Significantly, in France, on the evening of April 21, 2002 (Le., after the
first round of the presidential elections yielded a Jacques Chirac-Jean-Marie
Le Pen face-off for the second round), two-thirds of FN voters polled con-
sidered unemployment more of a priority issue than immigration. 23 The far
right in Europe is feeding off the fears and exasperation of large fringes of
the population, which-even when integrated into the labor market-feel
threatened by exposure to the outside world and international competition.
The far left is also taking advantage of this disquiet and has notched up
some major successes since the mid-1990s. Its scores at the European elec-
tions of 1999 and 2004, in Sweden, Finland, and especially France, range
from 10% to 16%24 and indicate high-level electoral stabilization for an
anti-neo-liberalism current. This phenomenon, however, is specific to the
EU-15, and does not concern the former Eastern Bloc countries, whose ex-
perience of communism has brought lasting discredit on revolutionary
movements.
These political manifestations express real mistrust of the traditional po-

litical class and are a global sanctioning of the inability of government par-
ties to find a satisfactory solution to employment problems. 25 The Euro-
barometer surveys show that for 76% of Europeans the employment
situation in their country is seen as "bad," as against only 22% who see it
otherwise: at 54 points this is a considerable differential. 26 In only five
member states-Ireland, Denmark, the UK, Luxembourg, and Cyprus-was
the employment situation seen as positive. Fear of business relocations is
particularly strong in France (56%), Austria (47%), and Germany (45%),
but much less so in the Baltic countries and Malta (13%-15%).27 These re-
sults show that economic competition is perceived as involving a danger of
regression more in the older member states than in the new ones, for which
entry into the EU represents a chance to improve their potential for com-
petitiveness and creation of jobs and wealth.
Denmark's "no" to the treaty of Maastricht in 1992 and Ireland's rejec-
tion of the treaty of Nice in 2001 indicated the limits of support for the Eu-
ropean project, but without hampering its development. France's and the
Netherlands's rebuff to the European Constitution in April 2005-via solid
majorities of 55% and 63% respectively-represents a more significant stop
to European political integration. 28 Such a snub means radically different
things in the two countries, but still highlights the importance of economic
factors and unemployment in electoral behavior patterns. In the Nether-
lands, where the unemployment rate in 2004 was the lowest in the EU, the
Eurobarometer post-referendum survey showed that the response was mo-
tivated by internal political factors counting for much more than the fear
that the European Constitution would "have negative effects on the em-
ployment situation in the Netherlands/relocation of Dutch enterprises/loss
of job" (7%).29 In France-where the unemployment rate is among the
highest for the EU-15, and where in the fall of 2003, 86% of people ex-
pressed the fear that developments in the EU would lead to relocations 30 -
the explanations put forward by "no" voters focus very largely on what are
seen to be the harmful effects of the EU on employment.
The main reason given is the fear that the Constitution would have neg-
ative effects on employment in France (31 % ). The second most frequent
reason is that the economic situation in France is too bad and that there is
too much unemployment (26%). As Bruno Cautres and Bernard Denni
(2005) remarked "There was doubtless no distinction between these two
reasons in voters' minds: France is in a bad shape because Europe is forcing
it to follow too market-oriented policies. This conviction is so strong that
all the arguments in favor of the treaty-which provides the tools for eco-
nomic regulation-were drowned OUt."31 A perceived neo-liberal emphasis
within the treaty and a lack of social concern in Europe were given as rea-
sons by 19% and 16% respectively, indicating clearly that rejection of the
How would you judge the current situation in each of the following domains?
The employmenl s ituafion in { Country]
'"
Sad Difference Good
"
"
"
,.
,
..,
...
...
...
.,.
.,,.
Figure 5.1. Assessment of the Employment Situation by Country
Source: Ellrobarome1ef 62 .1, Oct.- Dec. 2004, 6.
The Europenll Burdf!11 127
"Wllal are all the reasons why you voted "No" ai the referend um on the European
Constitut kmT"
l w II have negative effects on the 8fllIIoYmenI silulotion I Jon of jobs I relocation
The economc situatlon ill R ance .. too w ukllhtn ill too rruc:h u"""l'lo\'me<II
Ecoroorr1catt l peaki"lg. the dnJlI ill too liberal
Opposes 1M pores~ I !he !PI""""""" I ClI<I.... llOilicai P<lrtiea ~iiiiiiiiiiiii

No! eJlOUilh social &lrape
Too c<>fIl'Iex
D:!n r>OI w .." Turkey iII lhe GJr09An lIroioI'I
lIK:k of irlcrfTUtlon
No! dermer.1i::: ~
Owe_ilion 10 lurtMr_gerren1
The d~1 go8' too ' ar I advanc: ... 100 queldy

I dO 001 W art! I EurOj)ll.n pollical un;"" II &lr"",an leder.1 SlIIte
lam~11he BoI;es tein dlr"",live
Too technocra li<: I juridical I too rruch ,eguI9tlon
Figure 5.2. Reasons for Rejedion of Ihe EU Constitution in france

Sourc..: Fledl Eurobdrometer, 171 , The Europe"n ConSlilutiQfl; f'o5l-RcFercndum SurvC)' in frJOCf... 200'5, 18.
Constitution was only marginally motivated by an urge to sanction the

French President, th e government or cenain political parti es (l 8%).
The rejed .ions can not be attri buted, either, 10 nationalist sentiment or
ethnocentric withdrawal, and even less to dissatisfact ion linked 10 some
"democratic defi cit" (5%). This Eu rophobic wave came in Jarge pan from
the left - 94% of French Communist Pany sympathizers and a large major-
ity of Soda list and Green pany supponers (61% in each case) opposed the
Constitution-and provides dramatic confirmation of a movement of dis-
content that faithfully refl ects the unemployment curve and corresponds to
the map of poveny in France.32 Fourteen of the sixteen depanmenlS where
the "no" was most massive are in the nonh and southeast of the country,
128 Chapter 5
that is, in its most socially precarious zones. All the poverty indicators-un-
employment level, proportion of the population receiving the RMI mini-
mum welfare allocation, percentage of single-parent families, and income
levels-correlate statistically with the referendum "no." Regions of inter-
mediate levels of poverty also opted clearly for the "no" vote, which sug-
gests that the economic slump is politically impacting the middle classes as
well: the social rift is also a territorial one.
ORGANIZING THE UNEMPLOYED

WITHIN THE MEMBER STATES
Despite the exacerbation of situations of precariousness, mobilization by

the unemployed was long considered highly improbable. The obstacles to
overcome have been outlined in the literature and related to powerful forces
for social and political atomization. However, in the light of the recent rise
of collective action by the unemployed, such analyses require substantial
qualification. This section is devoted to a quick survey of action taken in
different European countries-Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Finland, Germany,
and France33 -and then to the lessons to be drawn more systematically
from the way they operate.
A first country category, comprising Belgium and Ireland, is characterized
by a limited, residual capacity for mobilization. In Belgium almost 85% of
the unemployed are trade union members. This atypical situation is the re-
sult of historical compromises leading to the payment of unemployment
benefits via the unions, which have always defended the rights of the un-
employed in respect to benefits, if for no other reason than to resist pres-
sure for lower wages. Despite the considerable rise in unemployment that
began in the mid-1970s, the level of protection for jobseekers has been kept
at a level well above the average in other countries. Belgium, for example, is
the only EU country in which there is, in theory, no time limit on benefit
payments. Over recent years, however, restrictions and, especially, controls
have been instituted regarding beneficiaries living in the same household as
someone receiving earned income. The unemployed have vigorously con-
demned these measures, which involve surprise home visits generally per-
ceived as violations of privacy, and the government has responded by re-
ducing their severity. Thus, Belgium is an example of a welfare state providing
a high level of protection even in times of serious labor market recession.
Paradoxically, however, mobilization by the unemployed is unquestion-
ably hampered by the level of protection from which they benefit in these
countries, as it decreases their feeling of being ignored and excluded. Even
when measures aimed at cutting back benefits are introduced, the social
and political representations they enjoy drastically limit the tendency to-
wards protest. Infrequent, small-scale mobilization generally has major po-

litical consequences, as it often generates a positive institutional response.
In Ireland, too, each wave of unemployment has seen the emergence of
unemployed organizations. This was the case in 1983, with the creation of
the Dublin Unemployed Alliance, which quickly obtained a major negoti-
ating status with the authorities and four years later became the Irish Na-
tional Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU). Expanding rapidly, it is
now considered the representative body for the unemployed: it had 100 af-
filiate groups in 1994 and some 180 in 2003. Devoting its energies mainly
to community aid for the unemployed and assessment of employment
policies, the INOU has continued to shun forms of action involving con-
flict. In a context of pronounced administrative centralization and a politi-
cal system marked by a strong respect for authority, the expected challenges
were snuffed out. The INOU has been entrusted with steadily growing re-
sponsibilities in terms of providing services to the unemployed and can be
considered a force for social pacification. A further result was that its mem-
ber organizations gradually toned down their demands, especially when
the drastic fall in unemployment that began in 1996 ushered in an un-
precedented period of prosperity. The Irish example thus highlights the fact
that unemployed associations do not necessarily work in favor of active
protest, especially when they have been coopted by the state apparatus.
A second category groups countries like Italy and Finland, in which mo-
bilization is moderate and limited. In Italy the phenomenon is concentrated
in certain urban parts of the South, mainly Naples and its region, where un-
employment of over 30% has been endemic for some decades. Its roots go
back to June 1975, when almost 2,000 jobless people, wearied by more
than a year of protest in Naples, marched to Rome and were received by the
government. At this meeting a promise was made to create 10,500 new jobs
for the mobilized unemployed; and the same day the City of Naples offered
700 mobilized unemployed persons a one-year work contract financed by a
state assistance fund. This success led in Naples to the creation of numer-
ous committees of the unemployed, which then negotiated hiring terms for
members with the local and national authorities.
These groups have since become part of the political landscape and are
now officially considered legitimate negotiating partners; they playa central
role in the labor market, functioning as a kind of employment agency and
compensating to some extent for the shortcomings of a welfare state whose
benefit payments are among the lowest in Europe. Italy represents a specific
case, with action by the unemployed having a strongly regional character.
There is certainly no other example in Europe of an autonomous unem-
ployed movement's having achieved such political recognition and influ-
ence, but these factors only operate locally and in contrast with the lack of
mobilization in the rest of the country.
130 Chapter 5
In Finland unemployment rose abruptly from 3.2% in 1990 to 16.6% in

1994, then stabilized at just over 10% until 2000. This jump led to the cre-
ation of a host of unemployed organizations-220 between 1990 and
1997-which came together as the National Cooperation Association of
the Unemployed, founded in 1991. Largely under the control of wealthy
and powerful trade union organizations with real influence on the func-
tioning of public sector action, these bodies played a decisive part in the
anti-government front, denouncing the restrictive measures of a welfare
state until then reputed throughout the world for its generosity. The move-
ment's high point came on "Revolution Thursday"- November 4, 1993-
when a call from the unemployed brought 20,000 people onto the street in
Helsinki. The largest demonstration the country had seen since the end of
World War II, this compares more than favorably with the 6,OOO-strong nu-
clear weapons protest in 2002 and, subsequently, the turnout of 10,000
against the war in Iraq, in 2003. Its impact, however, was short-lived, the ar-
rival of a progressive coalition government in 1995 leaving the unemployed
organizations isolated and deprived of the support of the unions and other
militant groups. Thus the situation in Finland testifies to the capacity for
mobilization of the unemployed, but also to their vulnerability, given that
their impact depends on exceptional political circumstances over which
they have almost no control. The case of Finland is also paradoxical: rela-
tively well organized, the unemployed are capable of taking part-and
sometimes even provoking-mass action, yet without mastering the dy-
namics of protest, whose driving forces are mainly external.
A third category, the one Germany and, even more so, France belong to,
is that of long-term, large-scale mobilization. France is unquestionably the
EU country in which the unemployed have achieved greatest visibility. Over
the last twenty years they have mobilized massively on several occasions
and shown a certain capacity for ongoing action. Their organizations have
built up a network that, while more active in some regions than in others,
enjoys both a national presence and alliances with trade unions and far-left
bodies that help reduce their political isolation. Despite its limited re-
sources, the French unemployed movement has succeeded in maintaining
a certain autonomy of action. The first-ever Syndicat National des
Chomeurs (SNC) was formed in 1982 at the instigation of a handful ofleft-
ist Catholic militants. On May 30, 1985, it was the driving force behind a
protest march in Paris-some 5,000 unemployed-that remains the SNC's
largest demonstration to date. Weakened by internal divisions, the SNC
split in 1985, giving rise to the Mouvement National des Chomeurs et Pre-
caires. The year 1987 saw the formation, by communist party leaders from
the Paris suburbs, of the Association pour I'Emploi, l'Information et la Sol-
idarite des chomeurs et travailleurs precaires. In 1993, "Agir ensemble con-
tre Ie chomage" was jointly launched by unionists, unemployed association
leaders, and intellectuals. Also deserving of mention is the CGT trade

union's unemployed defense section, founded in 1983, which plays a vital
role in the south of the country. All these organizations were formed in the
course of the decade beginning in 1982, a period marked by mass unem-
ployment, the emergence of the new poverty, the failure of the Left in re-
spect of employment, and acceleration of the process of European integra-
tion which, since the ratification of the treaty of Maastricht, prohibits any
reflationary policies.
The same period brought a substantial drop in unionization and a growing
mistrust of political parties, both of which favor the autonomy of social
movements. It was against this background, then, that the unemployed ex-
pressed their discontent and their determination to speak up on their own be-
half. Unable to count on the support of any party-with the exception, some-
times, of the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR) and the
Parti Communiste Fran<;:ais (PCF)-and in constant conflict with most union
organizations apart from the CGT, they did, however, benefit from public
opinion support. In November and December 1995 they found a favorable
context in taking part in what was the largest movement of social protest the
country had known since May 1968. In the winter of 1997 and again in 1998,
they demanded and ultimately obtained-once again in a climate of consid-
erable unrest-a "Christmas bonus" equivalent to 1500 francs (approx.
$250). Since then unemployed mobilization increasingly has aimed at using
the courts to challenge restrictions on benefit payments, but invariably runs
up against official refusal to recognize the representativeness of their organi-
zations, this being a status legally confined to trade unions.
In Germany too, unemployed mobilization significantly developed,
driven by the combination of rising unemployment and a series of reforms.
It mounted considerably in the wake of reunification, and remains much
more developed in the eastern part of the country, where unemployment is
running at twice the national average. Given Germany's decentralized po-
litical-administrative system, unemployed movements proliferated on a lo-
cal basis but gradually became structured around a number of national as-
sociations, notably the Arbeitlosenverband, which is very strong in the
former East Germany. Beginning in the mid-1990s, demonstrations by the
unemployed in many cities brought together several thousand people. The
phases of this mobilization match the various stages of a series of reforms
called "Agenda 2010," which involves restrictions in social security, of re-
tirement, sickness and invalidity insurance, and the rules regarding pay-
ment and job assignment for the unemployed.
Action peaked in 1998 and again in 2004. In 1998, tens of thousands of
people turned out each month when the latest unemployment figures were
published. And in the spring and summer of 2004, almost a million peo-
ple-half of them in Berlin-protested in 230 cities against the most recent
132 Chapter 5
installment of the labor market reforms. Obviously the magnitude of the

unemployed protests owes much to the extent of the reforms, which af-
fected the whole population. In this context the role of the unions and in
particular of the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) remained ambigu-
ous, as the latter, even though it could not ignore the level of popular dis-
content, did not condemn the reforms. Thus the unemployed organiza-
tions, of which about half were affiliated to a trade union body, received
support.
Opposition to the reforms was so broad that it was in part beyond the
control of the powerful DGB and offered militant unemployed people a rel-
atively favorable context to express their political opinions. Notably, it
tended to neutralize the stigma often attached to joblessness in Germany.
These are major changes in a country traditionally characterized by its cor-
poratist model and the efficacy of its system of management/labor negotia-
tion, and they represent new opportunities for action by the unemployed.
As in France-but without being able to count on the same popular support
and the same political connections-Germany's unemployed seem to be
turning towards increasingly autonomous, often eruptive forms of action
reflecting the unified country's difficulty in resolving the mounting prob-
lems stemming from labor market exclusion.
This overview of the European scene offers a perspective on aspects of
how the unemployed mobilize, but also on the limitations of such mobi-
lizations. High levels of mobilization correspond to unemployment peaks,
even if the relationship is neither direct nor automatic. The feelings of frus-
tration and anger generated by the spread and the fear of unemployment
are aggravated by the fact that expectations in some cases have been high.
The development of mutual aid and political awareness effected by such
groups is a vital lever for the transition to action. 34 This mobilization de-
velops in regional contexts, via confrontation with local actors-usually
employment agencies or municipalities-but this does not hamper its geo-
graphical expansion. When such expansion is the goal, devolved and/or de-
centralized political-administrative systems-of which the epitome is
doubtless the federal state-seem most propitious to collective action by
the unemployed. 35 Other specific factors play an even more decisive part.
A restrictive welfare state system would be likely to cause discontent
among the unemployed and thus encourage mobilization. However, the ex-
pectations and demands of the unemployed increase in line with their
rights, giving rise to correspondingly more acute frustration and protests
when these are challenged and diminish. This version of de Tocqueville's
law, which holds that the subjective dynamic of a social phenomenon
counts more than its objective gravity, is a key element to understanding the
issue. One of the configurations most conducive to unemployed mobiliza-
tion is thus the association of a high level of protection with reforms in-
tended to restrict benefits. At the same time, there is a distinction to be

made concerning countries in which benefits are paid via the trade unions,
a system which seems to entail better defense of the interests of the unem-
ployed. At the same time, unions' dividedness and fragmentation generally
offer greater scope for action to unemployed groups, which can play on ri-
valries and find room for maneuver in a host of possible alliances. The un-
employed, however, run the risk of a dependency counter to their desire for
autonomy, and rely on a global political configuration over which they have
no control: thus the impulse to protest on the part of unemployed people
has frequently been discouraged by trade unions concerned about keeping
social dissent in their own hands. A significant split is now appearing be-
tween reformist unions close to governments accepting benefit cuts for the
unemployed, and those, often less powerful and rooted in a culture of op-
position, backing these groups.
Finally, it is necessary to underline the role of cultural and cognitive con-
texts in unemployed mobilization. The Unempol research 36 showed that
Italy is the country where public discourse is most favorable, well ahead of
the intermediate zone occupied by France, the UK, and Switzerland, while
Germany and Sweden stand out for their relative lack of receptiveness. A
number of explanatory factors underlie these differences, among them the
value set on work and the consequent stigma attached to those without
jobs. This kind of consideration can playa certain part in regions influenced
by Protestantism. On the whole, however, attitudes within countries indi-
cate a support for the unemployed all the more vital in that it helps com-
pensate, at least partly, for their political isolation in Europe, and opens
possible alternative strategies for challenging public opinion.
Despite the crests of mobilization, what mainly stands out is the spo-
radic, not to say marginal character of actions taken. In one of the European
democracies' most painful paradoxes, the most vulnerable fringe of the
population is unable to organize on a lasting basis or, especially, to give
structured, enduring expression to the main social ill that has been gnaw-
ing at it for decades now. 37
EUROPEAN MARCHES AND ALTERMONDIALIST MOVEMENTS
Collective action by the unemployed has also taken on an EU dimension.

The movement known as European Marches against Unemployment, Job
Insecurity and Social Exclusion38 first demonstrated its mobilization capac-
ity in Amsterdam on June 14, 1997, when almost 50,000 people turned out
against the holding of the European Summit. What made the event even
more remarkable was the presence of demonstrators from many countries:
for over two months small teams of marchers had crisscrossed Europe
134 Chapter 5
before converging on the Netherlands and calling people into the street.
Nor was the event's impact short-lived: on June 3-4, 1999, marches took
place involving some 30,000 people in protests against the European Sum-
mit in Cologne. Since then similar events have been affected by demon-
strations on a smaller scale.
In the absence of a common policy for countering unemployment, the
responsibility remains on individual member states, which effectively pre-
vents any "top-down" Europeanization. The ETUC, for example, cannot
function as a focal point for grievances because it emphasizes consultation
as part of the social dialogue procedure and expresses support for EU pol-
icy.39 Moreover, the networks of associations capable of representing the in-
terests of "precarious" workers at the European level are few, not very
protest-oriented and for the most part cut off from national organizations.
Thus the European Anti-Poverty Network, founded in 1990, is a kind of
epistemic community4° that enjoys consultative status at the Council of Eu-
rope, but whose capacity for action is limited and not especially protest-ori-
ented. Established in 1982, the European Network of the Unemployed,
which includes most of Europe's national unemployed associations, is even
less influential: lack of funds has prevented it from meeting since 1998 and
it now has virtually no active existence. 41
Although the processions of marchers set out from a host of different
points all over the EU, thus calling attention to their truly European char-
acter, the organization of the marches was largely due to a small number of
leaders from the French far left. In the mid-1990s these activists had limited
visibility and were out to get issues relating to unemployment and job in-
security onto the European agenda. The mobilization of the unemployed in
each country depended mainly on the help provided by allies. As Michael
Lipsky noticed, "the 'problem of the powerless' in protest activity is to acti-
vate third parties to enter the implicit or explicit bargaining area in ways fa-
vorable to the protestors."42 Help from trade unions and civil society actors,
the churches in particular, was decisive in Germany-second only to France
in mobilizing troops-and in the northern European countries, whose
numbers, while not negligible, were appreciably less. Unemployed people
from Italy helped fill out the processions and were present in greater num-
bers than, among others, the Belgians, Slovenians, and Spanish.
By contrast, the numbers of English unemployed marchers was strikingly
low. Backing from England's unions was extremely limited: firstly because
most of them have declined considerably in strength over the last twenty
years; and secondly because the Trade Union Congress refused to take part,
aligning itself with a Labor Party whose agenda had little to do with the
claims of the unemployed. In addition, the overall loss of job security
around the country had eased the employment situation and diminished
still further the unemployed associations' capacity to mobilize. The fact that
unemployment benefit systems were residual did not encourage protest as

long as work-even when precarious-was widely available.
On the whole, then, the national makeup of the European march move-
ment closely reflected the mobilization capacity of the unemployed in
member states. However, this was not the case where unemployment pro-
visions were most favorable, but rather in the countries where, in spite of re-
strictive measures, the system was most generous, notably France, Germany,
Finland, and Belgium. In contexts of high unemployment it was the con-
junction of these two phenomena-plus the part played by the trade
unions-that explained participation by unemployed people. This partici-
pation was even more marked in countries where a significant split in the
labor market, induced by structural rigidities, meant less hope of finding a
job.
The main challenge facing the organizers of the marches was that of high-
lighting the situation of the unemployed in Europe as a political issue. In a
context of limited possibilities for action, the march approach enabled
groups with restricted access to power to make themselves visible and mo-
bilize public opinion in the hope of influencing political institutions. In
this perspective the marches embodied two major, conflicting agendas: the
first was long-term, seeing the creation of an "alter-European" social move-
ment as the main objective of mobilization, and the actual claims of the un-
employed and precariously employed as secondary. The second-and as a
rule the one put forward by unemployed association leaders and the un-
employed themselves-emphasized the urgency of the situation in obtain-
ing immediate material gains.
The tensions surrounding the goals of the movement did not prevent the
marchers from seeking the same level of visibility and the support of pub-
lic opinion in Europe. This organizational pattern made the marches a
unique mode of externalization of protest: the unemployed taking part made
up a transnational coalition of actors whose targeting of the EU was a
means of opposing government policy in the member states. Completely
reliant on the various welfare state systems, they had no short-term expec-
tations towards European institutions with no direct influence on their fate.
Rather, they took advantage of the visibility obtained by confronting the Eu-
ropean Council to put pressure on their national executives.
In many respects the European marches can be seen as among the pio-
neer elements of the altermondialist movement and the system of counter-
summits. Nonetheless, this unemployed movement did not outlive its early
success, running out of steam so quickly that by the time of the Nice sum-
mit in December 2000 its capacity to mobilize had plummeted. All that re-
mains now is an (admittedly very active) exchange and information net-
work on the Internet. 43 The cruel truth is that today's altermondialist
movement does little to express or represent the demands of the unemployed
136 Chapter 5
and, as a number of recent surveys indicate, is situated on the other side of

a sociological divide.
Overall, the militants at the first European Social Forum (ESF) in Flo-
rence in 2002 offer profiles far removed from those of the deprived and ex-
cluded thrown up by European integration and the globalization process.
Donatella della Porta (2004) stressed that among the former, "53% were
students, 11% unemployed or under-employed people, 25% wage earners,
and 7% self-employed."44 At the anti-G8 protests in Genoa in July 2001, the
unemployed and those without job security totaled only a fraction over
10%.45 Participants in the second ESF in and around Paris in November
2003 offered the extremely homogeneous image of a group with real cul-
tural capital-69% with higher education qualifications (as against 30% for
the population as a whole), of whom 51.6% held degrees from a university
or a grande ecole-and in many cases a stable public-sector job (46.1% as
against 10% for the workforce as a whole).46
Far from giving a voice to the victims of globalization, altermondialist ac-
tors express the discontentment of a fringe of "rooted cosmopolitans"47
with a rich social and cultural capital. The organizations fighting unem-
ployment and job insecurity make attempts at involvement in the ESFs so
as to benefit from the hearing they get in the public arena, but the results
are meager. True, their case is stated, but diluted and stifled by the much
more powerful representatives of civil society and the trade unions, who
find it appreciably easier to get a hearing and gain access to the political
sphere. The isolation and the position of inferiority imposed on the unem-
ployed at national level are equally present within the European move-
ment, which they in fact helped to found, and which is now emerging as a
collective actor of steadily mounting influence. 48
CONCLUSION
Unrest among the unemployed and disquiet within European public opin-
ion as a whole finds an outlet in sporadically emerging mobilizations that
find only feeble expression in national and EU political agendas. These mo-
bilizations take the form either of mistrust and rejection of political actors
and the EU in particular-notably evident in the French "no" to the Euro-
pean Constitution on May 29, 2005-and the rise offar-right populism. In
other words, adequate political responses to the seriousness of the phe-
nomena of exclusion in Europe are not forthcoming, and this is widening
the gulf between a growing part of Europe's population-rendered vulner-
able by economic and social difficulties-and political institutions.
Nonetheless the attribution of unemployment to European integration is
largely unfounded. Unemployment issues remain for the most part the re-
sponsibility of individual member states and outcomes are extremely wide-

ranging, unemployment rates being in some cases quite low. The most re-
cent major steps in political integration-the single market of 1992, the en-
largements of 1995 and 2004, and the changeover to the euro in
2001-have not had negative repercussions in this field. Nonetheless, the
persistence of the unemployment problem and the mounting dangers of ex-
clusion are seen by public opinion in Europe as priority concerns helping
to undermine the credibility of national and European policies. Given its
limited legitimacy, the EO is the main institutional loser here, even though
the implementation of employment policies-and even more so of the
fight against unemployment-remains the responsibility of the member
states.
NOTES
1. Eurostat 2003.
2. OECD, "Taking the Measures of Temporary Employment," in Employment
Outlook 2002, Paris: OECD, 2002, 127-85.
3. OECD, "Employment Protection Regulation in OECD Countries," in Employ-
ment Outlook 2004, Paris: OECD, 2004, 64-76.
4. This term covers temporary work and short-term, fIxed-term, and state-aided
contracts.
5. European Commission, "Chapter 4: Flexibility, Security and Quality in
Work," in Employment in Europe 2003, Brussels: European Commission, 2003,131.
6. The indicator has three components: the rules applying to laying off individ-
ual permanent contract holders; additional obligations in cases of group redundan-
cies; and the terms and conditions governing temporary hirings. Generally the vari-
ations in stringency observed come from the last of these categories. See OECD,
"Employment Protection Regulation in OECD Countries," 72.
7. Except for unemployed persons sharing accommodation with someone in
paid employment.
8. David Grubb, "Chapter 4: Eligibility Criteria for Unemployment BenefIts,"
OEeD Economic Studies, no. 31 (2000): 158.
9. Denis Fougere, "Accompagnement des ch6meurs et sanctions: leurs effets sur
Ie retour a l'emploi," in Plein emploi, rapport Jean Pisani-Ferry, Paris: La Documenta-
tion franc;aise, 2000, 313-40.
10. Pierre Cahuc and Francis Kramarz, De la precarite a la mobilite: vers une secu-
rite sociale professionnelle, Paris: Report to the Ministers of State, of the Economy, Fi-
nance and Industry, and of Employment, 2004, 64.
11. Les notes de la Fondation Copernic, Pour un « Grenelle de l'Unedic », Paris:
Editions Syllepse, 2003, 20-22.
12. Florence Lefresne and Carole Tuchszirer, "Dynamiques d'insertion et poli-
tiques d' emploi: une comparaison de six pays europeens (Belgique, Danemark, Es-
pagne, Italie, Pays-Bas, Royaume-Uni)" (paper presented at the Matisse conference
L'acces inegal a l'emploi et a la protection socia Ie, September 2004),16-17.
138 Chapter 5
13. "Active spending" designates the overall costs involved in measures concern-
ing hiring incentives, company formation, job training, and mobility within the la-
bor market. "Passive spending" designates unemployment benefit payments and the
various measures facilitating retirement and the reduction or sharing of work time.
14. Costa Esping-Andersen, Duncan Callie, Anton Hemerijck, and John Myles, A
New Welfare Architecture for Europe? Brussels: Report submitted to the Belgian Presi-
dency of the European Union, 2001, 36-7.
15. Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie, and Jae-On Kim, Participation and Political
Equality: A Seven-Nation Comparison, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
16. Emmanuel Pierru, "Sur quelques faux problemes et demi-verites autour des
effets eIectoraux du ch6mage," in La demobilisation politique, ed. Frederique Matonti,
Paris: La Dispute, 2005, 189.
17. Pierru, "Sur quelques faux problemes," 182.
21. Michael Minkenberg and Pascal Perrineau, "La droite radicale: Divisions et
contrastes," in Le vote europeen, 2004-2005: De l'elargissement au referendum franl;ais,
ed. Pascal Perrineau, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2005, 85.
22. Minkenberg and Pascal Perrineau, "La droite radicale: Divisions et con-
trastes," 86-7.
23. Quoted by Annie Collovald, in "Populisme: la cause perdue du peuple," La
demobilisation politique, ed. Frederique Matonti, 173.
24. Figures quoted by Daniel Boy and Jean Chiche, "La gauche radicale et les
Verts: Des contestations heterogenes," in Le vote europeen, 2004-2005: De l'eIargisse-
ment au referendum franl;ais, ed. Pascal Perrineau, 205-28.
25. Pascal Delwit and Philippe Poirier, eds., Parlement puissant, electeurs absents?
Les elections europeennes de juin 2004, Brussels: Editions de I'Universite de Bruxelles,
2005.
26. Special Eurobarometer 215/Wave 62.1, Lisbon, Brussels: European Commis-
sion, 2005, 5.
27. Special Eurobarometer 215/Wave 62.1, 32.
28. Renaud Dehousse, La fin de l'Europe, Paris: Flammarion, 2005.
29. Flash Eurobarometer, The European Constitution: Post-Referendum Survey in the
Netherlands, Brussels: European Commission, 2005, p. 15.
30. Bruno Cautres and Bernard Denni, "Autopsie de l'euroscepticisme," Libera-
tion, 7 June 2005, 36(N).
31. Cautres and Denni, "Autopsie de l' euroscepticisme."
32. Herve Le Bras, "Le non n'est ni de gauche ni de droite, il est precaire," Libera-
tion, 1 June 2005, 4(N).
33. In this section we summarize the content of a collective project devoted to
mobilization by the unemployed in Europe. The contributions were presented at an
encounter at the University of Oxford on 10-11 June 2005. For each country in-
valuable assistance was provided by, respectively, Jean Faniel, Frederic Royall, Si-
mone Baglioni, Eeva Luhtakallio and Martti Siisiiiinen, Christian Lahusen, and
Britta Baumgarten.
34. Sophie Maurer, Les chOmeurs en action (decembre 1997 - mars 1998): Mobilisa-
tion collective et resources compensatoires, Paris: L'Harmattan, 200 l.
35. Paul Bagguley, From Protest to Acquiescence? Political Movements of the Unem-
ployed, London: Macmillan, 1991.
36. For a presentation of the results and the methodology, see "The Contentious
Politics of Unemployment in Europe," ics.leeds.ac.ukjeurpolcomjunempol (ac-
37. Frances Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Suc-
ceed, How They Fail, New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.
38. Didier Chabanet, "Les marches europeennes contre Ie chomage, la precarite
et les exclusions," in L'action collective en Europe: Collective Action in Europe, ed.
Richard Balme, Didier Chabanet, and Vincent Wright, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po,
2002,461-93.
39. Jon Erik D0lvik, An Emerging Island? ETUC, Social Dialogue and the Europeani-
sation of the Trade Unions in the 1990s, Brussels: European Trade Union Institute,
1999.
40. Peter Haas, "Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy
Coordination," International Organization, 46, no. 1 (1992): 377-403.
4l. Frederic Royall, "Building Solidarity Across National Boundaries: The Case of
Affiliates of the European Network of the Unemployed," Journal of European Area
Studies, 10, no. 2 (2002): 243-58.
42. Michael Lipsky, Protest in City Politics: Rent Strikes, Housing and the Power of the
Poor, Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1970, 2.
43. Found at www.euromarches.org.
44. Donatella della Porta, "Democratie en mouvement: Les manifestants du Fo-
rum social europeen, des liens aux reseaux," Politix (Militants de l'altermondialisa-
tion) , 17, no. 68 (2004): 54.
45. Donatella della Porta, "Democratie en mouvement," 52-55.
46. Boris Gobille and Aysen Uysa!, "Cosmopolites et enracines," in Radiographie
du mouvement altermondialiste, ed. Eric Agrikoliansky and Isabelle Sommier, Paris: La
Dispute, 2005, 107.
47. Sidney Tarrow, "Transnational Politics: Contention and Institutions in Inter-
national Politics," Annual Review of Political Science, 4 (2001): 1-20.
48. Eric Agrikoliansky, Olivier Fillieule, and Nonna Mayer, L'altermondialisme en
France: La longue histoire d'une nouvelle cause, Paris: Flammarion, 2005.
6
Beyond State-Building: Centers and
Peripheries in the European Union
Perhaps the most striking feature of European integration rests with the re-
moval of multi-secular borders established between the member states. This
process was first driven by the making of the single market, then noticeably
developed with the Schengen agreement suppressing internal borders' con-
trol for most Ell countries, and culminated with the single currency. It was
also consolidated by the implementation of the Ell common policies,
among which cohesion policy plays an important part. Such changes have
been very significant. Not only do they reveal the importance of institu-
tional developments at the supranational level of Ell institutions; they also
exemplify key aspects of changes at the domestic level, and how European
integration affects political and social processes within the member states.
The idea of a "Europe of the regions" supplementing or competing with
member states' influence, and possibly developing new political regula-
tions, has been an important aspect of the European debate surrounding
the single market. It largely contributed to the introduction of the concept
of subsidiarity in the Ell terminology, eventually asserted as one of its ma-
jor political principles. These developments are therefore crucial in the un-
derstanding of European integration. Relations among different levels of
government as well as their role in public policy have been deeply trans-
formed with European integration. Similarly, the territorialization of inter-
ests (the spatial organization and relations among social classes, ethnic or
cultural groups, professions, and status groups) went through profound
changes since the early eighties. In this chapter, we consider how these de-
velopments gave rise to new patterns of collective action.
141
142 Chapter 6
THE ORGANIZATION OF TERRITORIAL INTERESTS IN EUROPE
Prior to the early steps in European integration after WWII, the territorial or-
ganization of Europe was largely dominated by the process of state-building.
The nation-state was naturally not the exclusive mode of social relationships,
as religious communities and economic exchanges also followed their own
boundaries. But with the making of sovereign states in the modem age, most
social relationships, including religious and economic ones, came to follow
the delineation of new boundaries. States were engaged in fierce competi-
tion among themselves to define their own boundaries, setting the prevalent
figure of war as a clash between rival states. Center-periphery conflicts were
also active internally between landlords and feudal power houses to control
their own territories, and to gain control over state resources. Rivalries also
pitted the secular power of kings and landlords to the authority of churches
and clergymen. Finally, with the development of a merchant and urban
economy, state-building often conflicted with the rising influence of cities
and their political institutions.
How nation-states became the hegemonic form of political organization
throughout Europe has become a classic of comparative politics.! Feudal-
ism was the initial melting pot where political and religious institutions
first became distinct and progressively asserted their autonomy. Centraliza-
tion was largely driven by war and by the necessity to raise financial and
material resources to face external pressures. During the modem and con-
temporary periods, a process of secularization transferred the main locus of
identity from religious to political communities, through which European
nations were constituted. In the advent of mass politics, cities were eclipsed
as rival powers to states, but nested their own development within the par-
liamentarization of national institutions, to which they largely contributed.
The result of this highly intricate process is an extreme diverse situation
across Europe. In the twentieth century, European state boundaries were pri-
marily affected by the dismantling of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian
empires after WWI, by the new territorial design imposed by the iron curtain
after WWII and its collapse in the early 1990s, and by the progressive removal
of internal borders within the ED and its successive enlargements. While the
ED can legitimately claim for having secured peace among its members, con-
flicts over territorial issues are still vivid in the Balkans and in Cyprus.
Since the question of the Oder-Neisse border between Germany and
Poland has been settled, most territorial disputes among member states
seem at the present day to be pacified. As a legacy of history, European
countries retain extremely diversified territorial organization. They largely
vary in size and population, ranging from micro-states like Luxembourg,
Malta, or Cyprus to large populated states like Germany, Great Britain, or
France. They also greatly vary in urbanization and population density, ap-
Beyond State-Building 143
proximately as a function of their distance to the center of Europe. Re-

markably analyzed by Stein Rokkan, the European territorial structure is
characterized by an urban core covering the south-east of England, Belgium,
the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the northern and eastern parts of France, the
western and southern parts of Germany, Austria, and the northern part of
Italy (to which should be added the urban valleys of Switzerland, not con-
sidered here). In 1998, central regions as defined by the Commission con-
centrated 33.2% of the EU-IS population on 14% of its land area, and
47.2% of its total GDP. Meanwhile, peripheral regions grouped 41.3% of
the population on 64.9% of the territory of the EU, for a proportion of
21.1% ofGDP.2
What is specific is not the urban concentration in itself, but the fact that
it is located at the center of the EU territory. As a result, regions with the
lowest popUlation density, the largest part of activity in the primary sector,
and lower GDP are located at the periphery of the EU (Ireland, Scotland,
northern parts of Sweden and Finland, new central and eastern member
states, Greece, southern Italy, Portugal, and southern Spain). The density of
urban networks in the core of Europe limited the initial developments in
state formation. Indeed the foundation of the German, Belgian, Dutch, and
Italian contemporary states in the eighteenth century was late in coming
compared to the early establishments of the French, Spanish, British, Dan-
ish, and Swedish royal states. The legacy of European absolutism is spread
in a "state belt" surrounding this urban core. It is worth noticing that the
largest capital cities such as London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, and War-
saw are located at the margins or outside of this urban core. Large contem-
porary states articulate this urban economic core to the third concentric
stratum of more or less remote rural peripheries.
European countries' territorial organization is also linked to the cultural
homogeneity of their population. Nations have principally been shaped as
a result of religious and linguistic cleavages, often bypassing states' bound-
aries. If the idea of a nation-state appears to be prevalent in European po-
litical culture, the reality is more diverse than usually assumed. Most coun-
tries only acknowledge one nation as a basis for the state. But the UK groups
together several nations, while the Spanish Constitution formally recog-
nizes several historical nationalities, and the Belgium Constitution of 1993
instituted several cultural communities. Historically, Catholicism offered
some resistance to the development of national communities, while Protes-
tantism, in supporting the making of national churches, favored the rise of
national identifications. Nowadays, the situation is somewhat reversed with
countries such as Ireland, Poland, or Italy sometimes claiming Catholicism
as part of their national identity.
Overall, territorial organization has to be understood as a complex institu-
tional setting historically shaped by the conjunction of the state's institutional
144 Chapter 6
development, urbanization and nation-building. 3 Contemporary features

roughly reflect country size, population density, and cultural diversity. They
range from federal to unitary state structures. Small-size countries with a
low population density and a culturally homogeneous population tend to
be centralized, while large and urbanized countries with cultural cleavages
tend to adopt federal institutions. But variations within this general frame-
work are important. It is worth noticing that federal countries (Belgium,
Germany, and Austria) are located within the European urban core, while
most peripheral countries such as Portugal, Ireland, Sweden and Finland,
eastern member states, and Greece are all unitary states. This roughly re-
flects the European urban structure, with a dense urban core composed of
small units linked together through intensive network relationships, and a
periphery where spatial organization is much more hierarchical and de-
pendent on centralized state structures.
The idea of wealthy centers exploiting poor peripheries is frequently mis-
leading. Poor peripheral regions owe most of their development (tourism,
agriculture, industrial investment) to exchanges with more urbanized re-
gions. Development at the periphery comes with increased integration
within urban networks, and "peripheries" are not necessarily poorer than
"centers." Indeed the wealthiest regions of Germany and Italy, for instance,
are not those surrounding the capital city. Center-periphery relations in Eu-
rope therefore cover a range of different issues: relations between wealthy
urban and poor rural regions across the EU; relations between rich and
poor territories within member states; and relations between states and re-
gions with some demand for greater political autonomy. The latter are more
salient with rich peripheral regions, able to compete with the capital region
on economic grounds, as is the case in Spain with Catalonia and to a lesser
extent with the Basque community, or in Italy with northern regions.
These developments illustrate the diversity of territorial integration across
EU member states. Many of them, such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, France with
regard to Corsica, Germany with eastern Llinder, and the UK with Wales,
Scotland and Northern Ireland, face critical issues in this respect. Territorial
integration relies upon three distinct sets of mechanisms: the level of au-
tonomy of local and regional governments, the territorial redistribution of
resources by the state, and the access and representation of local elites to na-
tional institutions. The French Jacobin "inclusive" model traditionally de-
voted little autonomy to local governments, while local and national elites
were highly integrated through elected positions jointly held at both levels,
and the state acted as an active entrepreneur in territorial development.
Conversely, German federalism endows regional governments with large ca-
pacities, while their influence at the national level through the Bundesrat
follows a distinct path from the lower chamber and the government. Both
models could yield comparable levels of territorial integration through dif-
ferent means. Tensions and trends towards disintegration mainly occur in

two different ways: poor regions may contest the insufficient redistributive
policies of the state and inequity of their political status. Such claims can be
found in most of the autonomist movements, such as those active in Cor-
sica and more generally in French overseas territories. Disintegration ten-
dencies may also come from wealthy regions, precisely when they contest
their contribution to redistributive policies, as has been the case in Spain,
Italy, and Germany with regard to the reunification. The results of this bar-
gaining are dependent on the trade-offs between economic redistribution
on the one hand, and political autonomy, particularly regarding cultural
matters when regional identities are sufficiently distinctive, on the other
hand. These relations based on exchange and competition are naturally
more favorable to rich than to poor regions.
Rather than stable institutional and sociological patterns, center-
periphery relations therefore need to be understood from a dynamic per-
spective. For centuries European populations have been regularly leaving
rural areas to concentrate in industrializing and ever-expanding cities.
Such processes accelerated after WWII within national territories. They
also took a new configuration with the completion of the single market,
as competition among localities to attract investments, residents and
public subsidies changed scale in expanding at the European level. Both
the processes of territorialization of social interests (the territorial fabric)
and the public issues associated with it were deeply renewed.
These tendencies motivated some adaptation in institutional and policy
designs, and favored the development of intergovernmental relations, of co-
operative style of policymaking in policy networks, and motivated some in-
novations such as fusion among local governments and creation of inter-
mediary institutions. As a result, large unitary states tended to adopt
decentralization (like in France), regionalization (like in Spain and Italy),
or devolution (like in the UK) reforms. Belgium even adopted a new federal
constitution in 1993. On the other side, observers of federalism generally
agree upon the increasingly interactive process of policymaking between
federal and regional institutions. 4 Domestic reforms interact with the de-
velopment of the cohesion policy of the EU and its implementation. The
overall picture is one of expansion and densification of intergovernmental
relations throughout Europe, forming the basis for a multi-level governance
system for the EU. 5
THE EU REGIONAL POLICY STRUCTURE
The second EU policy in budgetary terms after the CAP is the regional
policy, conveyed by the credits and regulations of structural funds. It is
146 Chapter 6
conceived as a cohesion policy designed to reduce territorial inequalities so

as to ensure access to a satisfactory standard of living to the whole of the
European population. The EU regional policy was introduced in 1975 with
the creation of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The
Treaty of Rome aimed in its preamble for the reduction of regional dispar-
ities through the making of the Common Market. In fact the first instru-
ment of a proper regional policy was introduced as an accompanying mea-
sure for the entrance of the UK, Ireland, and Denmark within the European
Community. The ERDF served in particular to compensate for the high level
of contribution of the UK to the financing of the CAP.
The share of structural funds in the European budget constantly raised
from 4.8% in 1975 to 9.1% in 1987,25% in 1992, 35% in 2002, and 39%
in 2006. In constant value (1999), their volume increased tenfold between
1987 and 1998. The EU regional policy was regularly promoted by succes-
sive enlargements and the deepening of economic integration. Before being
a micro-economic policy, regional policy is mainly a cohesion policy es-
tablished at the national level as the result of intergovernmental bargaining
for the different enlargements. The main instrument of regional policy was
established as a side-payment for the costs of enlargement for some of the
member states, very much in line with an intergovernmentalist approach to
the integration process. But once introduced, the measure opened a path for
cumulative policy developments and yielded unanticipated implementa-
tion effects, fitting the neo-institutional analysis of EU public policy.
The EU regional policy followed different steps in its own development in-
volving budgetary expansion and changing procedures, noticeably with the
early enlargements, the making of the single market launched in 1986, and
the "big" enlargement of 2004. It proclaims objectives of solidarity, aiming
to benefit citizens and regions that are economically deprived compared to
EU averages, and of cohesion, claiming that a narrowed gap of regional in-
come is beneficial to all. Territorial inequalities across Europe are therefore
stated to be larger than desirable for social optimum, and to require policy
intervention. The belief in the effectiveness of the regional policy is based on
the convergence in member states' GDP per capita, with the emblematic case
of Ireland moving from 64% of the EU average when it joined the EC to one
of the highest in the Union today. It is worth noticing that this philosophy,
favoring territorial equality as socially efficient and granting its progress in
public intervention, is far from the market-oriented ideology sometimes al-
leged to rule EU policymaking in each and every sector.
The EU policy instruments to reduce regional disparities are built on four
structural funds: the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the
European Social Fund (ESF), the section of the European Agriculture Guid-
ance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) devoted to rural development (Guid-
ance), and financial support for fishing communities as part of the Com-
mon Fisheries Policy (CFP). These funds represent about €213 billion or
roughly one-third of total EU spending, between 2000 and 2006. A further
€18 billion was allocated to the Cohesion Fund, set up in 1993 to finance
transport and environment infrastructure in member states with a GDP less
than 90% ofthe Union average at the time (Greece, Ireland, Spain and Por-
tugal).
Unlike the cohesion fund, poor or disadvantaged regions in all EU coun-
tries can benefit from the four structural funds according to certain criteria
or objectives. A total of 70% of funding goes to so-called Objective 1 re-
gions where GDP is less than 75% of the EU average. About 22% of the
Union population live in the 50 regions benefiting from these funds, which
go to improving basic infrastructure and encouraging business investment.
Another 11.5% of regional spending goes to Objective 2 regions (areas ex-
periencing economic decline because of structural difficulties) to help with
economic and social rehabilitation. Some 18% of the EU population lives
in such areas. Objective 3 focuses on job-creation initiatives and programs
in all regions not covered by Objective 1, and 12.3% of funding goes to-
wards the adaptation and modernization of education and training systems
and other initiatives to promote employment.
The EU regional policy also relies upon four special initiatives programs,
accounting for 5.35% of the structural funds, where the Commission has
wider initiative and more direct interactions with local governments. These
include cross-border and inter-regional cooperation (Interreg III); sustain-
able development of cities and declining urban areas (Urban II); rural de-
velopment through local initiatives (Leader + ); combating inequalities and
discrimination in access to the labor market (Equal).
Finally, the enlargement of 2004 posed new challenges to the EU. With
enlargement, the area and population of the Union expanded by 20% while
GDP increased by less than 5%. The GDP of the new member states before
their accession varied from about 72% of Union average in Cyprus to about
35% to 40% in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). The Union
created tailor-made financial programs for the period 2000-2006 to help
applicant countries to adjust to membership and to start narrowing the in-
come gap with the rest of the Union. These programs were worth about €22
billion in all, with further funding becoming available on actual entry. Their
different components were the Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-
Accession (ISPA) financing environment and transport projects with a
budget of €7.28 billion; the Special Accession Programme for Agriculture
and Rural Development (SAPARD) focused on agricultural development
with a €3.64 billion budget; both were additional to the earlier Poland
Hungary Assistance for Economic Restructuring program (PHARE), whose
budget for 2000-2006 was €10.92 billion, and whose priorities were to
strengthen the administrative and institutional capacity of new member
148 Chapter 6
states (30% of the budget), and to finance investment projects (which ab-
sorb the remaining 70%).
Meeting in Brussels in October 2002, the European Council set aside an
additional €23 billion from the structural and cohesion funds to be spent
in the new member states in the period 2004-2006. Compared to the€231
billion allocated to structural funds (including the cohesion fund), the
budget provisioned for the enlargement was limited. The issue raised no en-
thusiasm among public opinions of Western Europe, and governments
were aware of the difficulties of German reunification. Member states, aim-
ing at containing their deficits, established as a consensus not to increase
the EU budget, but could not agree on a significant reallocation of struc-
tural funds.
Turning to implementation, the EU regional policy rests on a set of gen-
eral principles guiding its procedures, defined as pluri-annual program-
ming, partnership, additionality, monitoring and evaluation, and financial
control. Programming was one of the key elements of the 1988 and 1993 re-
forms of the structural funds and remained central to the 1999 reform. It
involves preparation in several stages of multi annual development plans,
currently covering the period 2000-2006, with mid-term adjustments at the
end of 2003. General development and conversion plans stating national
and regional priorities, and including a description of the regional situation
and of development strategies, are first submitted by the member states' au-
thorities. Member states then submit more specific programming docu-
ments (community support frameworks translated into operational pro-
grams, or single programming documents) to the Commission. These
documents serve as a basis for bargaining between the Commission and the
member states' authorities. The Commission then makes an indicative al-
location of the funds to each form of assistance for each member state. Part-
nership is also emphasized as a general approach to policymaking, meant to
include the regional and local authorities, the economic and social part-
ners, and other competent bodies at all stages, starting with approval of the
development plan. Implementation of this principle had the effect of
strengthening the legitimacy of local and regional governments in policy-
making, and creating an incentive to develop their autonomy in unitary
states. But state bureaucracies are still central in determining the inter-
regional allocation of structural funds, and often playa key role in organ-
izing the consultation process among rival institutions.
Additionality is another crucial aspect of muti-tier intergovernmental rela-
tions developed with the EU regional policy. This principle requires Com-
munity assistance to be additional to national funding and not to replace
it. Although this principle states that for each objective the member states
must maintain their own public expenditure at least at the same level as in
the preceding period, the incentive versus disincentive effects on national
regional policies remain unclear. Under the conditions of the stability pact
and its constraints upon public expenditure, it is indeed tempting for mem-
ber states' governments to use structural funds as a substitute, rather than as
a supplement, to their own financial contribution. The situation varies
across countries, and is dependent on the territorial unit of evaluation. For
2000-2006, the geographic level at which additionality is checked had
been simplified. In the case of Objective 1, this means the totality of eligi-
ble regions, and for Objectives 2 and 3 combined, the entire country. In any
case, this means that the bulk of regional policy is indeed a joint policy-
making structure under a supranational frame, rather than an exclusive EU
policy.
Management, monitoring and evaluation are other important guideline
principles of regional policy. Member states must appoint a managing au-
thority for each program. The authority's tasks cover the implementation,
correct management, and effectiveness of the program. Monitoring com-
mittees are also established under the responsibility of the member states.
These committees, chaired by a representative of the managing authority,
ensure the efficiency and quality of the implementation of structural mea-
sures. Three types of evaluation have to be run. The ex-ante evaluation is un-
der the responsibility of the competent authorities in the member states,
the mid-term evaluation must be carried out by the authority managing the
program in collaboration with the Commission, and the ex-post evaluation
is under the responsibility of the Commission, in collaboration with the
member state and the managing authority. Evaluation reports are made
available to the public. In most member states, program evaluation was a
real innovation. It provided an incentive to recalibrate policy networks in a
more formalized manner, and served as a reference for "good practice" in
other policy areas.
Finally, payments and financial controls are based on financial contracts es-
tablished between the member states and the Commission whereby the
Commission undertakes to pay annual commitment appropriations on the
basis of the adopted programming documents. Each member state then ap-
points a payment authority for each program. The decentralization of pro-
gram management calls for checking arrangements, which are the responsi-
bility of the member states. This often brings national bureaucracies to
closely oversee and control the implementation of structural funds. Their
supervision of local and regional public policies has indeed increased with
the EU regional policy. State bureaucracies are key players in the highly in-
tertwined policy implementation of structural funds.
In February 2004 the Commission presented a proposal for the orienta-
tions of the regional policy for the period 2007-2013, specified with further
guidelines in July 2005. The procedures and principles reviewed above were
reinforced, but substantial changes were introduced in policy values and
150 Chapter 6
objectives of the programs. In particular, a better articulation is sought with

the objectives of the Lisbon strategy, including its objectives for research de-
velopment and innovation. This new orientation responded to the critics
and addressed the efficiency issues of the regional policy's previous fea-
tures. 6 It may also represent a fundamental change in the theoretical and
philosophical background of the policy, whose main objective would shift
from regional convergence to territorial competitiveness and innovation.
But even more striking are the difficulties linked to budgetary issues. Re-
gional policy has indeed been to a large extent frozen in its own design and
procedures since 1999. The expected cost of the enlargement pre-empted
any significant development within "old" member states, and the existing
consensus was based on the agreement to contain any budgetary increase.
Without budgetary growth, regional policy is a zero-sum game among the
member states, and among potential beneficiaries of structural funds (farm-
ers and the unemployed on the one hand, investors on the other hand). The
stringent critique in late 2005 of the EU budget produced by Tony Blair dur-
ing the UK's term of EU presidency epitomized this debate. The recurrent
budgetary crisis of the last years demonstrates that compromises are diffi-
cult to attain, precisely because there has been no consensus on the princi-
ples of the structural policy.
MOBILIZATION OF TERRITORIAL INTERESTS IN THE EU
How did this new policy structure impact upon the behavior of territorial
interests? The development of the EU regional policy created considerable
opportunities for the mobilization of local and regional governments to-
wards national and European institutions. The most straightforward incen-
tives lie with the design and eligibility for the structural fund programs. But
more generally, the EU regional policy also opened a space for political rep-
resentation soon vested by territorial governments. The different reforms of
the structural funds introduced in the aftermath of the SEA yielded an in-
creasing mobilization of regional and local governments. The concept of
"multi-level governance"? was coined to depict this reality of changing in-
tergovernmental relations throughout Europe and the loosening of central
control. In a second stage, these relations came to a certain stabilization,
while member states' authorities retrieved some influence with the imple-
mentation of structural funds. However, local and regional governments
had in the meanwhile entered the European sphere, and now contribute to
its shaping. In this sense, Europeanization has more to do with the way in
which actors and political arenas are interconnected than in the definitive
preponderance of a level of government. 8 Interestingly, the concept of "sub-
sidiarity," promoted in the European arena by activists of local and regional
democracy, has been acknowledged by the Maastricht Treaty, but in a more

national than local interpretation.
Policy formulation sees an active lobbying of territorial interests, both of
national bureaucracies and the Commission, to influence the criteria for el-
igibility and the volume of credits retained in the policy design. Subna-
tional authorities are nevertheless unlikely to be successful at this stage
without the support of their national governments. Eligible regions and ter-
ritories are also dependent on the state under the principles of additional-
ity and financial control in the implementation phase. The EU policy in pe-
ripheral regions tends to foster or to expand national governments'
programs. Multi-level relations between the EU, member state authorities,
and sub national governments are in that case cumulative. Other principles
of programming, monitoring, and evaluation have been more instrumental
in reshaping territorial relations. Actual changes differ from member state
to member state, largely as a function of the initial stage of intergovern-
mental relations. 9 They generally contribute to more pluralistic and more
flexible policy communities, where state bureaucracies' influence is overall
less hierarchical. This precisely is the core feature of multi-level gover-
nance. 10 State-centric governance has therefore been renewed more than
challenged by the EU regional policy implementation, as the three parties
are in a relationship of mutual dependency rather than hierarchy, 11 yielding
a greater variance in patterns of policy networks.
Article 203 of the Amsterdam Treaty authorizes representatives of re-
gional executives to vote in the Council of Ministers on questions relating
to regional competencies. 12 Only the most institutionally powerful regions,
particularly those in Belgium, Germany, and Austria, have been able to
achieve significant agreements with national governments in this matter. In
1994, Italian regions were allowed to establish direct contact with EU insti-
tutions and to participate in preparatory EU meetings (without voting
rights). The 1999 devolution laws in the UK worked out limited arrange-
ments for the Scottish and, to a lesser extent, Welsh executives. Spanish re-
gions have sought similar arrangements, but so far with limited success. 13
Even in these cases, the impact of Article 203 remained limited, as it does
not provide specific regions with an individual voice. When regional min-
isters act in the Council, they speak on behalf of the regions of their coun-
try as a whole. Moreover, the unanimity rule still applies for decisions
where the Council has the most decisive power, in particular for reforming
the regional policy. Regional ministers therefore tend to adopt the position
of their national governments. In forcing the aggregation of regional inter-
ests at the national level, Article 203 imposes the convergence of prefer-
ences between national governments and regions. Although it acknowl-
edges the political status of concerned regional authorities, there is no
substantial evidence that direct access to the Council makes a substantial
152 Chapter 6
difference with member states where the measure does not apply, and
where aggregation of territorial interests is more informal.
The first institutional body created for the representation of territorial in-
terests was set in 1988 with the Consultative Council of Regional and Local
Authorities, in line with the reform of structural funds following the SEA.
The COR was then established in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty, on the pat-
tern of the Economic and Social Committee (ESC), basically to incorporate
such a representation within the treaty legal framework. European institu-
tions (the Council of Ministers, the Commission, and after 1997, the Par-
liament) are obliged to consult the COR on matters directly related to re-
gional or local competencies. 14 The Committee may equally share its
opinions with the Commission or the Council on issues if it considers such
action as appropriate.
The creation of the COR was indeed emblematic of the entry of territo-
rial governments within the European institutional arena, independent of
the umbrella of member states bureaucracies. Nevertheless, its power re-
mains consultative and therefore indirectly impact upon decision-making.
Members of the COR are proposed by member states following different se-
lection procedures and nominated by the Council. If the COR as such can
convey a territorial point of view through the EU decision-making process,
member states cannot act as elected representatives of local governments,
and in a way, the Council of Ministers is more accountable to them. Fur-
thermore, relationships within the COR reflect the diversity of territorial or-
ganization throughout Europe, and display deep internal divisions between
North and South, local and regional governments, or representatives from
federal versus unitary states. The strongest impediment has probably been
the impact of nationality, and the related tendency to develop consocia-
tional practices in its own organization. IS
Such cleavages make it difficult for the COR to reach clear policy posi-
tions and impose severe limits to its authority. As a consequence, advocates
oflocal democracy in Europe felt that the COR fell short of the expectations
raised by its creation. Its major accomplishment, however, does not lie with
its limited influence, but with its role in socialization, communication, and
representation of territorial interests in the European arena. It certainly con-
tributed to a change in the way local elites think of themselves, and to mak-
ing Europe a relevant dimension in the behavior of these local entitites.
With highly variable resources and modes of action, offices established
by territorial governments in Brussels constitute quite a diffuse network de-
veloping a significant lobbying. For countries with a strong tier of regional
government (Belgium, Germany, Austria, Spain), regional governments
dominate representation in Brussels. In countries with a weaker regional
tier, representation usually consists of a mixture of local and regional units.
The UK is an interesting case where representation in Brussels induced the
mobilization of territorial interests despite uneven and often weak territo-

rial institutions. Local authorities, regional quangos, regional enterprise or-
ganizations, national local authority organizations, universities, and elected
regional assemblies fund offices representing territorial interests in different
settings. They add to offices representing the North of England, Northern
Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In July 1999, the newly elected Scottish exec-
utive shared a brand-new location, Scotland House, with Scotland Europa,
a conglomerate of Scottish public and private organizations that has repre-
sented Scottish interests in Europe since 1992. In unitary systems such as
the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, local authorities (or or-
ganizations of local authorities) dominate.
Interestingly, territorial representation is not directly linked to the extent
of EU funding. This confirms that access to EU regional policy is still largely
channeled through member states' bureaucracies. The strongest motivation
for subnational representation in Brussels is informational exchange, not
restricted to regional policy, at the EU level. This is most obvious for regions
in federal or semi-federal states, but it also underlies the decision of the
powerful local authorities in Sweden and Finland to set up offices in Brus-
sels even before formal accession of their countries to the EU. Information
gathering is a key component of lobbying, even if pressure is then exerted
through national channels. The representation of rural American states to
anticipate the developments of the CAP and positions of the EU in World
Trade Organization (WTO) bargaining is significant in this respect. In ad-
dition, a symbolic dimension is clearly at play here. 16 An office in the EU
capital city is obviously emblematic of a European and international di-
mension for territorial governments, flagging regional identity for their con-
stituents, their national governments, and other member states. Regions
claiming cultural distinctiveness and autonomy, such as Galicia, the Canary
Islands, Bretagne, Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Northern England,
Catalonia, or the Basque Country, were prompt to open such bureaus.
National authorities have been reluctant to accept this tendency, but nev-
ertheless failed to oppose it. Offices rarely collaborate with their national
permanent representations. Rather, they develop links with each other, with
informal networks particularly dense among offices of the same country. In
addition, subnational offices representing authorities with comparable sub-
national competencies or political aspirations tend to exchange good prac-
tices. However, subnational offices are primarily in Brussels to serve as an
information hub between the EU institutions and territorial governments.
They also seek to develop transnational partnerships for EU funded proj-
ects, or engage in lobbying of the Commission on particular policy projects.
Regional and local authorities have, overall, asserted themselves as rela-
tivelyautonomous, and flexible, players of collective action in Europe. They
sometimes develop networks directly reacting to or anticipating the new
154 Chapter 6
policy setting induced by European institutional developments. Their in-

fluence on big policy projects of the EU remains limited. But the broader
implications of their transnational activities are increasingly apparent. In
the 1960s and 1970s, regionalism was primarily conceived as a socio-polit-
ical response to domestic processes-the mobilization of cultural difference
or of discontent with national public policy. Territoriality was thought of as
the spatial setting of social relationships, whose specificities were primarily
conceived in cultural and political terms, and asserted within the frame of
the nation-state. However, the dynamics of regionalism around the tum of
the twenty-first century lie as much outside the member states as inside, and
have taken a new economic dimension. Territorial identities are shaped in
reference to a broader European space, and the promotion of regional and
local authorities, including transnational collective action, are to a large ex-
tent understood as responses to increasing competitive pressures in a global
economy. I?
Therefore, the impact of these networks on EU decision-making is signif-
icant in terms of political networks and social cognition. In sharing experi-
ences, "best practices," and tips in dealing with EU institutions, common
local and regional elites are engaged in a mutual socialization and learning
process. They think of themselves as part of a common European space, far
beyond the border limits of the member states. Territoriality was not only
expanded in its reference frame, it was also substantially transformed by the
intrusion of the EU as a third player in center-periphery relations. Brussels
did not supplant the national capital cities as the new political center of Eu-
rope. Rather European integration progressively substitutes a common
poly-centric structure to the previous pasting of mono-centric national ter-
ritories. The mobilization of territorial interests is pro-active in this process,
and contributes to the development of multi-level governance.
Considered over the medium term, the EU regional policy and territorial
mobilizations developed in connection with it went through two distinct
phases. The early stages of policy developments, the most dramatic of
which occurred during the eighties as a mean to complete the single mar-
ket, were sustained by a coalition between the Commission and regions,
both seeking emancipation from national governments through policy im-
plementation. Territorial interest representation was burgeoning to shape
the new POS and to take advantage of it, both in material (access to struc-
tural funds) and symbolic (political representation outside the nation-
state) terms. As the regional policy was still in the making, the actual con-
figuration of policy networks was very flexible, and their further
developments largely uncertain. Flexibility and uncertainty were character-
istics of multi-level governance, as opposed to rigidity and predictability of
policy networks in state governance.
During this period, the idea of a "Europe of the Regions," where regional
governments would supplement and possibly eclipse national bureaucra-
cies as the proper tier ofEU policymaking, became popular within decision-
making milieus, and brought about controversies between its promoters
and opponents. However, the situation went through substantial changes
after 1993. Reasons for such changes include some difficulties in imple-
mentation of regional policy ranging from mismanagement to under-con-
sumption of credits, the perspective of the enlargement and the associated
need to revise the structural funds, the decline in political leadership of the
Commission after the J. Delors presidency, and finally the rise of Euroskep-
ticism among public opinion after the Maastricht Treaty. As a result, the
same pattern of EU regional policy was consolidated during the nineties,
stabilizing its principles and procedures until 2006. This phase offered
fewer new opportunities and less uncertainty than the previous one, and
more clearly defined responsibilities among stakeholders. National author-
ities clearly exerted a stronger influence during this phase, through the
Council of Ministers regarding policymaking towards the enlargement, and
through national bureaucracies in the monitoring and financial control of
structural funds' implementation.
Significantly, a new development occurred in 1999 with the adoption by
the Council of Ministers of the European Spatial Development Perspective,
a document aiming at a "balanced and sustainable development" of the EU
territory. IS The initiative acknowledged both vertical and horizontal means
of cooperation for spatial development. But it clearly signified that the
Commission had no exclusive leadership role in regional policy, and that
within the existing framework, gains could be made through transgovern-
mental cooperation and benchmarking. Transgovernmentalism neverthe-
less does not equate with a simple return to intergovernmentalism. If na-
tional bureaucracies definitely remain key actors, they have lost their
exclusive privilege in shaping norms of the policy process, and play in
much more pluralistic policy communities.
CURRENT FEATURES OF EUROPEAN

TERRITORIAL INTEGRATION
How does this setting of public policy and interests' mobilization relate to
territorial integration in the EU? Territorial integration is considered here
under its socio-economic and political dimensions.
Let us first consider socioeconomic inequalities. As the market economy,
industrialization, and urbanization operate through some forms of spatial
concentration, territorial inequalities are co-substantial of social and economic
156 Chapter 6
activities. Regional differences across the EU are significantly wider than in

the United States. Territorial inequalities impact upon the living conditions of
European citizens, such as their level of income, access to employment, edu-
cation, and social benefits. Therefore they impact on the degree of social co-
hesion of the EU, and motivate the policy intervention of structural funds.
We use here statistical data collected and produced by the Commission
as part of the regional policy.19 The assessment of territorial inequalities is
always dependent on the unit of analysis. Territorial integration can refer to
differences across member states, to differences across regions, or across
smaller subnational units. Cross-regional variations can in tum be mea-
sured all over Europe or within member states. And the extent of territorial
inequalities is naturally affected by the successive enlargements and the ex-
pansion of the EU territory.
Consider first integration across the fifteen member states before the
2004 enlargement. In the "cohesion countries" eligible for the cohesion
fund (Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland), growth in GDP per head was
overall higher than the EU average, for both periods 1986-1996 and
1995-2001, and differences in GDP per head with the EU average have
been reduced (table 6.1). Two cases are worth noticing. Ireland, with the
Table 6.1. Cohesion and Convergence among EU-15 Member States: GDP
1986-2001
GOP/head GOP/head
1986-1996 1995-2001 GOP/head 1986 GOP/head 2001
Average annual Average annual
growth rate growth rate
EU-15 2.1 2.5 100.0 100.0
EU-25 2.6
Austria 2.4
Belgium 2.4 106.9
Denmark 2.5 115.3
Finland 4.1 103.9
Germany 1.6 100.4
France 2.6 104.8
Greece 1.6 3.5 59.2 67.1
Ireland 6.2 9.2 60.8 117.6
Italy 1.9 100.1
Luxembourg 6.1 194.0
Netherlands 3.3 113.3
Portugal 3.5 3.5 55.1 70.7
Spain 2.8 3.7 69.8 84.2
Sweden 2.9 106.1
UK 3.0 105.4
Source: European Commission, Third Report on Economic and Social Cohesion, Luxembourg: Office for Of-
ficial Publications of the European Communities, 2004.
highest growth in the EU (9.2% in 1995-2001) and the second rank in

GDP per head in 2001, largely driven by foreign investment stands in a way
as the herald of cohesion policy. On the other hand Greece, lagging behind
in the first period, has been clearly catching up in the second, with a growth
in GDP one point above the EU average. Even if disparities remain sub-
stantial (Greece and Portugal GDPs per head are still around 70% of the EU
average), EU integration has resulted to convergence rather than divergence
among member states.
GDP is known to be a rough measure of living standards, as it does not
take into account the actual use of economic wealth, which may be invested
elsewhere. Unemployment in the cohesion countries between 1987 and
2002 nevertheless was also dramatically reduced in Ireland and Spain, and
to a lesser extent in Portugal where figures remain rather low anyway. On
the other extreme, Greece went though a rise in unemployment from 7.4%
to 10%, above the EU average. Even if their unemployment level is obvi-
ously a burden, Spain and Greece nowadays display patterns close to France
Table 6.2. Cohesion and Convergence among EU-15 Member States: Unemployment
and Poverty
Unemployment Rate Unemployment Rate
(%) 1987 (%) 2002 Poverty Rate 2001***
EU-15 10.5** 7.8
Austria 3.8 4.0 7
Belgium 11.0 7.5 7
Denmark 5.8 4.6 6
Finland 5.2 9.1 6
France 10.3 8.7 9
Germany 6.3* 9.4 6
Greece 7.4 10.0 14
Ireland 18.1 4.3 13
Italy 10.2 9.0 13
Luxembourg 2.5 2.6 9
Netherland 9.9 2.8 5
Portugal 7.0 5.1 15
Spain 20.8 11.4 10
Sweden 2.5 5.1 ****
UK 11.0 5.1 10
* Excluding new Lander
** Euro-12
*** At-persistent-risk-of-poverty rate. The share of persons with an equivalized disposable income below the
risk-of-poverty threshold in the current year, and in at least two of the preceding three years. The thresh-
old is set at 60% of the national median equivalized disposable income.
**** Not available
158 Chapter 6
and Germany. Despite this relative convergence, all cohesion countries in-
cluding Ireland still present poverty rates above the Ell average.
Cohesion among member states is structurally affected by the ongoing
process of enlargement. Disparities in income and employment have been
significantly widened with the 2004 enlargement and the joining of ten
new member states to the Ell. Average GDP per head in these countries is
under half the average of the present Ell, and only 56% of those of work-
ing age have jobs, as against 64% in the Ell-15. 20 Growth in new member
states was in the mid-1990s 1.5% above the Ell average, but decreased after
2001, and remains largely dependent upon the dynamism of markets in the
rest ofthe Ell.
Let us now consider cross-regional disparities. Among European re-
gions,21 the top twenty-five regions (including the regions of Hamburg,
Brussels, Paris, London, Vienna, and north Italian regions) had a GDP per
head of 143 (Ell-IS = 100) in 1996. At the other end of the scale, the
twenty-five poorest regions (including the French overseas territories, Por-
tuguese regions and Extremadura, and new German Lander), had a GDP
per head of 59. The ratio between GDP of richest and poorest regions was
2.42. In 1986, the same ratio was 2.65. Although they remain wide, the
range of regional disparities between the extremes therefore tended to de-
cline during this period. Nevertheless, regional disparities measured by
standard deviation in GDP per head, thus referring to the spread of the
distribution around the mean, have slightly increased between 1986 and
1998 (from 27.1 to 28.3) across the Ell, and remained stable regarding
unemployment (table 6.3). This is partly due to the German reunifica-
tion, but more generally to more uneven regional developments in the
medium range of the scale. Significantly, regional disparities within mem-
ber states tended to increase, both in terms of GDP and unemployment,
in nearly all countries except Portugal. The reason for this trend lies in the
fact that cross-national convergence is driven "from above" by the devel-
opment of most wealthy regions in member states, thus increasing the
gap with other median regions, even if poor regions tend to catch up at
the bottom.
Naturally these trends in regional development are not the direct or ex-
clusive outcome of the Ell regional policy. Regional disparities vary as a
function of several factors, mainly economic growth, foreign and domestic
investment, and national policies, all contributing to reduce their range.
The Commission nevertheless estimates the impact of structural policy in
1999 as a gain in GDP of 1.5 % in Spain, 2% in Greece, 3% in Ireland, 4%
in the German Lander, and 4.5 % in Portugal. 22
Regional development within national territories is also more contrasted,
and sometimes polarized. 23 In urban regions, most wealthy areas are often
in close proximity to urban decay and concentration of poverty,24 notice-
Table 6.3. Regional Disparities (Standard Deviation) in GDP per Head and
Unemployment among EU-15 Member States
Unemployment Unemployment
GDP*lhead 1986 GDP*lhead 1998 1987** 1999
EU-15 27.1 28.3 5.6 5.5
Austria 24.7 27.8 1.0 1.1
Belgium 25.0 25.7 3.0 4.3
Finland 17.4 24.6 2.6 3.2
France 27.8 26.5 1.8 2.5
Germany 22.0** 26.8 2.2** 4.3
Greece 6.0 10.2 2.1 2.0
Ireland *** 17.3 *** 0.7
Italy 25.2 27.6 5.2 7.9
Netherlands 12.2 15.8 1.4 0.8
Portugal 16.2 14.2 2.4 1.4
Spain 13.7 19.1 5.7 5.7
Sweden 10.7 17.1 1.0 1.6
UK 19.6 33.9 3.6 2.6
* Power purchasing standard

** Excluding new Uinder
*** Not available
ably in the London area. Regions with a high level of employment in ser-
vices are divided between large urban centers concentrating business ser-
vices and poor peripheries where the public sector is the main employer.
Manufacturing is generally spread over dense urban networks, but again,
the most productive high technology areas contrast with industrial restruc-
turing and sometimes decline. And rural areas alternate natural resources,
tourism, residential attractiveness, and high value-added activities relying
on connections with urban networks, with vulnerable dependence on
mono-activities (particularly agriculture), depopulation, and loss of a
skilled workforce leaving them with few development options. Such differ-
entiation often occurs at subregional levels, producing a pattern described
by the Commission as "patchwork development. "25 This picture indicates
that territorial integration at the European level, attested by the convergence
between member states and by the reduced range of regional disparities at
the extremes, goes with important tensions in national patterns of socio-
spatial development. In particular, inter-regional disparities within coun-
tries and subregional differentiations among provinces, departments, or
districts and among urban neighborhoods tend to increase. European inte-
gration coincides with a trend to territorial fragmentation within the mem-
ber states, most profoundly affecting the cohesion of urban localities.
160 Chapter 6
Considering now the political dimension of this process, does European

integration depicted with subnational mobilizations provoke some signifi-
cant tensions at the national level ? In the strong sense of the term, the an-
swer has been so far negative. The territorial organization of member states
inherited from long-term policy processes followed the same pattern of
path dependency as institutional arrangements of the different welfare
states. As exemplified by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, state structures are not necessarily perma-
nent, and European integration may represent a chock for the most fragile
among them. No member state has collapsed or changed its boundaries
since its accession to the EU, however, despite important autonomist move-
ments within some of them. None of these movements has been successful
in imposing secession from the national state. Political violence in the
Basque Country, Northern Ireland, and Corsica remains largely unad-
dressed and unaffected by EU institutions. Core institutional reforms, as
important as they have been in Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and in the UK,
were in no way imposed by the EU. And sub national authorities did not
supplant national governments influence in EU decision-making.
On the other hand, territorial policymaking and policy networks have
been deeply transformed with the EU regional policy, and European inte-
gration in that sense substantially renewed the relation between European
states and their territories, towards a less exclusive and more cooperative
style of authority. Structural funds provided the incentive for these changes,
and often helped to motivate reforms in operating procedures. The notions
of subsidiarity, partnership, additionality, and evaluation reframed center-
periphery relations on a contractual mode. They helped in that way to con-
solidate and to articulate national and European patterns of territorial inte-
gration. But while the institutional hardware of center-periphery relations is
still there, the software has been changed. Pro-active territories such as Scot-
land, Wales, the Midlands, the Four Motors (Baden-Wiirttemberg, Rh6ne-
Alpes, Catalonia, and Lombardy), Atlantic regions, and border regions used
this maneuvering room to assert themselves in the European arena, and to
renew the meaning of regionalism and territorial governance, adding to
rather than contesting nation-states. Beyond these rather stabilized forms of
collective action, proliferating ad hoc policy networks considerably densi-
fied and expanded intergovernmental relations on a transnational scale. Eu-
ropean integration at the national and sub national level was cumulative in
these different cases.
Nevertheless, structural funds failed to prevent the development of ten-
sions in social cohesion and the socio-spatial fragmentation of develop-
ment in European countries. Significantly, this fragmentation has been lo-
cated within, rather than among, the member states, often in
micro-territories, at the core of urban decay or rural desertification areas. Ex-
clusion is cumulative in these cases. The concentration of job losses and de-
population in the poorest neighborhoods and counties is not caused by Eu-
ropean integration, and structural funds bring substantial public support to
these areas. But their populations, and those feeling threatened by this so-
cial reality, feel all the more marginalized as they witness high levels of
growth and development in contiguous areas. They experience political dis-
trust, social resentment, and loss of identity. Those are the areas where
turnout in elections collapses, where cultural and ethnic tensions are most
vivid and sometimes nourish urban riots, where popUlist and neo-nation-
alist candidates often score high, and where support for European integra-
tion is at the lowest.
Populist and far rightist movements in France, Flanders and Wallonia,
Northern Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, and Bayern flourished
on this basis. EU institutions failed to secure support from popular classes
to their policies, and European integration did not prevent the decay of so-
cial and political cohesion at the national and local level. Despite signifi-
cant collective action developed through networks of territorial governance,
the growing difficulties of cities' governments to integrate urban popula-
tions into local societies is an exemplar of this. When Europe is actually
contested, it is more likely to be in the name of the nation and of its lost
cohesion than in the name of other territorial identities.
CONCLUSION
European integration undoubtedly exercises complex influences upon cen-

ter-periphery relations in Europe. The most straightforward is that the EU
appears as a polycentric system, from both the economic and political point
of view, and that peripheries are more diversified than they used to be in
culturally unified nation-states. The cohesion policy contributes to reduce
general regional disparities across the EU, although their major dynamics
lie with macro-economic factors. For the most peripheral regions, it repre-
sents an essential tool for their development, channeled by national gov-
ernments. From this point of view, regional policy is an integrative factor
between national centers and peripheries. But it also opened up a "stall" of
public policies constitutive of an enlarged interactive sphere. Europe of the
regions does not signifY the end of the state, but rather of its hierarchical
monopoly over the political interactions active on its territory and, thus, the
end of its most strictly Weberian forms. In the breach opened by this slack-
ening off of constraints imposed by the state, the most pro-active territorial
interests rush to mobilize and to assert themselves in the EU political sys-
tem. However, this mobilization process requires both institutional re-
sources and social capital, particularly with the capacity to engage business's
162 Chapter 6
interests in territorial coalitions, and remains therefore largely uneven. As

most peripheral regions often lack this social capital, and most politically
powerful ones face the consensus between their national governments and
the Commission not to address domestic political issues, mobilization has
been most significant among medium-range subnational authorities, both
in economic and political terms.
Territorial integration therefore appears predominantly as a positive-sum
game between subnational, national, and EU institutions. Strategies to by-
pass the state and coalition formation between the Commission and re-
gional or local governments have been limited to the initial period and to
the implementation of structural funds. Situations of cumulative exclusion
do occur within the member states, most of the time at a micro-territorial
level. They nourish disaffection towards national and EU politics, and fuel
populist, neo-nationalist and anti-European political enterprises. Therefore
they have contributed to the patterning of new political cleavages linked to
European integration.
NOTES
1. Stein Rokkan and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Building States and Nations (vol. 2),
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1973; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European states, AD
990-1990, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990; Charles Tilly, The Formation of National States in
Western Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975; Norbert Elias, The
Civilizing Process. Vol. 2, State Formation and Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell, 1982;
Frank H. Aarebrot, Stein Rokkan, and Derek Urwin, Centre-Periphery Structures in Eu-
rope: An International Social Science Council Workbook in Comparative Analysis, Frank-
furt am Main: Campus-Verlag, 1987.
2. European Commission, Second Report on Economic and Social Cohesion, Luxem-
bourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001.
3. See in particular John Loughlin, ed., Subnational Democracy in the European
Union: Challenges and Opportunities, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
4. Arthur Benz and Burkard Eberlein, "The Europeanization of Regional Policies:
Patterns of Multi-Level Governance," Journal of European Public Policy, 6, no. 2
(1999): 329-48.
5. Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, Multilevel Governance and European Integra-
tion, Lanham, MD: Rowman &. Littlefield, 2001.
6. Andre Sapir et al., An Agenda for a Growing Europe, Brussels: Report of an Inde-
pendent High-Level Study Group, established on the initiative of the President of
the European Commission, 2003. Also see Section 4.
7. Hooghe and Marks, Multilevel Governance and European Integration; Liesbet
Hooghe, ed., Cohesion Policy and European Integration: Building Multi-Level Gover-
nance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
8. Liesbet Hooghe, "The Mobilization of Territorial Interests and Multi-Level
Governance," in L'action collective en Europe: Collective Action in Europe, ed. Richard
Balme, Didier Chabanet, and Vincent Wright. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 347-76.
9. Hubert Heinelt and Randall Smith, eds., Policy Networks and European Struc-
tural Funds, Avebury: Aldershot, 1996; Liesbet Hooghe, ed., Cohesion Policy and Eu-
ropean Integration; Gary Marks, "Exploring and Explaining Variation in EU Cohesion
Policy," in Cohesion Policy and European Integration, ed. Liesbet Hooghe, 388-422.
10. Christopher K. Ansell, Craig Parsons, and Keith A. Darden, "Dual Networks
in European Regional Development Policy," Journal of Common Market Studies, 35,
no. 3 (1997): 347-75; Liesbet Hooghe, "EU Cohesion Policy and Competing Mod-
els of European Capitalism," Journal of Common Market Studies, 36, no. 4 (1998):
457-77.
11. Gary Marks, "An Actor-Centered Approach to Multilevel Governance," in The
Regional Dimension of the European Union: Towards a Third Level in Europe? ed. Char-
lie Jeffery, London: Frank Cass, 1997,20-40.
12. This arrangement applies also to the Council working groups.
13. Michael Keating, The New Regionalism in Western Europe, Cheltenham, UK: Ed-
ward Elgar, 1998.
14. Since the Amsterdam Treaty, consultation is required for education and vo-
cational training, culture, health, transport and trans-European networks, economic
and social cohesion, employment, social matters, and the environment.
15. Martyn Farrows and Rosarie McCarthy, "Opinion Formulation and Impact in
the Committee of the Regions," Regional and Federal Studies, 7, no. 1 (1997): 23-49.
16. Gary Marks, Fran<;ois Nielsen, Leonard Ray, and Jane Salk, "Competencies,
Cracks and Conflict: Regional Mobilization in the European Union," Comparative
Political Studies, 29, no. 2 (1996): 164-92.
17. Richard Balme, ed., Les politiques du neo-regionalisme: Action collective regionale
et globalisation, Paris: Economica, 1996; Michael Keating, ed., Regions and Regional-
ism in Europe, Cheltenham, UK: Edwar Elgar, 2004.
18. European Commission, ESDP, European Spatial Development Perspective: To-
wards Balanced and Sustainable Development of the Territory of the European Union, Lux-
embourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1999.
19. European Commission, Sixth Periodic Report on the Social and Economic Situa-
tion and Development of Regions of the EU, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publica-
tions of the European Communities, 1999; European Commission, Second Report on
Economic and Social Cohesion; European Commission, Third Report on Economic and
Social Cohesion, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Com-
munities, 2004.
20. European Commission, Third Report on Economic and Social Cohesion.
21. We refer here to NUTS 2 territorial levels of analysis as defined by the Com-
mission.
22. European Commission, Third Report on Economic and Social Cohesion.
23. European Commission, ESDP.
24. Mike Geddes and John Benington, eds., Local Partnership and Social Cohesion
in Europe, London: Routledge, 2001; Patrick Le Gales, European Cities: Social Conflicts
and Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
25. European Commission, ESDP.
7
Collective Action and New Rights
Who benefits from Europe? A pluralist interpretation of the building of Eu-

rope would stress the openness of EU institutions to different interest
groups, and even their capacity to provide alternative forms of access to ac-
tors under-represented in national institutions; while a more elitist inter-
pretation, sensitive to political domination, would put the emphasis on the
filters at work in the process. The question arises, in particular, with regard
to a set of rights politically structured well after the formation of cleavages
stabilized within the framework of the nation-states. In this chapter we
shall examine three areas of public policy and mobilization corresponding
to the defense of the rights of women, of the environment, and of migrants.
We aim at understanding their mode of development within both the mem-
ber states and the EU. The reciprocal influences between these two levels of
action will be given special attention, with a view to identifying the
processes of Europeanization at work.
The choice of these case studies is justified by several factors. We seek,
first, to compare recent areas of European public policy, immigration being
the most recent addition to the EU agenda. This parallel will provide some
important lessons regarding the EU's capacity to represent constituent in-
terests at different stages in the integration process, relatively early for the
defense of the rights of women and the environment, and later for the man-
agement of migratory phenomena and the populations concerned, which
now constitutes an emergent, increasingly sensitive political issue.
This choice, then, allows for a better understanding of why and how cer-
tain causes enjoy readier access to EU institutions than others and are bet-
ter defended by them. The areas of study selected involve quite distinct in-
terest categories. Thus women's rights organizations strive to promote
165
166 Chapter 7
policies of equality with universal reach; the defenders of the environment

fight to preserve the integrity of public goods; and the champions of mi-
grants fight for the rights of a specific group. We shall see via these three ex-
amples in what ways the activists concerned affect the rationale of repre-
sentation within the EU.
Lastly, our analysis suggests the need for real prudence in respect to the
answers to all these questions. In recent times, in Europe, the rights of
women and the environment have advanced considerably, with the support
and sometimes at the instigation of the EU; migrants, on the other hand,
find themselves in a much more difficult situation-non-EU citizens seek-
ing residence on European territory having to face obstacles to entry set in
their way by national and European authorities. The role of anticipator and
driving force that European institutions can play in the promotion of cer-
tain causes is not systematic. At the same time, in each of the cases under
study, mobilization remains largely anchored in specific territorial contexts
and differs markedly from one country to another. The mosaic taking shape
thus associates European integration with the maintaining of the disparities
between nations, selectively benefiting certain emergent causes and accen-
tuating rather than reducing inequality between groups with greater and
lesser resources.
A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS
The first significant campaigns for male/female equality began in EU mem-

ber states in the early 1960s and were often influenced by the pioneering
civil rights movement in the United States. These campaigns, however,
quickly ran up against the conservatism of national decision-making
spheres and public opinion, and so began looking to EU institutions for al-
ternative support. In this context, Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome, bearing
on equal pay, would provide the basis for promotion of policies of equality
by the defenders of women's rights in Europe. l Remarkably, this provision
was introduced under pressure from employers, in France especially, who
were keen to harmonize social welfare costs-notably for men and
women-in the light of the future establishment of the Common Market.
This judicial anchor was taken advantage of by European institutions,
and notably the Commission, which demonstrated undeniable militancy
in this respect. In 1974, Jacqueline Nonon, then the head ofDG V "Social
Affairs," decided to set up a study group devoted to working conditions for
women in Europe; and rather than appealing to independent experts and
Commission bureaucrats, or to European trade unions that would have
tried to control the initiative, she chose personalities known for their mili-
tant activity at national level, the great majority of them women. 2 This
Collective Action and New Rights 167
group showed itself extremely active and set about drawing up resolutions
for the Council, three of which resulted in the adopting of directives in less
than a year. 3 The extent and the justifiability of these efforts were confirmed
in 1976 by the creation of a unit for equal opportunity, followed in 1981
by the granting to the study group of the status of consultative committee
for equal male/female opportunity. In 1976, a Women's Information Unit
was created at the DC X "Employment and Work." Coordinated by Fausta
Deshormes, at the time also editor in chief of the magazine Femmes d'Eu-
rope, this body would decisively speed up the networking of the women's
rights defense organizations in the member states.
Three years later the first EP elections with universal suffrage offered this
movement a new forum, justifying the holding of work sessions and con-
ferences to which the most active national organizations were invited. An
ad hoc parliamentary commission for the rights of women and equality of
opportunity was set up and in 1981 became the Permanent Committee for
Women's Rights. The host of encounters that followed-in Bonn in 1982,
Turin in 1984, The Hague in 1985 and London in 1987-brought together
85 associations representing over 50 million members.4 This seemed the
right moment for the creation of a European body for the defense of
women's rights, and the European Women's Lobby (EWL) was officially
launched in September 1990.
The influence EWL enjoyed in European quarters was largely due to the
determination shown by the Commission, and from the outset it had a mo-
nopoly on access to EU budget resources relating to associative action in fa-
vor of women. The careers-both personal and professional-of its "found-
ing mothers" linked the combat for women's rights to the defense of the
European project, and this kind of commitment gave them special and of-
ten direct access to the highest echelons of EU officialdom, notably under
the presidency of J. Delors. Today EWL is a powerful, well-structured Euro-
pean pressure group embracing some 4,000 organizations. With 80% of its
financing provided by the EC, it is a member of the consultative committee
for equal opportunity between men and women, itself set up by the Com-
mission. 5 Enjoying consultant status with the United Nations Economic
and Social Council and the Council of Europe, it takes part in numerous in-
ternational conferences, such as the World Conference on Women held in
Beijing in 1995. Thus it mobilizes large transnational networks of experts,
which take part in the drawing-up and implementation of public policies at
national, European and even global level.
At the same time, EWL integration into European spheres-largely a pre-
condition for its effectiveness-constitutes an obstacle for other groups de-
fending similar interests. Representing only national coordinating bodies
and European organizations, and being exclusively focused on EU lobby-
ing, EWL tends to marginalize the local and national groups working closest
168 Chapter 7
to the grass roots; it leaves little room for expressive forms of action and
even less for outright protest. Thus it has played no significant part in the
worldwide women's marches movement that sprang up in 2000-even in
terms of European coordination or when the demonstrations took place in
Brussels: the range of action taken, the goals pursued and the actors mobi-
lized were at a far remove from its habitual register.
Beginning, then, with a limited legislative premise originally bearing
solely on the question of equal pay, the European agenda has expanded to
take in numerous spheres of public and private life-such as outwork po-
litical representation, sexual harassment health, and the rights of women
who are pregnant or on maternity leave-extending far beyond the purview
of Article 119. The EC has carefully taken account of member state opposi-
tion and when the odds seemed against it, opted for recommendations
that, while not enforceable, have enabled a flexible but effective fight
against forms of sexual discrimination. It initiated positive action programs
to back up existing systems and used part of the European structural and so-
cial funds to support specific women's aid measures. It has also carried out
significant work in terms of research and information, notably via the ac-
tivities of the Centre for Research on European Women, contributing to the
creation of a cognitive framework for the defense of women's rights. The EP
has also helped to increase the impact of their claims. Lastly, the decisions
handed down by the ECJ have clarified and most often extended the scope
of EU directives, thus facilitating their application in the fields of national
policy and legislation.
Overall, then, European institutions have shown themselves highly re-
ceptive to the women's cause. The relative specificity of European elites-of-
ten younger, better educated, more aware of feminist issues and less cultur-
ally conservative than those of the member states-has worked in its favor.
Finally, the international context may have made a contribution, with the
International Labour Organisation and the United Nations developing
their own commitments to gender equality.
Since the early 1990s protective measures for women's rights have been
considerably enhanced at both European and national levels. The Amster-
dam Treaty was a major step forward in this respect, making male/female
equality one of the EU's specific goals. This concern for mainstreaming gen-
der equality is now integrated into all European action programs, with an
increasing focus on indirect forms of discrimination-those which, while
paying lip service to equality, generate negative effects for women. This
overall aim is backed up by a complex, full-time monitoring system that
bears credit to EU determination in this field. The adoption of the Charter
of Fundamental Rights was an impressive illustration of the EWL's influ-
ence, the organization ensuring that the document be non-gender-specific.
Despite unwillingness in some quarters and variable impact, the member
states have been induced to take account of the EU stipulations and to im-
plement gender-equality measures of their own. To take one example, it was
in the wake of a European Council recommendation of 1996 aimed at en-
suring equitable participation of men and women in posts of responsibility
that the most recalcitrant countries-notably Belgium, France, and Italy-
passed legislation giving women readier access to elected political posts.
However, EU-driven policies of equality have not prevented extremely
variable levels of national mobilization, as shown in figure 7.1. The specific
dynamic of European institutions is overlaid on that of national spaces to
a much greater extent than it supplants it. The phenomenon is even largely
cumulative, with the countries in which participation is strongest-Bel-
gium, Austria, and Luxembourg-being among those best represented in
EWL. Overall, participation is higher in the former Eastern Bloc countries-
above all in Slovakia, which was not an EU member in 1999-than in
southern European member countries (Italy, Spain, France), a fact that
highlights the fundamental importance of national contexts among mobi-
lization factors.
Thus women's rights militancy is traditionally much more limited in the
Latin countries than in continental and northern Europe. When sophisti-
cated social welfare systems favor the integration of women into the labor
market, there is greater civic commitment by women, especially in relation
to their own cause. Paradoxically countries that, like the UK, have made
gender a significant public policy category, produce little mobilization by
women because their rights are at least legally recognized.
One vital question is obviously that of the impact of formally granted
women's rights. Do these rights entail a real decrease in gender inequality,
and if so, what has been the EU's part in the process? Answers to these ques-
tions come with various qualifications, notably according to the criteria ap-
plied and/or the countries under consideration. 6 Thus for the period
1998-2003, the gender gap in employment rates fell significantly (from
20% to 16%) in the countries currently belonging to the EU-with the ex-
ception of Slovenia-notably because of the employment policies being
promoted at the European level. Similarly, education levels among women
are rising steadily, outstripping that of men in almost all member countries
if the basic criterion is the percentage of individuals graduating from upper
secondary school. There has also been real progress in combating violence
against women.
On the other hand, progress seems slower and less widespread where
salary inequalities are concerned, women with comparable skills being paid
close to 25% less than men. In this respect national situations show marked
discrepancies: in recent years the gap has clearly narrowed in Ireland, Swe-
den, and above all in the new member countries, while widening in Bel-
gium, Spain, Denmark, and Portugal, and remaining unchanged in France.
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Figure 7.1. Membership in Women's Rights Organizations, 1999
Source: World Value Survey, www.worldvaluessurvey.org.
The risk of poverty is also higher for women compared to men in seventeen
of the member states. It should be pointed out, too, that posts of political
and/or economic responsibility are still heavily loaded in favor of men,
with no sign of significant improvement: as an example, women held less
than one seat in four in national parliaments in 2004. In all these respects
EU determination is unequivocal and has shaped a European social model
that has contributed to real advances, even if it is not fully applied.
Lastly, two main limiting factors can be identified with regard to the
progress of women's rights. First, the member states retain full autonomy
in respect to issues that, even if they do not concern women as such, have
a pronounced effect on their situation in terms of social welfare, educa-
tion, child-care policy, and so on. More generally, EU initiatives systemat-
ically pass through the political filters of national governments, the result
being that their impact is highly variable and often limited. Second, wide-
spread public deficit cuts and, more broadly, the trend towards minimal
state intervention, make it more difficult to apply policies of equality, so-
cial support, or counter-discrimination, which require real commitment
by the authorities.
Thus the window of opportunity opened by the progress in European in-
tegration seems to be partially blocked by more restrictive labor legislation
resulting from the pressure of international competitiveness. In this context
policies of equality are not always synonymous with social progress. In the
UK, for example, harmonization of male/female retirement age meant an
increase in the number of years worked by women. Similarly, France has
been condemned several times by the ECJ on the grounds that the prohibi-
tion of night work for women in industry is incompatible with the aim of
gender equality. In much broader terms, the question that arises is that of
preconditions for implementation of this policy in the light of the Lisbon
strategy, an increase in the European employment rate seeming to involve a
challenge to social protection for the categories most excluded from the la-
bor market, and women in particular.
Women's rights have indisputably benefited from the European integra-
tion" but in a somewhat top-down way, in the sense that well-structured
networks with access to EU institutions and enjoying their backing have a
significant influence within those institutions. The explanation for this suc-
cess lies in the intersection of windows of action generated by the EU with
women's groups with sufficient resources in the national spaces to be able
to grasp these opportunities. At the same time, access to European spheres
by a powerful, well-organized lobby-one possessing, in this case, a virtual
monopoly of influence-makes representation more difficult for other or-
ganizations, which find themselves restricted to the national spaces. Fur-
thermore, European policies on gender equality do not always seem capa-
ble of producing significant convergence between member states.
172 Chapter 7
THE ENVIRONMENT: THINK GLOBAL, ACT LOCAL
Defenders of the environment have long sought to organize collectively at

the European leveL notably because the issues at stake are often transna-
tional. Although the Treaty of Rome gave Europe no authority in this field,
the early 1970s saw a significant change. In 1972 the European Council
meeting in Paris proposed a five-year action plan for the environment that
was followed by six others, the last being currently under way. 7 The creation
of the EEB in 1974 was a direct consequence of this initiative and enabled
European institutions to enjoy the collaboration of a sufficiently large and
well-structured network of specialists. For almost twelve years EEB was the
sole organization with EU recognition in this field. The SEA would change
this situation radically, including in its aims an entire chapter devoted to a
European environmental policy. Even if the implementation of this policy
remained largely under the control of the member states, this new phase in
the integration process gave rise to numerous European networks. The pe-
riod was all the more conducive to the mobilization of environmental in-
terests in that ecology parties were racking up numerous electoral successes
in member states and even achieving representation in the EP.
In this context the international branch of Friends of the Earth (FoE)
opened an office in Brussels in 1986, followed in 1988 by Greenpeace, and
in 1999 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Climate Action
Network, now Climate Network Europe (CNE). The European Federation
for Transport and the Environment (EFTE) and Birdlife International did
the same in 1992 and 1993 respectively. Most of these organizations tended
to specialize in a specific area, but this was balanced out by a parallel Eu-
ropean coordination movement leading to the formation of the Group of
II
Eight." B The Treaty of Maastricht took a further step by making environ-

mental protection a transversal concern for all sector policies and involving
the EP more closely with these issues via the co-decision procedure. The Eu-
ropean Environmental Agency, based in Copenhagen, was set up in 1993
and made possible regular overviews of the situation. Within only a few
years, then, extension ofEU competences brought with it significant growth
in the number of European environmental protection networks. Support
has been provided by the decisions of the ECL which in the rare cases
brought to its attention has very often found in favor of these groups.
However, results for the last few years seem less encouraging. First, certain
member states do not support an ambitious European environmental pro-
gram and on a number of occasions have tried to oppose Commission ini-
tiatives. These battles for influence are destabilizing for the interest groups
concerned in that they force them to diversifY their action plans and thus
disperse their efforts. Second, the budget difficulties most members states
are facing have made the Commission much more prudent in its initiatives:
for instance, the aims of the different programs launched in the early years
of the new century as part of the sustainable development strategy have
been revised downwards as it became more and more evident that the Lis-
bon strategy aims would not be attained. And lastly, the advocates of an en-
vironmentally strong Europe have been deprived of the formerly unfailing
support of Germany, which since the collapse of the Berlin wall and reuni-
fication has been concentrating its efforts on internal political needs.
This changing configuration has led the Commission to modify its strat-
egy and, recently, to ask member states to identify their main environmen-
tal problems themselves, with the emphasis on a sector-based approach. In
a context of a shortage of resources, this pragmatic tactic requires increas-
ingly exigent, perceptive input from NGOs, which sometimes have trouble
meeting the needs of European institutions in terms of expertise and in
making their voices heard when implementation of their demands would
entail, at least in the short term, significant financial cost.
Recent institutional changes within the EU, notably the extension of the
prerogatives of a Parliament traditionally receptive to the interests of pro-
tectors of the environment, may bring the latter increased influence.
However, increasing access to EU institutions is of benefit only to a small
number of the most powerful organizations, and these have a tendency to
monopolize representation of the environmental cause. The others found it
easier to get a hearing in the EU when the integration process was less ad-
vanced. Rationalization of consultation procedures and the relative satura-
tion of the system of European representation are resulting in an increas-
ingly higher entry fee for any new arrivals, while the resources of bodies like
Greenpeace and FoE have been stagnant since the early 1990s. These diffi-
culties explain in part their greater specialization and, above all, their reser-
vations about full involvement in Europe. Such factors directly affect the
EEB, whose capacity for coordination and influence is declining.9 In addi-
tion, other, often competing interests-those of manufacturers and pro-
ducers, for example-are enjoying steadily increasing protection within the
framework of Europe's public policies, especially since the creation of the
single market.
All in all, even if the windows of opportunity in the EU remain signifi-
cant, intensification of the building of Europe has brought, if not a decline,
at least a stagnation in their openness to environmental interests. In partic-
ular, fragmentation among national and European actors seems never to
have been as pronounced. The organizations most active in relation to the
EU are thus tending to develop ranges of action that are less and less as-
sertive, even when the organizations are-like Greenpeace-traditionally
dissenting. In return they lose the support of other national actors which,
like Earth First!, refuse to associate with networks they see as insufficiently
confrontational. lO Other organizations, more or less lacking the financial
174 Chapter 7
means needed to get access to European spheres, have a tendency to turn

towards national governments, which then become intermediaries and a
way of putting indirect pressure on the EU. The differentiation of these
fields of action prompts such players to try less conventional, more aggres-
sive and often spectacular modes of intervention.
Lastly, the globalization of collective action-accentuated by the increas-
ing ease of transport, the spread of modern, especially electronic commu-
nications technology, and the rise in ecological awareness-is relatively dis-
connected from the European setting. In line with the famous Think
Global/Act Local precept, "glocalisation" is thus a sign of a desire to remain
in contact, in terms of geographical proximity, with grassroots militant net-
works attuned to people's concerns.
Despite the establishment of a European framework, the vast majority of
mobilizations in this field continue to take place within the nation-states;
so much so, indeed, that the existence of a transnational movement re-
mains problematic. Environmental protection campaigns in the EU are
most often sporadic, limited, and relatively informal, being initiated either
by national organizations that cooperate on an ad hoc basis or by Eu-
rogroups operating out of Brussels or Strasbourg. The obstacles to coopera-
tion stem on the whole from lack of finance and the continuing influence
of relatively specific national cultures that limit collaboration and the ca-
pacity to get access to the Commission. Their financial and media resources
depend largely on national contexts. Transaction costs on a European scale
are something of a deterrent, especially for discreet modes of lobbying-
based action that get little publicity and whose effectiveness often goes un-
remarked by the actors in the field. All in all, then, European environmen-
tal networks are neither very dense nor very active.
One part of the explanation is that whatever the relevant decision-mak-
ing level-it may be European-implementation remains national or local.
In this sense, the relevant targets of contention for environmental players
are part of relatively specific contexts, and thus the often marked differences
between national movements in terms of institutionalization tend to be
lasting. A second reason has to do with the fact that the states that were the
first to become involved in environmental protection, notably Germany
and Denmark, have had the chance to dictate the EU's political agenda in
this respect, while issues more directly affecting others-mostly in the
south: Spain, Greece, and Portugal-have received little or no European at-
tention. Furthermore, the most environmentally advanced countries enjoy,
in most cases, normalized, peaceful exchanges with well-off environmental
organizations. In the other countries the actors are often vulnerable and
marginalized, and as a result little inclined to protest activity. Integration of
environmental movements into the EU thus depends largely on their na-
tional roots and the quality of their relationship with government.
For all these reasons, then, integration of environmental movements into

the EU has not given rise to harmonization and convergence of practice at
the EU level. The present situation may even exacerbate the differences, as
some countries take more advantage of European opportunities than oth-
ers, and do so more effectively. For some scholars, integration of environ-
mental organizations into European spheres is accompanied by decreased
participation at national level,ll while for others the EU represents an ad-
ditional target and/or resource, especially when national prospects have
been closed off, as in the UK of the Thatcher years. 12 Whatever the case, it
is remarkable that no significant trend towards Europeanization of protest
is currently detectable in this domain. After a comparative study carried out
in eight member countries over the period 1988-1997, Christopher Rootes
put his findings frankly: "Nor did we find evidence that protests were, to
any great extent, mobilized on a European level, addressed issues whose un-
derlying scope was European, or were targeted at European level actors. "13
Not only is the EU most often seen by militant ecologists as an ally, and
is thus rarely a target for their complaints, but also the rationales for action
are territorially embedded and remain substantially different. Hence mobi-
lization issues vary widely from one country to another: the anti-nuclear
cause in Germany; water purity in Spain; road building in France, the UK,
and Sweden; animal rights in the UK, Sweden, and Italy; and urban pollu-
tion in Spain, Greece, and Italy.14 Similarly, there are marked differences in
the level at which action takes place; half of all protests in Germany, the UK
and Sweden are local or regional, as against 90% in Greece. IS And while
two-thirds of such demonstrations are aimed at national targets in Sweden,
the figure is only half in the other three countries. Mobilization networks
vary in the same way, some being relatively autonomous and even loners,
as in Spain, while others have close ties to a third party: political parties in
France and trade unions or churches in Germany. Table 7.2 illustrates the
tenacity of national differences, looked at here in terms of membership in
an environmental protection organization.
In general terms these results differentiate the northern European
countries-Sweden, Denmark, and especially, the Netherlands-from the
southern European ones: Portugal, Italy, and Spain. In the case of the first
group, environment-related hazards have long been taken into account by
the authorities and have a real place on the political agenda. The influence
of the ecological parties and public awareness of these issues mean a rela-
tively high rate of environmental organization membership. In the case of
the second group, by contrast, the conservation question is largely ignored.
The organizations active in this field are few and resource-poor, and gener-
ally speaking can only take action locally. This north/south dichotomy is
relative: the gaps are tending to close and in certain instances the roles are
even being reversed. In this respect, integration into the EU certainly plays
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Figure 7.2. Membership in Environment Protection Organizations, 1999
a part in increasing the awareness both of citizens and of the most retarded
political elites. Thus in Greece, membership rates for environmental organ-
izations are among the highest in Europe, slightly behind Sweden and Den-
mark but ahead of Belgium and Luxembourg. Far more than in Italy or
Spain, civil society involvement is finding political expression and back-
ing-witness the recent appointment of a former Greenpeace director to the
post of minister of the environment. A further factor is the continuing exis-
tence of substantial regional differences which-as in the Spanish Basque
country, where environmental mobilization is very marked-blur national
differences by linking ecological militancy to an independence movement.
The examples of Austria, Slovenia, and Ireland likewise suggest that the en-
vironmentalist cause can fuel nationalist sentiment.
While organization membership rates in France, Germany, and the UK
are all within the same low range, the situations are divergent. In France the
movement is historically feeble, notwithstanding occasional anti-nuclear
upsurges. 16 The Green parties made a breakthrough in the mid-1990s, but
their role remains a marginal one. In Germany and the UK support for the
environmental cause is traditionally much stronger and, especially in the
latter, does not necessarily involve membership in an organization. These
two countries combine a membership rate among the lowest in Europe
with an environmental protection movement that is politically strong and
galvanizing. These examples suggest that institutionalization of the cause
can lead to citizen demobilization, at least in terms of formal commitment.
The electoral successes of Germany's Greens, who have became a politi-
cal force to be reckoned with, have been accompanied by a significant fall
in the number of militants. Conversely, it can be anticipated that the lack of
concern with environmental issues in southern and eastern Europe will in
the long run give rise to reactive forms of mobilization. In central Europe
involvement is currently limited, suffering both from the insufficient em-
beddedness of the Green parties and the embryonic character of environ-
mental policies whose application owes much more to ecological disasters
and EU pressure than to any citizen-led movement. The only exception here
is the Czech Republic, where nuclear power stations are a focus for strong
local protest.
The overall picture given above is that of an EU actively promoting the
environmental cause and favoring representation for groups defending
these interests. At the instigation of these groups, a public action mecha-
nism and a body of standards have been created. In this respect Euro-
peanization is significant, but even so, European issues are poorly inte-
grated into debate within member states. Two relatively autonomized
spheres of action are tending to take shape, one emphasizing lobbying of
European institutions, the other looking to more reactive, protest-based
forms of intervention at the national level. In this context of differentiation
178 Chapter 7
and fragmentation of action, mobilization remains subject to very marked

variations from one state to another.
The same applies to the impact of the environment protection policies
that have been implemented. The Kyoto Protocol, for example-ratified by
some 140 countries and the EU as such, and put into effect in February
2005-sets upper limits for greenhouse gas emissions in the industrialized
countries; it thus testifies to the efforts of the EU, but also to the highly vari-
able-and in some cases nonexistent-resolve of the member states. The
signatories' primary aim is a worldwide 8% reduction of these emissions by
2010, as compared to 1990. The progress reports issued by the European
Environmental Agency show that European efforts have not been in vain
and that over the period 1990-2000 the EU seemed capable of honoring its
commitment. However, the 3.3% reduction recorded at that time has since
been eroded, falling to 2.3% in 2003, and little hope remains of achieving
the goal set for 2010. Only Sweden, Germany, and the UK have complied
with (or come close to) the criteria. The new member states have attained
very encouraging results, but the situation in Austria, Ireland, Portugal, and
Spain leaves much to be desired. Thus the addition of environmental pro-
tection issues to the European agenda has widely differing-and far from
automatic-effects within the national spaces. It should be pointed out that
country by country, the results seem more telling when there is real mili-
tancy and public awareness, a conclusion that points to their combined in-
fluence.
IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP: BUILDING THE FORTRESS
One of the distinctive features of European migration policy is that it hinges

much more on intergovernmental collaboration than on overall coordina-
tion between EU institutions, even if EU provisions in this field have devel-
oped somewhat in recent times. These provisions focus on population
groups that are highly diverse in ethnic terms and sociologically very mixed.
Our main concern here is non-EU migrants aspiring to long-term residence
on EU territory, especially when their presence is illegal or they are seeking
asylumY In 1975, the founding of the Trevi Group, comprising the minis-
ters for the interior and for justice of the EU member states, marked a sig-
nificant first step towards enhanced cooperation between police forces and
intelligence agencies. Its field of action expanded rapidly, and by the early
1980s covered the preconditions for harmonization of the granting of visas
and asylum status in Europe. Shortly afterwards the Schengen Agreements,
signed by France, Germany, and the Benelux countries in June 1985 and
taking effect ten years later, implemented a set of provisions allowing for re-
duced internal customs checks while stepping up surveillance on external
frontiers. At the time the agreements constituted an intergovernmental

charter which, as such, involved no transfer of powers to the EU.
The Dublin Asylum Convention, signed in 1990, increased this focus on
coordination by setting up convergence criteria for the examination of re-
quests for asylum and specified that applications could henceforth be made
in only one country. In 1992 the Treaty of Maastricht defined a set of mi-
gration issues-the right to asylum, border controls, policies regarding mi-
grants residing inside and outside the EU-that basically continued to de-
pend on individual state sovereignty, even though they fell within a field of
interest common to the Commission and the Council. Significantly, the Eu-
ropean citizenship sketched out in the treaty was not immune to this sov-
ereignty, being subject to the possession of civil rights in one or other of the
member states. The Amsterdam Treaty, signed in 1997 and put into effect in
1999, brought significant modifications, providing for the transfer of mi-
gration matters, which after a five-year transition period would be placed
under the responsibility of European institutions. At this point the Schen-
gen Agreements became part of EU law and after consulting the European
Parliament, the Council could henceforth unanimously decide to apply the
co-decision rule and QMV.
This Europeanization remained limited, however, since the procedure
was not automatic and remained at the discretion of the states-which,
moreover, retained the possibility of having their own policies as long as
these were compatible with the treaty. In addition, England and Ireland
were exempted from these provisions by a special waiver. At Tampere, in
1999, the Council laid down the rules for a common system for refugees
and asylum seekers that would both limit and better distribute the entry of
migrants into Europe. In Seville in June 2002 the EU's heads of state and
government decided to speed up application of this program. As a result,
the Dublin Convention, remodeled and extended in February 2003, be-
came an EU regulatory regime backed up by the Eurodac databank a sys-
tem allowing for comparison of the fingerprints of asylum seekers and ille-
gal immigrants and thus the identification of persons attempting
fraudulent entry.
At the November 2004 summit in The Hague, a program of action for
2005-2010 was adopted that notably aimed at developing the "capacity for
migration management" of non-EU countries: the intention, in other
words, was to contain illegal immigration by tighter controls upstream,
away from EU borders. Current conditions of entry and residence for legal
immigrants are still marked by clear differences between member states in
terms of demographic developments, manpower requirements, and tradi-
tions of integration, and remain relatively unharmonized;18 on the other
hand, anti-illegal immigration policies have become steadily tougher over
the last thirty years.
180 Chapter 7
Here too, however, major national differences remain: in the early 1990s
Italy and Spain conferred resident status on hundreds of thousands of ille-
gal entrants, while in France the figures were very much lower. Requests for
asylum, once one of the main avenues for foreigners seeking residence in
Europe, have been subject to much more selective treatment since the mid-
1970s and likewise continue to show marked national disparities: in 2004
Austria granted refugee status to over 50% of applicants, while in Greece the
figure was 0.3%. These variations should not, however, be allowed to ob-
scure a pronounced and convergent tendency towards increased no accept-
ance. Austria aside, throughout Europe between 85% and 99.9% of appli-
cants are now turned down: in some countries, like Italy, Switzerland, and
to a lesser extent the UK and Germany, the refusal ceiling was already
reached in the late 1980s, while in others, like France, Belgium, Spain, and
Greece, it came later.19 "Fortress Europe" -on the whole extremely rich-
thus threw up a rampart against more or less neighboring countries stricken
by poverty, underdevelopment, and/or war.
Cooperation in respect to immigration and asylum initially developed in
a highly specific way, as a set of intersecting measures for which responsi-
bility shows considerable overlap while most often hinging on intergovern-
mental bodies, in particular the ministries of the interior. It focuses on
questions relating to migration flow and control-or illegal cross-border ac-
tivities-but not on the modalities of integration, naturalization, and citi-
zenship, which remain an exclusively national affair. The policies con-
cerned generally reflect national emphases laid down by governmental
actors and echoed at the European level, rather than the reverse. Despite the
changes brought in by the Treaty of Amsterdam, Europeanization is here
dominated by the specific dynamics of member states-as represented on
the Council-and are largely uninfluenced by other European institutions.
Significantly the DG Justice and Internal Affairs, created in 1999, handles
immigration and asylum-related matters, and is attempting to promote a
coordinated approach within the Commission, but its capacity for action is
limited. 2o It can boast only a low level of expertise which has not been fu-
eled, as in other fields of public action, by close collaboration with repre-
sentatives of European civil society; this is because the stranglehold of the
national executives in this domain made such collaboration seem largely
pointless.
Some members of the EP have taken an interest in these matters, notably
denouncing the racism and discrimination to which migrants can be sub-
ject, but often in a polemical vein more aimed at boosting their personal
political credibility than at getting the issue onto the European agenda.
Episodically the Parliament gives advocates of migrant rights the chance to
make themselves heard and is doubtless one of the access points most re-
ceptive to their cause. In a report published early in 2006, the Parliament
even went as far as addressing a strongly worded warning to the heads of

Europe's states and governments, summoning them to put a stop as soon as
possible to certain modes of detention of illegal entrants, seen as detri-
mental to human dignity.
Overall, however, Europeanization of migration policies has been less
than favorable to the populations concerned in that it has generated a
change in the role of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
(HCR), whose support for migrants has steadily narrowed, especially since
the beginning of the new century. Numerous NGOs that had developed
special relationships with this body, especially through its European office,
are finding it more and more difficult to obtain its backing and to exert any
significant influence on it. Most of the immigration control measures
drawn up by the EU today have been prepared in collaboration with the
HCR, and this reduces the maneuvering room of those defending migrants
and the possible alliances open to them. Nonetheless international
institutions-foremost among them the United Nations and its constella-
tion of associations-are far more favorable to mobilization than European
or national ones.
If the opportunities are so reduced at the European level, it is not solely
because of the incompleteness of migration policy integration, but also be-
cause the organizational difficulties encountered by migrant defense bodies
have prevented them from seizing certain chances for action. The trajectory
of the European Migrants' Forum is an eloquent illustration of the migrant
movement working to provide itself with a lasting, effective structure in re-
lation to EU institutions. Created at the instigation of the Commission in
1991, this consultative organization for migrant populations in Europe
functioned for a decade or so as an immigrant rights lobby, notably within
the framework of the European citizenship project. However, its influence
rapidly declined to the point where it was justifiably dissolved: first of all
because its level of expertise proved insufficient to meet the requirements of
the Commission, and second because its internal divisions prevented it
from developing a rationale acceptable to its various national components. 21
In this case, as in others, migrant mobilization, rooted in national polit-
ical and legal contexts very different from each other, failed to find effective
unity in European terms. Their multifarious claims and the equally varied
responses supplied by each member state caused dissension at the very
heart of the European networks that were supposed to represent their inter-
ests, the result being that the few organizations now capable of giving mi-
grants access to EU institutions generally settle for pacific, low-profile
modes of action. Many of them are solidly embedded in northern European
countries and are not the organizations most directly confronted with the
issues raised by migrant flows to EU borders. Other bodies, like the Euro-
pean Citizenship Action Service, are more like service providers, giving
182 Chapter 7
assistance with administrative procedures for migrants-often with legal

status-who are already on the road to integration. Their concerns are with
promotion of civil rights and policies of equality, but are not really attuned
to the situation of migrants whose status and presence in Europe are prob-
lematic. Lastly, among the NGOs defending migrant rights, only Amnesty
International and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) en-
joy regular, official contact with the Commission; even so, the former does
not specialize in asylum and immigration matters, while the latter has only
limited scope for putting its case.
All in all, then, migrant movement action is characterized by marked
fragmentation, the actors involved in European networks having only ten-
uous links with those active in member states. 22 It may be that the national
organizations are reinforcing their connections with European NGOs, and
ECRE in particular, in response to the ongoing integration of EU migration
policy. This process nonetheless remains emergent, Europeanization taking
place more "from below," from outside, or on the margin of European in-
stitutions and in opposition to them. With its virulent denunciations of EU
migration policy, the Migreurop association, formed at the European Social
Forum (ESF) in Florence in November 2002, is a perfect example of this
phenomenon. All members, within the framework of their respective na-
tional associations, are charged with monitoring European asylum and im-
migration policies (this testifies to clear specialization) and within their
network they pursue information exchange and the formalization of a com-
mon discourse designed to increase public awareness. Their stances are
based on a very real expertise generally allied to a strategy of outrage. Re-
course to provocative rhetoric (e.g., the comparison of the migrant deten-
tion policy at EU frontiers to the "Europe of the camps," in a deliberate
analogy to the Nazi experience) is intended as a way of compensating for
their institutional isolation and the recurring handicap of their meager lo-
gistic and financial resources. Even if the influence of this kind of European
network remains extremely limited, the pooling of analyses enhances the
capacity for action of national militants, especially in their negotiations
with governmental executives.
Overall the movement for the defense of migrants' rights faces a series of
obstacles whose effects are largely cumulative. The dominant role of the
member states in controlling migration flows goes counter to the establish-
ment of a European-scale debate or even of basic information, and thus pre-
vents the organizations representing migrant interests from drawing sup-
port from public opinion. The opacity and complexity of the mechanisms
at work are not conducive to identification of political rationales and re-
sponsibilities, a stricture that also applies to specialist associative actors. It
is hardly in the interests of the controlling elites to draw attention to these
questions, which cruelly expose the systems of exclusion on which-read-
ing between the lines-the building of Europe is founded, and the limits to
the application of human rights where foreigners living as illegal entrants are
concerned. In a period of economic difficulty and mass unemployment
these groups become natural targets for the xenophobic movements now on
the rise in many European countries; and often they do not receive the sup-
port of the other actors in national politicallik who have a tendency to re-
strict the principle of solidarity to the "community of citizens./I Getting the
issue onto the European agenda and finding support for the migrant cause
generally are hampered by the highly specific forms of stigmatization mi-
grants can suffer because of their ethnic origin, a situation further compli-
cated by the invisibility to which the illegal entrant is usually condemned.
The discrimination to which migrants can be subject seems explicable, if
not justifiable, to a part of European public opinion, very likely disturbed
by the more or less insidious connections and confusions between immi-
gration, crime, and terrorism. It is this combination of institutional and
cognitive factors that explains why the fate of migrants causes so little mo-
bilization in Europe. The subject being especially sensitive for politicians
and investigation being particularly difficult for journalists, the general
public is under-informed. For population groups as vulnerable and little-
organized as migrants, the media barrier can be insurmountable and repre-
sents, beyond any doubt, one of the major drags on the defense of their
rights. Here the absence of an independent, broad-audience European
medium is cruelly felt and makes it difficult to imagine strategies for getting
the right questions asked. Recent events have demonstrated that when the
fate of illegal immigrants-turned back at the gates of the European El Do-
rado and dying by dozens-claimed the attention of the media, Europe's
politicians as a whole were challenged and forced to attempt a justification
of current migration policy. Nor did the heads of state and government fail
to get the message about the strategic impact of this media coverage: they
decided to create detention areas on non-EU territories that will henceforth
have to accept responsibility for them and are less in the media spotlight.
European migration policy, focused as it is on the question of controlling
EU frontiers, has little impact on national political communities. This situ-
ation largely explains the variations from one national space to another, in
terms not only of integration or naturalization, but also of collective mobi-
lization and the structuring of public debate on these matters. In this field
the cumbersome heritage of the construction of the national state hampers
the process of European integration, emphasizing collective identity and at-
tributing a fundamental value to the notion of sovereignty.23 It is notewor-
thy that the questions raised by immigration should now be central to po-
litical agendas and discussions in member states, in striking contrast with
the lack of debate at European level. At the same time the capacity for ex-
pression of migrants and those who represent them is generally low, in the
184 Chapter 7
majority of cases not exceeding 10% of the stances taken on the subject.24
In addition, migrants are isolated from other civil society actors, in particu-
lar trade unions, as illustrated by the UK, which is, nonetheless, one of the
countries most favorable to their mobilization.
Regarding immigration, and ethnic relations in particular, citizenship sys-
tems as the expression of the national state channel public debate and sig-
nificantly influence the choices of collective actors. In each country, greater
or lesser recognition of the political rights and cultural particularities of mi-
gration-based groups points up different models. 25 On the one hand, when
migrants do not acquire the nationality of the host country and remain
largely excluded from the national community, the great majority of their
political utterances bear on the country of origin; conversely, when acquisi-
tion of civil rights is facilitated, their demands are very largely aimed at the
host society and its institutions. Meanwhile, greater (or lesser) public and
political acceptance of their ethnic, religious, or cultural particularisms en-
courages (or discourages) their participation. According to these criteria,
Switzerland and Germany are fairly segregationist, France is universalist,
and the UK and the Netherlands are multiculturalist. 26 In line with this dual
logic, mobilization of migrants is lowest in Switzerland (5% of all stances
taken on immigration and ethnic relations), followed by Germany (7%),
the Netherlands (9%), France (10%), and the UK (18%).27
In countries in which immigrants remain mainly foreigners and do not
have the right to vote, their opportunities for action are limited. The mech-
anisms for public action on their behalf are few and cannot provide rea-
sons, or targets, for protests. By contrast, in the Netherlands and the UK,
measures in favor of equal opportunity and against discrimination are
highly developed and represent real incentives to participation and the
making of claims. Given this, mobilization of migrants in the Netherlands
can appear surprisingly low, suggesting that when cultural differences are
very marked and, above all, socially accepted, ethnic communities tend to
organize on self-sufficient lines and involve themselves less in public de-
bate. The in-between situation in France is revelatory of the ambivalence of
its integration model: it readily accords political rights to migrants, but not
the right to express communitarian claims in organized political form.
The types of claims made are also very different from one country to an-
other. In Germany and Switzerland, religious and cultural demands are al-
most nonexistent, whereas they loom conspicuously larger in the three
other countries, including France. The acceptability of demands in terms of
the group of origin obviously plays a part here, but so too does their impact
within the host society. In France, where particularistic claims are less toler-
ated, these issues are the subject of debate and have a polarizing effect.
Lastly, the forms of action are most moderate in the UK, closely followed by
the Netherlands, then France, Germany, and Switzerland. In other words, in
the countries in which the opportunities for political expression are most
restricted, the action taken is more reactive and violent.
In contrast with the two preceding examples, the EU does not favor de-
fense of migrant interests and does not represent an alternative space al-
lowing for greater assertion of rights than nationally. To a large extent, free
movement of persons and goods within the Union is being matched by a
toughening of access conditions to European territory for non-EU popula-
tion groups. In this field, member states are clinging to their sovereignty
and retaining most of their basic prerogatives. Thus while the EU is equip-
ping itself with common rules for border checks, integration modalities re-
main within the sphere of national governments. This configuration leaves
little maneuvering room for migrant rights defenders, who find themselves
faced with sets of regulations basically hostile to their cause. These institu-
tional obstacles are aggravated by the fact that the population groups con-
cerned have few resources and, lacking adequate support, are unable to take
advantage of the windows of opportunity and mobilize effectively. In this
context their forms of participation and representation remain profoundly
linked to the historical and political specificities of each host country, with-
out there being currently any sign of convergence.
CONCLUSION
In the fields of public action considered here-women, environmental

movements, and migrants-representation and mobilization of interests
depend on specific, sometimes contradictory processes that preclude any
unequivocal analysis. The policies implemented by the EU in these sectors
are not developing in a uniform way and selectively favor certain types of
interest. In the first two categories EU recognition is relatively long-estab-
lished and points to advanced integration; by contrast it is much more re-
cent and embryonic in the case of the third category, which remains largely
under the authority of member states seeking tougher controls on European
borders while preserving their sovereignty in terms of incorporation of im-
migration-based populations. Even when strongly institutionalized by the
EU, as with the measures in favor of women and the environment, these
measures have as a whole little effect on mobilization conditions at the na-
tionallevel. It would even seem that the widening of EU powers brings with
it the coopting of a small number of organizations involved in the consul-
tative and decision-making processes, but blocks representation of most
other groups, which are relegated to their national spaces as the building of
the Union advances.
Seen in this light, the three studies outlined in this chapter present only
differences of degree. Moreover, access to European institutions causes a
186 Chapter 7
visible change in the repertoires of action of movements and, notably, a de-

crease in their level of conflict. Mobilized actors gradually adopt the inter-
vention registers and styles of the target body, thereby provoking a backlash
of reactive protests in the national spaces, but without any direct challenge
by the national movements to the European institutions. This tendency to-
wards fragmentation of spheres of action doubtless fuels feelings of Eu-
roskepticism and reinforces the idea that EU institutions are out of touch
with citizen concerns.
The fundamental issue for interest groups is that of the convergence be-
tween the openings European institutions can present and their own re-
sources at national level, which govern their capacity to grasp these possi-
bilities. In this respect, the defense of women's rights, like that of the
environmental cause, has benefited from doubly favorable, reciprocally re-
inforcing circumstances: while the resources available at national level have
considerably facilitated access to European institutions, these latter have
boosted the resources of their interlocutors, allowing for their reuse in the
national space. The protest potential of the two movements has thus been
substantially activated and developed by European institutions, which have
been a motor for the Europeanization of the issues in question and have, in
turn, given rise to conditions favorable to their development in the mem-
ber states. The thrust provided by the Commission, in particular, has en-
abled creation of a number of Eurogroups that have gone on to organize a
durable, structured defense of their interests. The result, then, is a cumula-
tive, snowball effect.
For the best-organized actors at European level, mobilization is generally
pro-active, using the same avenues as lobbying, but can also adapt to cir-
cumstances and so exert significant influence in different contexts, as the
environmental movement has done. Thus the intervention possibilities are
many, allowing for greater room for maneuver and for playing off one space
for action against another. Even if defended by the EU, the interests in ques-
tion are subject to cyclical economic factors, and the implementation of
ambitious European programs is made more difficult by the fact that the la-
bor market is currently facing grave problems. The predictable failure of the
Lisbon strategy has thus led to the shelving of the most innovative plans
and a renationalization of the corresponding policies, in the sense that each
member state is trying to evade meeting the objectives set by the Commis-
sion-often costly and generating few hirings, at least in the short term-so
as to focus on the employment issue. Conversely it can be concluded that
immigration controls are all the more strict because unemployment and
lack of job security have not been resolved.
Our analyses and, more broadly, the whole of the literature devoted to
the representation of interests in Europe, strongly suggest that the EU, even
when it constitutes an alternative space for action, is not capable of sub-
stantially modifYing the balances of power and the inequalities that are part
of the national spaces. To a certain extent, as analyzed in chapter 5, a coun-
terexample is provided by the unemployed, who have succeeded in mobi-
lizing massively at EU level over the last few years, something they had not
been capable of within the member states. It should be pointed out, how-
ever, that it has been much more a case of exploiting the European
summits-hijacking them, so to speak, in order to take advantage of their
visibility-than of benefiting from the voluntary support of EU institutions
in the way the women's movement did.
Overall, groups with scant resources suffer much more from their limited
means of action and their isolation at national level than from EU os-
tracism. In this view of things migrants are doubtless an exceptional case,
since the measures taken by the EU are aimed at drastically limiting the ar-
rival and entry of non-EU migrants. The combination of the powerful inte-
gration models embodied by the states and the policy overlay of increas-
ingly strict controls on entry into EU territory is a dual obstacle to their
action and its Europeanization: first because the problems migrants face re-
main locked into precise politico-judicial contexts, a situation not con-
ducive to the transnationalization of mobilizations; and second because
European institutions, and especially the Council, agree on the need to har-
monize the mechanisms for combating the influx of refugees and immi-
grants. It must be stressed here that in this field the balance of power be-
tween the Commission and the Council is clearly in favor of the latter,
which largely governs the possibilities for dialogue between interest groups
and the publicizing of the related issues.
For migrants the difficulties accumulate as the restrictive measures taken
by heads of state and government become more effective and, in parallel, as
backing from other international organizations crumbles. This situation is
all the more prejudicial for them in that it has little visibility in Europe and
has only marginal status on national political agendas, thus rendering inop-
erative the strategies for challenging public opinion used by other resource-
less groups. Nonetheless the constraints are never total or irreversible, and al-
ternative levers for action do exist. In particular, mobilization of migrants in
the member states is fueled by exchanges of information and ideas allowing
for comparison between militant experiences on a European scale. Similarly,
applications to the ECl offer the glimmer of a possibility of judgments fa-
vorable to defense of their rights. The traditional attachment of democracies
to the issue of human rights might also, in the long term, generate greater
media attention to the fate of migrants, thereby causing shifts in opinion, a
partial reaction among the ruling classes, and a substantial modification of
the political formulation of those rights.
What must lastly be highlighted is the compartmentalization of these
three areas. The functioning of European institutions favors sectorization
188 Chapter 7
and, as a consequence, protest; thus it runs counter to the creation of a

broad social movement of the kind that exists in most member states.
Nonetheless emerging signs of rapprochement and even of convergence in
terms of action are perceptible, notably in the wake of the implementation
of such Commission-backed programs as the sustainable development
strategy, which affects the interests of women, migrants, and the environ-
ment. For the moment, however, these phenomena are not strong enough
to have a significant interest and are, as it happens, tending to develop out-
side such Ell institutions as the ESE
NOTES
1. The effect of European provisions was also felt in candidate countries. In

1970, for example, Great Britain, in anticipation of its entry into the EU, legislated
for equal pay for all.
2. Thirteen out of eighteen members.
3. Directives 75/117 of 10 February 1975, 76/207 of 9 February 1976, and 79/7
of 19 December 1978, relating respectively to equality of pay, of access to employ-
ment, training, promotion and working conditions, and of social security status.
4. Jacqueline de Groote, "Le lobby europeen des Femmes dans Ie dialogue
civi!," in Vers une societe civile europeenne, ed. Jean-Claude Boua!, Paris: Editions de
l'Aube, 1999, 120.
5. www.womenlobby.org.
6. For a summary cf. European Commission, Report on Equality between Women
and Men, Brussels: European Commission (Directorate-General for Employment,
Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities), 2005.
7. Cf. European Environmental Bureau, EU Environmental Policy Handbook: A
Critical Analysis of EU Environmental Legislation, Brussels: European Environmental
Bureau, 2005.
8. Including EEB, CNE, EFTE, FoE, Greenpeace, WWF, the World Conservation
Union, and Birdlife International.
9. The funds of the DG Environment, which represent almost half its budget,
have been substantially reduced over the last few years
10. Christopher Rootes, "Environmental Movements," in The Blackwell Compan-
ion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, Ox-
ford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, 608-40.
11. Klaus Eder and Maria Kousis, Environmental Politics in Southern Europe: Actors,
Institutions, and Discourses in a Europeanizing Society, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic, 2001.
12. Christopher Rootes, "The Transformation of Environmental Activism: An In-
troduction," in Environmental Protests in Western Europe, ed. Christopher Rootes, Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 14.
13. Rootes, "The Transformation of Environmental Activism," 13-16.
14. Rootes, "The Transformation of Environmental Activism," 239-40.
15. Rootes, "The Transformation of Environmental Activism," 248.
16. Hein-Anton van der Heijden, Ruud Koopmans, and Marco Giugni, "The West
European Environmental Movement," in Research in Social Movements, Conj1icts and
Change, ed. Matthias Finger, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1992, 1-40.
17. Every year some 2.45 million persons from non-member states migrate to the
EU, to which figure must be added, according to the most trustworthy estimates,
120,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants.
18. Thus it is significant that cumulative rates of naturalization in relation to the
total population for the years 1981-1997 vary from 49% for Lichtenstein and 48%
for Sweden to 0.4% for Portugal. Other figures include 37% for the Netherlands,
33% for Switzerland, 31% for Belgium, 29% for Luxembourg, and 15% for France
(Source: Eurostat).
19. Jerome Valluy, "La nouvelle Europe politique des camps d'exiles: genese
d'une source eIitaire de phobie et de repression des etrangers," Cultures et Conj1its,
no. 57 (2005): 13-69.
20. Adrian Favell, "L'europeanisation ou l'emergence d'un 'nouveau champ' poli-
tique: Ie cas de la politique d'immigration," Cultures et Conj1its, no. 38-39 (2000):
153-85.
21. In this context it is probable that the scope of European programs against dis-
crimination based on "race, ethnic origin, religion or beliefs, age or sexual orienta-
tion" has, for the migrants themselves, been considerably reduced.
22. Virginie Guiraudon, "Weak Weapons of the Weak? Transnational Mobiliza-
tion around Migration in the European Union," in Contentious Europeans: Protest and
Politics in an Emerging Polity, ed. Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow, Lanham, MD: Row-
man & Littlefield, 2001, 163-83.
23. Christian Joppke, Resilient Nation States, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999.
24. See the Mobilisation over Ethnic Relations, Citizenship and Immigration
(MERCI) project website for studies of France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK,
and Switzerland over the period 1992-1998, ics.leeds.ac.ukjeurpolcomjresearch_
projects_mercLcfm (accessed 15 April 2007).
25. We use here the main conclusions of the MERCI research.
26. These variations are perceptible in the way immigration-related phenomena
are named in different countries: for example, one speaks of immigres (immigrants)
in France, Auslander (foreigners) in Germany and Switzerland, etnische minderheden
(ethnic minorities) in the Netherlands, and racial groups in the UK.
27. Ruud Koopmans, Paul Statham, Marco Giugni, and Florence Passy, Contested
Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2005.
8
Interests' Mobilization in the
Constitutionalization of Europe
On June 20, 2003, in Thessalonica, Valery Ciscard d'Estaing presented the

draft treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe to the European Coun-
cil. The very existence of such a proposal marked a significant event in the
history of the EU. While the document did not guarantee Europe's future, it
brought her a step closer to constitutionalization and to the full acceptance
of the supranational nature of EU institutions. For better or for worse, the
adoption of a Constitution was inscribed on the political agenda of the EU
and its member states. While far from a novel polemic, the inevitability of
constitutional adoption was instigated by the perspective of European ex-
pansion and the accompanying institutional reform that such a develop-
ment would necessitate.
The question of adoption of a European Constitution dated back more
than a decade: with the disintegration of Communist regimes, negotiations
with candidate countries began in earnest. The emotive reaction instigated
by the end of the Cold War might have provided a propitious context for
constitutional edition-both from the perspective of governments as well
as from that of public opinion. Nevertheless, for reasons internal and ex-
ternal to the EU, no coalition capable of supporting such a project could
emerge during the 1990s. To a certain extent, the European Convention's
proposition belied the repeated failures of the ICC. The path to constitu-
tionalization might even have seemed improbable at the time of the Ams-
terdam Treaty. The December 2003 adjournment at the Brussels Summit,
followed by France and the Netherlands' referendum rejection of the Con-
stitutional Treaty in 2005, demonstrated beyond doubt the non-consensual
nature of the debate. The problematic ratification of the Constitutional
191
192 Chapter 8
Treaty resulted from a particular political dynamic (initiated with the edi-
tion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and subsequently taken up by
the Convention) impacted by a large number of more or less formally or-
ganized interest groups.
In this chapter, we will analyze collective mobilizations instigated by the
constitutional process, including both the edition of the Charter and the
works of the Convention. Our objective is to characterize the role of inter-
est groups in the emergence and definition of the draft Constitutional
Treaty. This subject holds historical as well as comparative interest. Society
as a whole is effectively mobilized and specific interest groups are closely
associated with practical constituent processes. We may refer to the French
example of the political and social affirmation of the Third State in the
works of the Constitutive National Assembly (1789-1791) and the aboli-
tion of the ancien regime's corporations by the Le Chapelier Law. Mention
should also be made of the influence of the National Council of the Resis-
tance in the edition of the preface of the 1946 Constitution, and the ab-
sence of interest groups in the constitutional process of 1958. In the United
States, economic interpretations of the Constitution have emphasized the
role of constituent interests.! In Hong Kong, where de-colonization and
democratic transition conflict, the "tycoons" -godfathers of Chinese in-
dustry and finance-maintain conservative positions in the debate on re-
form of the Basic Law, amidst powerful tensions between Beijing and the
Special Administrative Region. 2
The above examples illustrate that drafting constitutions always entails ten-
sions between specific (ideological or social) interests and the definition of the
common good. Two major cases can be distinguished. In an "open" case, col-
lective actors (organized interests and social movements) invest directly, in rev-
olutionary phases, or are associated, in a transition phase, with constitutional
elaboration. Alternately, in a "closed" model, constitutional edition may be
strictly restricted to a political elite intent on controlling the process and avoid-
ing disruption. In both cases, citizens may be called upon to respond by refer-
endum on more or less liberal projects. In other words, both the constitutional
process and design may follow different conceptions of democracy (elitist or
pluralist, direct participation, or representative government).
The other major interest in clarifying constitutional emergence and edi-
tion lies in revealing the alliances and cleavages generated by the process.
Forged around controversy, the constitutional process can pit pro- and anti-
European factions against each other as well as differing aspirations and
conceptions of Europe. These cleavages shape the European polity and al-
low for a better understanding of the concrete democracy that animates Eu-
ropean integration politics.
In order to address these questions, we will first examine the context in
which the consultation occurred and the way it provided a cognitive and in-
Interests' Mobilization in the Constitutionalization of Europe 193
stitutional frame for mobilization. Since mobilization of interests depends

upon the structural opportunities within which they are deployed, it is nec-
essary to clarify the resulting effects of the institutional cadre adopted in
terms of constraints and resources. We will then analyze mobilizations of
interests via three major perspectives capable of effecting European social
agents: the values and objectives of the Union, the Union's social dimen-
sion, and the relationship between citizenry and institutions. Finally, we
will discuss how alter-European mobilizations emerged and consider their
role relative to EU constitutionalization.
THE Ell CONSTITUTION AND THE

FRAMING OF COLLECTIVE ACTION
How did constitutionalization come to be inscribed on the EU policy

agenda? To summarize, it can be argued that constitutionalization echoed
the Euroskepticism of the 1990s and resulted from the conjunction of two
distinct processes: (1) the primarily intergovernmental pursuit of institu-
tional reform necessary to European enlargement, and (2) the mobilization
of social organizations engaged in the affirmation of fundamental rights at
the EU level.
Since the SEA, considerable developments in economic and political in-
tegration were not met by a corresponding adherence or even interest in
public opinion. The difficulties of ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in
1992 along with the first rejection in Denmark marked a turning point
from this perspective; what had been up to then a tacit permissive consen-
sus gave place to a more Euroskeptic and divided public opinion, in some
cases positively Europhobic. This reticence was further underscored by the
second refusal to join the EU by Norway in 1994, by the initial Irish rejec-
tion of the Nice Treaty in 2001, the Swedish refusal of the euro in 2003, and
finally by France and the Netherlands's referendum vote in spring 2005 that
saw a clear majority rejecting the adoption of a Constitutional Treaty. The
theme of European "democratic deficit" began to creep into the discourse.
The reason, the majority of analysts agree (with a few exceptions),3 that the
EU fails democratic exigencies has to do with Europe's problem of legiti-
macy in pursuing integration, a process to which the constitutional project
hoped to respond. Furthermore, the increase in the number of member
states due to the 2004 enlargement, while increasing the risk of paralysis in
unanimity voting, required a reform of the EU's institutions.
These two imperatives were evident during the European Council of Nice
in December 2000. From an institutional perspective, the compromises
reached at Nice were difficult and unstable, adopted with future revisions
already in mind. Undoubtedly, the barely concealed failures of the ICC
194 Chapter 8
favored other developments deigned to preserve the credibility of the Euro-

pean project. During the IGC, two crucial measures were adopted: on the
one hand, to include the Charter of Fundamental Rights as an annex to the
Treaty (an act that did not give a constraining juridical value to the Charter
but conferred a certain legitimacy to the Convention's work, hence prepar-
ing the terrain for important future processes); on the other hand, to call the
member states to an "open and deep debate" on the future of Europe. 4 This
latter declaration inaugurated an effort to publicize the institutional ques-
tion, heretofore reserved for the tight coteries of European specialists. In
France, from April to November 2001, citizens were subsequently invited to
express their opinions on the subject via forums and Internet sites designed
to amass individual or collective contributions. These forums were managed
by specific groups designated to monitor the debate but also by the National
Assembly as well as the Senate and the Presidency of the Republic. 5
Finally, in December 2001, the European Council, by authority of the
Laecken Declaration, put into place a new Convention whose proposals
were meant to abet relations between the citizenry and European institu-
tions and to explore the eventual opportunities of adopting a constitutional
text. This declaration is therefore the root of the project presented in 2003.
But it was at the Nice Summit in December 2000 that the necessary institu-
tional (reform), political (mobilization of public opinion) and constitu-
tional (the Charter of Fundamental Rights) elements came together. The
paradox of the situation lies in the fact that, had the intergovernmental
agreement on institutions proposed earlier, the second Convention might
never have taken place.
During the period spanning December 1999 (the beginning of the ses-
sions of the first Convention) until July 2003 (the end of the sessions of the
second Convention),6 diverse interest groups began mobilizing. Consulta-
tion did not, obviously, take on the form of a historical emotion (as in, say,
the fall of the Berlin Wall) but significant participation was nonetheless in-
stigated. The Internet site of the Convention7 witnessed "an average of
47,000 visitors per month and a high of 100,000 in June 2003."8 On the fo-
rum designed to facilitate dialogue with civil society, contributions at the
end of June 2003 were at 1,145. 9 Individuals or organizations of course
sought to advertise these works but often without successfully reaching the
general public. Media attention to the subject varied significantly from one
country to the next: France's media reaction was rather weak while Great
Britain's showed strong interest. We might note here that, in France, print
media gave high visibility after the Convention while televised media more
or less completely ignored the subject. Overall, the polls had great difficulty
in identifying one or even several public opinion( s) regarding the works of
the Convention-the common voter knew little to nothing of the Conven-
tion's activities right up to the stage of ratification.l°
Although the general public may not have demonstrated immense inter-
est in constitutional issues in the initial phase, the two Conventions were
subsequently the subject of intense mobilization from interest groups.
Stakeholders, despite ostensible reservations, felt that they could better de-
fend their interests via the Conventions than they could have done in an
IGC. The methodical efforts of the Convention to give credibility to its
work-especially in its willingness to collaborate on transparency in a rela-
tively debated and consensual manner-gave the constitutional project a
global acceptability for those who participated in its preparation.
To comment on the respective influence of different interest groups in the
process is a delicate exercise. We may nonetheless observe the following el-
ements: first, dialogue was essentially established with the public and with
organizations sympathetic to the EU cause. Globally, Euroskeptical opin-
ions and alternative global movements were little heard in the context of
available procedural consultations for either structural (lack of representa-
tion) or strategic (refusal to participate) reasons. Second, organizations that
were well integrated into the European institutional tissue were the most
likely to be directly concerned by the constitutional process and to have ac-
cess to the necessary resources for formulating a view. Consequently, the
most powerful organizations (particularly the Eurogroups) have seized the
occasion for intervention. The partners of European social dialogue, as well
as the principal actors of European civil society have thereby brought active
participation to the constitutional project and made it a procedural prior-
ity. The UNICE, the ETUC, and the CEEP insisted during interviews on the
importance of the Convention's work in their agenda. On the other hand,
groups with the most contact with exclusion and poverty, for reasons per-
taining to both their limited resources and to specific conditions of access
to EU facilities (and in spite of the debate on fundamental rights), were rel-
atively little represented.
Mobilization of interests around the constitutional question was there-
fore progressively shaped by the changing institutional and cognitive frame
of collective action at the at the EU level. This elaboration was first marked
by the conjunction between the growing feeling of democratic deficit, the
need for institutional reform imposed by the enlargement, and the edition
of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It was the Nice Summit that melded
these factors together and opened the opportunity for a constitutional path.
Interest groups (predominantly pro-European and long-time active in Brus-
sels) then selectively committed themselves to the constitutional direction.
They largely contributed to the emergence of the constitutional question by
their implication first in the edition of the Charter, then in the draft Con-
stitutional Treaty (although to a lesser degree the latter). The relatively weak
interest of the general public therefore contrasted with the active mobiliza-
tion of certain European civic groups.
196 Chapter 8
GENDER, CITIZENSHIP AND RELIGION:

CONTROVERSIES REGARDING THE VALUES OF THE EU
For promoters of the European ideal, as for those working for the develop-
ment of human rights, the nature of the legal status of the EU's values and
goals are obviously essential. Preparation of the Charter and the draft Con-
stitutional Treaty have offered a number of important opportunities to pub-
lic interest groups promoting moral causes. In essence, the draft Constitu-
tional Treaty specifies in Article 1-2 that "the EU is founded on values of
human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and rights of
man. These values are common to member states in a society characterized
by pluralism, tolerance, justice, solidarity and non-discrimination." The
wording resulted from much editing and intense reflection and review of
the ideals already mentioned, as well as the terms in which these ideals are
expressed and their localization (in the preface, the values, the objectives,
or in the Charter). It is interesting to explore the liveliest of these debates to
identifY the political cleavages revealed by the constitutionalization of the
EU.
The first debate focused on the role assigned to the Constitution in the
battle against gender inequality. The European Lobby of Women had regu-
larly demanded that the reference to equality as a value be specified by
adding "notably between women and men": the Convention gave only par-
tial satisfaction to this demand by inscribing "the equality between women
and men," not in the values but in the objectives of the EU (Article 1-3). The
lobby also asked that "the Rights of Man" be replaced by "the Rights of the
Individual." Only the first Convention acceded to this request; the Charter
of Fundamental Rights had furthermore been re-worded in such a manner
as to be grammatically neutraPl On the other hand, if the Charter had ini-
tiated a principle of positive discrimination ("the maintenance or adoption
of measures designed specifically to advantageously favor the under-repre-
sented sex," Article 11-23), the parity principle between men and women
was not retained. 12
Non-discrimination was also inscribed among the values of the EU. More
explicitly, the Charter in its Title III excluded all discrimination based no-
tably on nationality. In the context of rising populism and radical rights in
Europe, this proscription could eventually serve as a juridical reference
point to justifY sanctions towards member states that practice a policy of na-
tional preference.
In terms of the EU objectives, the reference to "full employment" rather
than "high level of employment," as well as to "social market economy"
were attained at the last hours of negotiation (Art 1-3). UNICE managed to
get the term "highly competitive economy," which figured in the prior ver-
sions of the project, re-inserted into the newer version. Controversies also
arose around certain motions, such as the objective of "social peace,

"peaceful society" or "pacific," which were suspected of eventual applica-
tion in curbing certain forms of collective action (particularly strikes).13
One of the most debated subjects during the Convention-and which re-
ceived extensive media coverage-had to do with the question of religious
heritage. The preface to the Charter had already brought up this controver-
sial question. Paradoxically, it was not the churches that demanded the in-
clusion of such a reference but a majority of representatives of the EP, no-
tably Germans, "in exchange for an increase in social rights."14 The
potential evocation of "cultural, humanist and religious heritage of the Eu-
ropean Union" provoked many objections with opponents proposing
"spiritual" instead of "religious." In France, the Catholic Church, the Feder-
ation of Protestants, and the journal Temoignage Chretien militated for a ref-
erence to religion. 1s Finally, the formulation adopted by the Charter, in-
spired by the European Council, was "conscious of its spiritual and moral
heritage, the Union .... "16
Arguments were re-Iaunched during the edition of the draft Constitu-
tional Treaty. The Polish, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Christian-Democratic
conventionalist and particularly the Bavarian Christian Democrat Union
and/or the Popular European Party (PPE) as well as the Christian Churches
and the Holy See all desired a reference to "religious heritage" or even the
more restrictive "Christian heritage" or "Christianity" or "Judeo-Christian-
ity." As way of compromise, the preamble specified that Europe holds the
values of "cultural, religious and humanistic heritages."1? Furthermore, Ar-
ticle I-51 stipulated that "the Union respects and does not prejudice against
the statute, as a national right, of churches and religious associations or
communities in the Member States.... The Union will maintain an open,
transparent and regular dialogue with these churches and organisations."
This recognition responded to the hopes of the churches, the German in
particular, and presented a better guarantee than those planned by the Am-
sterdam Treaty (contained in an annexed declaration). The Conventional-
ists worried that the expression "religious community" could be construed
in a confusing manner and be used to serve interest groups with sectarian
motives.
The bitterness of the debate refers to the varying place of religion in coun-
tries of the EU and to the importance of related social issues. We may men-
tion the right to abortion, regularly contested by the Catholic Church and
not recognized in Ireland, for example. Other current ethical issues such as
medically assisted procreation, bio-technical uses, or homosexual mar-
riages are also affected by religious doctrines and their social influence.
More generally, social habits and civil law, provision of education, health
care and social services largely depend on the relationship between mem-
ber states and religious institutions, wrought over centuries of conflict and
198 Chapter 8
institutional arrangements. As those arrangements differ largely throughout

Europe, each religious institution wishes to preserve its status and the legit-
imacy of rights that it enjoys in the new legal context suggested by the draft
Constitutional Treaty. In an enlarging Europe, with public opinion con-
cerned with immigration and faced with the candidature of Turkey, it is
equally the question of Islam in Europe that is being posed.
The religious terrain, therefore, not only refers to the classic confronta-
tion of the secular Left against Christian Democrats. It also reveals the top-
icality of freedom of religion in general, of reactions to fundamentalism
and to the phenomena of sectarianism. Beyond this, the very nature (secu-
lar or religious) of the public European space and of its organization (uni-
fied or communitarian) is at stake here. European society, a product of a
collage of different nations, linguistic communities and religions, here re-
veals the difficulties of conceiving of a common political model capable of
managing its multicultural reality. Many organizations continued to express
serious concern and rallied for the effacement of all religious reference. In
France, the Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l'Homme
(CNCDH)-and through the CNCDH a significant network of other im-
portant associations-feared that the proposed formulation of the draft
treaty would "threaten the secularity of Europe, founded on the separation
of religion and state."18
These controversies are revealing on more than one level. The debates
opened important questions regarding the criteria of equality and therefore
on essential conceptions of non-discrimination in terms of gender, nation-
ality, and religion. The questions underscore the confrontations between
liberals and conservatives, and on a deeper level undoubtedly, between con-
ceptions of equality based on communities or individuals, recognizing or
opposing the rights of groups. "Highly competitive social market economy"
is a formula that expresses the ambiguity, or even the absence of social com-
promise at the European level. Finally, the unexpected virulence of the reli-
gious debate underscored the degree of the differences in the political foun-
dations of the member states, here evaluated by the measure of separation
between religious institutions and the state. There is no European consen-
sus today on the subject of religion and agreements regarding such an es-
sential value are difficult to establish.
THE SOCIAL DIMENSION
The social dimension covers a large range of issues such as social protection,
labor law, industrial relations, and public services. Two opposing positions
arose during the two conventions. The first position simply opposes all
policies aimed at heightening social protection. This position is clearly in-
carnated in UNICE, which seeks to defend market competition. "In

UNICE's view, social policy can only be a means towards achieving these
overall objectives. "19 We might add that UNICE is extremely sensitive to the
issue of dumping on the global economic scale, which in UNICE's point of
view renders overly ambitious social norms undesirable within the EU.
During the Convention, UNICE assumed a position against20 : the creation
of a working group devoted to social issues in Europe; the incorporation of
the Charter of Fundamental rights in the Constitution21 ; the extension of
QMV in the social domain; the reference to services to general interest; the
inscription of the notions of "social justice" and "social market economy"
in the stated values and objectives of the EU.
For the employers' confederation, the final text was "acceptable." In fact
the confederation managed to get the role of the social European partners
inscribed in the draft Constitutional Treaty, a demand formulated jointly
with ETUC and the CEEP. The current situation therefore permits the con-
federation to develop three strategies: (1) to rely on the right of veto of
member states -generally the UK-in the Council to limit an extension of
social rights; (2) to use its influence in the context of European social dia-
logue; and (3) to leave its members with the largest possible margin of ne-
gotiation within companies. Above all, nothing should fundamentally
question the rule of free market-the essential goal of UNICE. Better yet,
the Constitution if ratified would actually consecrate the principles of mar-
ket competition at the top in the hierarchy of norms of European integra-
tion (Art. 1-3, line 2).
The second position, promoted by a wider coalition of political leaders,
members of civil societies, Eurogroups, and consultative organs of the EU,
seeks on the contrary to advance social rights in the EU. Initially rather crit-
ical of the constitutional project, pro-labor organizations later thought that
the project could offer significant guarantees. From this perspective, incor-
porating the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the draft Constitutional
Treaty has been a significant accomplishment. Up until September 2000,
during the preparation of the Charter, opposition from unions and NGOs
was fervent. Their hostility was based on the fact that the Charter held no
constraining power. Afterwards, when the initial versions were made pub-
lic, the opposition deemed the measures insufficient, and demanded the
Charter to be abolished altogether. Finally, as their demands were progres-
sively accommodated, the opposition came to support the project.
This episode demonstrates the effects of interest group mobilization. The
Charter largely expresses the power relationships between constituted in-
terests (certain having been little represented, in areas such as environmen-
tal and consumers' rights for example, in comparison with others, notably
on questions of social and women's rights).22 We may note that, if it is true
that faith organizations mobilized for the cause of religious heritage, their
200 Chapter 8
support for social rights was, on the other hand, limited. We remark, there-
fore, that "analysis of contributions shows that integration of social rights
in the Treaty was at least controversial: the Office Catholique d'Information et
d'Initiative pour l'Europe, as well as the Federation Protestante de France and the
Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community had
difficulty according social rights any juridical power. "23
More generally, the conditions of elaboration of this text demonstrate the
manner in which a political process initially seen by many as weakly rele-
vant managed to promote social rights to the level of fundamental rights-
a historical first for an international document. In very little time, the situ-
ation had evolved considerably: the European Council of Cologne, which
did not expressly possess the power, took the initiative to create a "body"
that proclaimed itself the "Convention," proceeding thereby to a "kind of
coup d'etat from the very first session"24 which gave birth to a text suffi-
ciently ambitious to invoke the resolute opposition of those who did not
wish to see the EU take on a social policy.
To the disappointment of its defenders, the Charter was finally integrated
into Part II of the draft Constitution-and not into a preamble (which
would have given it a place of honor) as many had anticipated. Anti-poverty
and/ or immigrant protection groups also regretted the fact that the wording
of the Charter distinguished between general human rights and other rights
reserved strictly for citizens of the EU. More generally, important restric-
tions pertaining to application were introduced by the British. Article II-52
seems to even question the primacy of European rights over national rights
by specifying that the contents of the Charter must be interpreted in har-
mony with the traditions of its member states. Furthermore, the clause
made the implementation of the Charter an option rather than an obliga-
tion and limited its juridical invocation uniquely to the EU. These modifi-
cations caused many reservations, notably from the ETUC and the CNCDH
which denounced the risk of "emptying the Charter of its social content and
thereby its usefulness. "25
The place reserved for public services-Services for General Interest
(SGI)-was another important issue. The proposition of the group on So-
cial Europe, aiming to integrate the promotion of public services into the
goals of the EU (officially and notably supported by France and Belgium),
was ultimately rejected. The proposition collided against firm opposition
from employers' organizations, backed principally by representatives from
the British and Spanish governments. Those who fought in favor of a spe-
cific status for the SGI often proceeded in a disorganized fashion, putting
forth differing concepts. Take the example of the CEEP, which adopted this
theme as its principal war cry during the Convention and thereby managed
to publicize its uniqueness in relationship to the two other more influen-
tial and powerful partners of the European social dialogue. Internally and
without any true agreement on the definition of the SCI, the CEEP nonethe-
less succeeded in setting up the conditions of support towards an eventual
directive-cadre.
On this issue, two positions are competing, the first one demanding the
Commission to take a legislative initiative to guarantee the role and means
of the SCI, while the second one is more cautious, stating that such a
process does not constrain the prerogative of national and local authorities
in defining and implementing public services. 26 Ultimately, it is the ques-
tion of the opening of the market that is the obstacle between those who
defend the monopoly of public services (French style)-with the preserva-
tion of the status of civil servants-and those who insist upon de-monopo-
lizing the services, whose missions would still be placed under the auspices
of public authorities, but with market modes of financing and private sta-
tus for personnel.
The same tensions exist within the European Liaison Committee on Ser-
vices of Ceneral Interest. The ETUC, for its part, is amenable to a dispensary
status concerning rules of competition when it comes to certain areas (no-
tably culture, health, education) but not when it comes to post and
telecommunications or electricity, for example. The ETUC tightly associates
the defense of public services to an improved consideration of the client-
users. Consequently, while in 2000 the CEEP and the ETUC succeeded in
embarking on a project common to the Charter and the SCI,27 they did not
present a joint contribution on the subject during the Convention. During
the final hours of deliberation, a decision was made to provide a juridical
base to the SCI to be included in Part III, concerning the policies and func-
tioning of the EU. Their status was nevertheless unclear and did not seem
to dispense with free trade (Art. III-G). This ambiguous compromise satis-
fied those whose goal was to inscribe the SCI in the Constitutional Treaty
and those who feared that exceptions would be explicitly applied to market
competition.
Two distinct ideological and tactical cleavages on the social question can
therefore be distinguished. Opposition between free market and regulation
concepts of employers' organizations or unions are complemented by sub-
tler interplays on the perceived opportunity offered by possible constitu-
tionalization. In fact, the conceivable compromise inscribable in the text lay
below the preferences of the most active organizations on social issues,
most often reluctant as they feared the Constitution could open the way to
a possible regression of national legislations. Once the editorial process had
been instigated, this initial obstacle was nonetheless raised by the necessity
to counter the most free market arguments, especially the proclaimed goal
of a "single market with free and non-biased competition" mentioned in
Article 1-3, paragraph 2. The drafting of the Charter and then the Constitu-
tion, by opening up policy sectors and confronting different policy
202 Chapter 8
communities, triggered a bandwagon effect in which interests' motivation

to contribute has been in large part interactive. Therefore in the public space
of constitutional edition, competition among rival interests favored com-
promises internal to each camp.
MAKING UP THE EU DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT
The question of citizens' relation with the institutions of the EU, and there-
fore of the European democratic deficit, is closely linked to the issue of so-
cial rights. For many, in fact, a "Europe close to the people is an EU which
responds to their preoccupations and guarantees their social protection."2s
The simplification of the treaties is also looked upon favorably by most
agents of civil society since such simplification would allow a larger num-
ber of citizens to better understand the functioning of the EU and thereby
encourage participation. Finally, we should emphasize that the issue can-
not be disassociated from the redefinition of the institutional balance of
the EU, a theme that some rare organizations have made their battle cry
(along the lines of Notre Europe). Without going into details, the proposi-
tions most often aimed at extending the prerogatives of the Commission
and/or Parliament to the detriment of the Council. The Permanent Forum
of Civil Society or the Round Table of European Industrialists, for example,
clearly expressed adherence to these views during the Convention. This
preference reflects the possibilities of access and influence of interest
groups on EU institutions, opportunities in the Council being generally
more restricted. If the draft Constitutional Treaty was generally considered
as primarily following an intergovernmental logic, the Parliament's au-
thority would nevertheless have been tangibly enlarged with the EP gain-
ing rights to access to records of budgetary spending-a move that would
correspond to the wishes of the major actors of civil society. What specifi-
cally were the measures in the Constitutional Treaty that would encourage
citizens' participation?
Following suggestions put forth by representatives of the Bundestag at the
Convention (suggestions that also met with approbation from a large ma-
jority of the national and European MPs), a direct democracy mechanism,
introduced for the first time at the European level, was adopted in the final
days of negotiation. As such, "the Commission can, upon the initiative of
at least one million citizens of the Union coming from a significant num-
ber of member states, be invited to submit an appropriate proposition on
questions that the citizens believe should be addressed through legal action
on the part of the Union" (Art. I-46). It is interesting to note that this
proposition concerning the right of popular initiative did not emanate
"bottom-up" from a social movement or from a civil society entrepreneur.
Several civic groups expressed reservations about the procedure, and indeed
feared that it would be a powerful tool for well-organized lobbies and pop-
ulist leaders.
Furthermore, for the first time, a strong tie was established between the
nomination of the president of the Commission by the Council and the re-
sults in the election of the EP. "Taking into account European Parliamentary
elections and after appropriate consultations, decided by the qualified ma-
jority, the European Council, proposes a candidate for the Presidency of the
Commission. This candidate is elected by the European Parliament by ma-
jority constituent vote" (Art. 1-26). Even if the procedure did not allow po-
litical parties to explicitly present candidates for the presidency of the Com-
mission, the procedure could still facilitate the articulation between
national and European political issues. This disposition could end by a
greater permeability of the Commission to national political contexts, with
the risk of instability this could also engender. There is yet a significant dis-
tance to be covered in order for the designation of the EU executive to be
more clearly derived from the European parliamentary elections. And it is
within this domain that the essence of the European "democratic deficit"
resides.
A mechanism called "advanced alert" was equally entrusted to the na-
tional parliaments in order to allow them to exercise control over the prin-
ciple of subsidiarity (Part N). This mechanism obliged the Commission to
re-examine a draft legislation if, under certain conditions, the latter ad-
vanced an argued objection. "The Court of Justice has the power to take re-
course for violations of a legislative act according to the principle of sub-
sidiarity introduced . . . by the Member States or transmitted by them
according to their legal system in the name of their national parliament or
of a branch of such" (Point 7). The retained formulation leaves each mem-
ber state the freedom of application of this prerogative. In this way, the for-
mulation satisfied a demand expressed by the MPs from federal states-Bel-
gium and Germany especially-and would have allowed these Lander to
have the possibility of access to the Court of Justice. This formulation also
offered an acceptable solution for those who, like Spain, are particularly
sensitive to questions of national cohesion and do not wish the regions to
be able to use this measure to augment their autonomy.
Amongst the most active organizations, the question of civil participation
undoubtedly proved the most disappointing issue. While Article 1-46 pro-
claimed the principle of democratic participation, the statement was left
unattended by concrete modalities of application. Certain frustrations de-
rived from the fact that the editing of the Charter had been more open to
civil society than the second Convention, which appeared as much more in-
tergovernmental and political. The Economic and Social Committee (ESC)
played an important role in the organization of numerous debates, seeking
204 Chapter 8
to situate itself in a mediating relationship with the agents of civil soci-

ety, particularly with EU candidate countries. From its national strong-
hold in twelve EU states, the ESC attempted to position itself as the in-
evitable representative of "organized civil society," insisting on its
"exclusive legitimacy."
From this perspective, the ESC nevertheless structurally competes with
the COR, both of them claiming to contribute to the EU democracy and,
thereby, to be granted with the full status of institution. Furthermore, the
ESC underscored that the existence of a European social dialogue did not
exonerate organized consultation of civil society with the creation of a civil
dialogue that should, in its view, have obtained constitutional status. 29 In-
directly, the potential participants to civil dialogue would have been in con-
flict with the members of the European social dialogue. The latter therefore
adopted several provisions (some in common) during the Convention re-
garding the necessity to privilege the consultation of social partners. 30 On
its part, ETUC refused to belong to the Civil Society Contact Group, ac-
cepting only the role of observer, in order to avoid contributing openly to
the recognition of civil dialogue. Ultimately, neither one nor the other (nor
even the expression "organized civil society") appeared in the text.
For the ESC, results are mitigated. Its status as a consultative organ and
its prerogatives have not evolved and the demand for "the right to recourse
before the Court of Justice"31 was not retained. Some Convention partici-
pants even publicly expressed the desire to suppress the ESC and the Re-
gional Committees on grounds that their utility did not justifY their cost. 32
Significantly, consultative organs intended to provide some articulation be-
tween EU institutions and social actors were marginalized in the constitu-
tional process.
ALTERNATIVE MOBILIZATIONS
While the Convention encouraged the participation of numerous interests,

it also succeeded in mobilizing organized groups and social movements
who roundly denounced the Convention's results. In the first place, the am-
plitude of this movement should be emphasized: 50,000 people attended
the meeting in Paris on November 15, 2003, for the closing day of the Eu-
ropean Social Forum. 33 Their visibility in the public sphere and the media
attention they drew contrasted sharply with the relative confidentiality of
the conventional debates.
Partisans of an "alternative Europe" denounced a text that, according to
them, would constitutionalize free market economy. There lies the dividing
line between those who defended the draft treaty to varying degrees and
those who opposed the logic of market economy. Many contested the mas-
Interests'Mobilization in the Constitutionalization of Europe 205
sive presence of Commission-subsidized associations and the reduced

speaking time for the majority of civil society organizations. Furthermore,
proponents of an alternative Europe never failed to point out that the re-
form of the EU decisional system, more than democratic and social aspects,
was the primary objective of the Convention, and that nothing in the draft
treaty seemed in their view an adequate response to this question. Contro-
versies about religion were also vigorously contested by the alternative Eu-
rope groups. Dissatisfactions included complaints shared by most progres-
sivists in the Convention (for example, absence of explicit reference to
housing rights and the eradication of poverty; or the general maintenance
of unanimous vote concerning social matters) to more specific claims such
as proposals to include lithe right to work" or "universal minimum wages."
Overall, criticisms were aimed at the efficacy of proclaimed rights and were
in sync with the skepticism of many civic groups. Therefore, alternative Eu-
rope groups insisted that the Charter of Fundamental Rights was an instru-
ment of juridical control which did not in itself imply that the EU had au-
thority to develop implementation policies. In fact, the inclusion of the
Charter in the Constitutional Treaty was opposed on the ground that, on
many points, the Charter offers both inferior guarantees to those proffered
by the majority of the member states, and threatened to eliminate the ref-
erence to other important rights contained in the revised Social Charter of
the Council of Europe.
Part of the anti-globalization movement, this mobilization has managed
to federate very diverse complaints on the basis of what it conceives to be a
radical contestation of the capitalist system. The strength of these groups re-
sides much more in their capacity to give voice to a multitude of dissatis-
fied and worried individuals or marginalized groups than in any capacity to
establish a homogenous and structured program of grievances. Instead of
addressing their arguments directly to the Convention, these groups
adopted strategies to avoid and to bypass the constitutional process, and
used this political opportunity to directly contest the EU and its member-
states policies. They called upon "opinion multiplicators" in order to incite
"parallel convergences which should progressively contaminate govern-
ments impregnated with the 'neo-liberal virus' and push parties to Euro-
peanize themselves in order to respond efficiently to supranational is-
sues. "34
Relationships with unions and partisan organizations remain ambiguous
on this matter. Unions were invited only as margins to the ESF.35 With par-
tisan organizations, tensions are even more pronounced: The Porto Alegre
Charter specifies that political parties do not have a place in anti-globaliza-
tion forums. In France, during the assembly of Annemasse and Larzac in
June and August 2003, delegations from the Socialist Party were expulsed
by force. Socialist leaders had to leave the ESF followed by invectives and
206 Chapter 8
projectile objects. 36 Considering the popular and media success of this mo-
bilization, no organization of any real scope can afford to alienate itself
from the movement. The Socialist Party, therefore, abundantly used its as-
sociative network. The Greens, the LCR, and PCF are members of the French
Initiative Committee of ESF by way of their respective newspapers.
The Right is also seeking to get closer to the alternative Europe groups.
The growing audience of this movement led parties to take sometimes dis-
senting positions on the question of the draft Constitutional Treaty, as the
fracture of the French Socialist Party during the 2005 Referendum amply
demonstrated. Certain ideas promulgated by the alter-Europeans (such as
the theories from economists such as James Tobin)37 progressively spread
in the public sphere and, upon encountering a significant audience, forced
partisan realignment. Largely excluded from the European institutional
sphere, Euro-protesters filled a political void by demanding a more social
and a more civic Europe. In this way, their reactive mobilization defined
and invested an enlarged public European space. Their arguments would
later on be decisive in the failed ratification of the Treaty.
CONCLUSION
The analysis conducted here sought to qualify the type of social mobiliza-
tion associated with the constitutional question in Europe. Looking back
to the typological categories mentioned at the beginning of this chapter,
we see that the process is more open than closed, and more liberal than re-
publican. Interest groups have been amply solicited and associated during
the two steps of the tentative constitutional elaboration. They played an
important and explicit role in the promotion of the draft treaty and in the
symbolic "coup" in the edition of the Charter. This process, while not fully
representative of the diversity of opinions, nevertheless corresponded to
the mobilization of a certain European civil society. The network of inter-
est groups constituting a representative platform in Brussels is generally
pro-European and close to EU institutions, having few outlets in the mass
population. Group mobilization is therefore biased from this perspective,
if we allow that such mobilization could possibly represent all voices. But
group mobilization has also been significant and effective, which surely
eliminates a closed and exclusive, strictly elitist interpretation of the con-
stituent process. In relationship to other historical experiences, the context
is, however, not critical enough to elicit the more sustained interest of the
citizens.
Our analysis shows that two registers of mobilization tend to coexist.
One is internal to the Conventions and concerns a limited number of ac-
tors, narrowly associated with the consultative process. This kind of mob i-
lization subscribes to the logic of acceptance of market rules that should be

more or less strongly regulated. This struggle for influence resulted in the
draft Constitution consecrating economic competition while integrating
new civic and social dimensions. In this sense, the draft Constitution satis-
fied very diverse interests.
The other register of mobilization is external to the Conventions. This
register is circumscribed by groups that contest the economic liberalism of
the EU. Having limited access to European institutions, these groups
nonetheless benefited from powerful popular and media attention forged
by "anti-Summit" organizations during, notably, the meetings of the G7,
the European CounciL and the wro meetings. These two registers coexist
more than they dialogue. They do however echo one another: the ESF is
aiming at offering an alternative to the Convention's works and the differ-
ent IGCs. It is therefore solidly within a public European space, polarized
around distinct networks of actors defending clearly different positions,
that the debate developed. The two Conventions therefore contributed, in-
ternally as well as externally; to the structuring of the European polity.
NOTES
1. Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United

States, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913.
2. They are publicly opposed to full universal suffrage in designation of the ex-
ecutive and the legislative branches on grounds of its possible impact on the devel-
opment of welfare provisions and public spending.
3. Andrew Moravcsik, "In Defence of the Democratic Deficit: Reassessing Legit-
imacy in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, 40, no. 4 (2002):
603-24.
4. Declaration 23 attached to the Nice Treaty.
5. "25,000 French citizens participated in one way or another in this exercise"
(Report to the French President and the Prime Minister, Ensemble, dessinons l'Europe,
Paris: La Documentation franc;:aise, 2001, 18). In terms of influence on the consti-
tutional project, the impact is certainly nil. The significance of this campaign lies
more with preparing public opinion for the constitutional eventuality.
6. Unless otherwise indicated, "the Convention" refers to the July 2003 Con-
vention.
7. european-convention.eu.int (accessed 15 April 2007).
8. Etienne de Poncins, Vers une Constitution europeenne: Texte commente du projet
de traite constitutionnel etabli par la Convention europeenne, Paris: Editions 10/18,
2003,31.
9. Olivier Duhamel, Pour l'Europe: Le texte integral de la Constitution explique et
commente, Paris: Seuil, 2003, 143.
10. Flash Eurobarometer, Convention on the Future of Europe-Wave 2, Brussels:
European Commission, 2003.
208 Chapter 8
11. The only exceptions to this rule are errors in the Charter. Cf. Guy Braibant, La
Charte des droits fondamentaux de l'Union europeenne (remoignage et commentaires),
Paris: Seuil, 2001, 231, 269.
12. Braibant, La Charte des droits fondamentaux, 160-64.
13. Pervenche Beres, Une Constitution pour la grande Europe, Paris: Les Notes de la
Fondation Jean Jaures, 2003, 54. Also, Duhamel, Pour l'Europe, 156.
14. Braibant, La Charte des droits fondamentaux, 50.
15. In its 7 December 2000 edition, the weekly published and initiated a petition
edited to this effect signed by 130 public figures (including Jacques Delors).
16. It should be noted that the German version more directly refers to religion
with "geistig religiosen." For further details, see de Poncins, Vers une Constitution eu-
ropeenne, 73-75.
17. The plural in "heritages" is important.
18. Written message from Joel Thoraval (President of the CNCDH) dated 8 July
2003 addressed to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Delegates
of the French European Affairs.
19. UNICE, Convention Plenary Session: Debate on Social Issues, Brussels: UNICE, 7
November 2002, 1.
20. All ensuing information are contained in the UNICE report, European Con-
vention: Overview of UNICE Actions and Messages, 9 September 2003.
21. Carsten Dannohl, one of UNICE's leader, notably objected to human rights
being extended to also include the right to strike.
22. Braibant, La Charte des droits fondamentaux, 29-33.
23. Report to the French President and the Prime Minister, Ensemble, dessinons
I'Europe, 86.
24. Braibant, La Charte des droits fondamentaux, 20.
25. Letter from Thoraval (President of CNCDH).
26. CEEP, Reponse du CEEP au Livre vert sur les Services d'interet general, 21 May 2003.
27. CEEP/ETUC, Proposition pour une Charte des Services d'interet general, 15 June
2000.
28. Beres, Une Constitution pour la grande Europe, 35.
29. ESC, Resolution a l'intention de la Convention europeenne, 19 September 2002,3.
30. UNICE, Convention for the Future of Europe, 17 June 2002, 1.
31. European and Social Committee, Elements d'intervention sur les travaux de la
Convention europeenne, 16-17 July 2003,14.
32. de Poncins, Vers une Constitution europeenne, 181.
33. In the French press, the given statistics oscillate between 50,000 and 80,000
protesters.
34. ATTAC (Association pour une taxation des transactions financieres pour
l'aide aux citoyens), www.france.attac.org/a1359 (accessed 21 April 2007).
35. Remi Barroux, "A l'exception de la CFDT, les syndicats investissent les trib-
unes altermondialistes," Le Monde, 11 November 2003, 8(N).
36. Isabelle Mandraud and Jean-Baptiste de Montvalon, "La delegation du PS a
defile sous une pluie de canettes de bieres et d'insultes," Le Monde, 18 November
2003,9(N).
37. The American Nobel Prize winner proposed taxing the flux of financial spec-
ulation in such a way that the earnings could be applied to a balancing and redis-
tribution of wealth.
9
The Regulation of Interest Groups
in the European Union
Given the place interest groups occupy in European governance, the issue of
their regulation is crucial for an understanding of power games within the
EU. Regulating the activity of actors seeking to exert pressure on European
institutions inevitably raises the matter of the part played by the represen-
tatives of those institutions, foremost among them the EU's parliamentari-
ans and bureaucrats.
The main question involved here is how private or specific interests,
whether economic, social, or civic, mesh with a general interest produced
and embodied by those acting in the EU's name. Clarification is made more
difficult by the fact that proximity between organized interest groups and
European spheres has been historically encouraged as seeming necessary
both to dialogue with the different civil society actors and to the quality of
the public policies implemented. With a host of sensitive issues at stake
here, it is hardly surprising that the question of regulation meets with con-
siderable resistance. The Commission in particular has always been hostile
to all compulsory forms of supervision of interest groups, thus basically
neutralizing parliamentary efforts already burdened by pronounced inertia.
However the recent obstacles to European integration have relaunched a de-
bate that makes ethics and transparency core parts of the European agenda;
this hints at the possibility of a more demanding regulation of lobbyists
and, in broader terms, of all parties involved in the European governance.
The dynamics currently at work testify to growing EU receptiveness to the
claims of the Alter-EU movement; to the power struggles between represen-
tation models; and to the existence of more or less open, virtuous and/or
citizen-controlled conceptions of public action that reflect differentiated
national traditions and practices.
209
210 Chapter 9
THE ABORTIVE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

INITIAL ATIEMPT AT REGULATION
On March 18, 1985, the Danish European Deputy Jens-Peter Bonde issued
a crafty challenge to the Commission of European Communities, calling on
it to "give an idea of the growth in the number oflobbies between 1972 and
1974, indicating their relationships with consumer associations, trade
unions, companies and profession bodies."! Some years later, on December
I, 1989, his Dutch colleague Alman Metten was more explicit when he
raised the issue of transparency and monitoring of EU pressure group ac-
tivity.2 Drawing on the system already in operation in the United States, he
suggested the creation of a common register for the Commission and the
European Parliament that would allow for better identification of these
groups and the provision of rules of conduct. Twenty years down this track,
regulation of lobbying is still a long way from this kind of scenario, even if
it generates more and more controversy.
At that time anybody could enter the parliamentary complex. At the door
all the visitor had to do was declare that he or she had an appointment; the
visitor was then given a badge providing unrestricted access to the build-
ings. Very quickly the increase in EU areas of authority, especially after the
SEA in 1986, began attracting lobbyists in substantially larger numbers,
sometimes to the point of interfering with parliamentarians' work and gen-
erating malfunctions. 3 In May 1991 the Committee on the Rules of Proce-
dures, the Verification of Credentials and Immunities invited Belgian Mem-
ber of the European Parliament (MEP) Marc Galle "to submit proposals
with a view to drawing up a code of conduct and a public register of lob-
byists accredited by Parliament."4 For the first time, an official EU institu-
tion document raised the possibility of regulation and supervision of lob-
bying activities.
For many months the working party concerned organized consultations
with numerous interest groupsS and carried out a number of investigations
into the current situation in the member states. 6 This extensive stocktaking
operation provided an idea of the diversity of opinions, the various na-
tional regulatory systems and, lastly, the main points of disagreement.
Discussion then centered on a number of problem areas. What consti-
tutes a lobby? Should a compulsory register be established or should regis-
tration remain optional? Should all pressure groups be subject to the same
rules, or should a distinction be made between economic interests on the
one hand and civic and social interests on the other? Was regulation of con-
duct necessary? If so, should the system be one of self-regulation or of rules
imposed by the European institutions? This was when interest group strat-
egy, especially in the economic field, took fairly clear shape, most often
stressing the opacity and ambiguity characterizing the activities of certain
The Regulation of Interest Groups in the European Union 211
MEPs; thus it put the ball in the Parliament's court, and rejected the notion
of lobbyists as the only ones whose status should be subject to regulation.
Since no consensus could be reached on either issue, Galle's quest for an
overview led him to broaden considerably the spectrum of proposals cov-
ered by his brief. The report he filed in October 1992 with the Committee
on the Rules of Procedures defines lobbyists? in considerable detail and rec-
ommended that the Parliament draw up a code of conduct for them, re-
stricted them to areas separate from MEPs' offices and, above all, compelled
them to enroll in a register available to the public. The register should in
particular specify "the activities developed to influence Members of the Eu-
ropean Parliament directly or via staff or assistants, and the budgets in-
volved in it."s Persons complying with these requirements would then be
provided with a renewable annual pass and access to the working facilities
the Parliament grants its visitors.
Two other vital stipulations targeted not the lobbyists but the parliamen-
tary institution itself and its personnel: "To ensure that Members of Parlia-
ment meet the same standards of transparency that Parliament requires of
lobbyists, Members should be required to update their declaration of fi-
nancial interests at least annually. A register of financial interest of mem-
bers' staff should also be introduced forthwith."9
Lastly the report added that the committee should examine the extent to
which intergroups and the like can be used for covert lobbying purposes,
but without indicating exactly how this might take place. In attempting to
regulate the situation both of lobbyists and of parliamentary personnel-
thereby implying that there were conflicts of interest between the two cate-
gories that called for specific provisions-the Galle Report provoked oppo-
sition on a broad front and finally became a dead letter, not even being
examined in plenary session.
While the resistance, not to say hostility, to this project on the part of
some MEPs partly explains this initial defeat, the role of the EC was equally
decisive. A key document published in December 1992 10 outlined the main
emphases in the representation of interests, going counter to the Parliament
at the very time when the latter was examining the proposals contained in
the Galle Report.ll What the Commission was doing was urging the lobby-
ists to draw up their own rules of (good) conduct and create their own rep-
resentative professional associations. This pressing invitation combined the
carrot and the stick 12 with a good dose of suggestion,B and results were not
slow in coming: in the following months the first European lobbyists' fed-
erations appeared and in September 1994 a self-regulatory code drawn up
by the Commission was signed by a number of interest groups. 14 These new
organizations involved only a tiny number oflobbies,15 but they presented
themselves as the emerging spokespersons for European public affairs and
so became major actors. Nobody was deceived however: the Commission
212 Chapter 9
and the interest groups tacitly agreed on an ultraminimal self-regulation

process and thus defused the parliamentary initiative.
Within the EP the College of Quaestors took advantage of the opportu-
nity to offer lobbyists a minimally modified version of this code-which
was not binding in any way-and with it automatic access to the complex
for signatories. 16 For three years this optional registration-left to the free
choice of interest groups and totally non-regulatory-guaranteed them free
access. I? For the lobbyists, the code would also act as an obstacle to the im-
plementation of bolder projects, for example the one some of them dis-
cussed late in 1995, which involved extending Condition CD to financial in-
ducement to MEPs and their staff as well as Ell officials. This was ultimately
rejected on the grounds that it would have been incompatible with the
functioning of certain intergroups.18
IMPLEMENTING THE FORD AND

NORDMANN REPORTS: NO EASY MATIER
After the June 1994 European elections, the question of regulating lobby-
ists' activities came to the fore again, mainly at the instigation of the Group
of the Party of European Socialists. Given the chastening failure of the Galle
Report, subsequent projects approached matters more prudently. In No-
vember 1994, MEP Glyn Ford was commissioned by the Committee on the
Rules of Procedure, the Verification of Credentials and Immunities to report
on lobbying in the European Parliament. In an initial working document,
Ford spoke of developing the rules gradually and suggested the creation of
voluntary registration for all those "who wished to have long-term access to
Parliament and its members."I9 This extremely vague turn of phrase had the
advantage of applying without distinction to different categories of actors
and avoiding the ever-contentious definition of lobbyists that had played
such a part in the rejection of the Galle Report. Those who agreed to regis-
tration should comply with a code of conduct and draw up an annual state-
ment of their activities; to be made public, this statement would "include a
list of payments monetary and in kind to members of the European Parlia-
ment, their assistants and parliament staff for the previous year," in return
for which they would be give a full-time one-year right of entry.
The aim here was to systematize the unofficial College of Quaestors prac-
tice, which would now be integrated into parliamentary rules. Those who
refused to comply would still have the possibility of requesting a pass, but
for certain parts of the complex only, which constituted a major restriction.
It was clear that Ford's strategy was an update of the measures Galle had
wanted to put through some years earlier, but with incentives added in the
hope that enough interest groups would step into line to ensure eventual
compliance by the majority.
The preliminary draft report drawn up some weeks later formalized this
set of proposals, honing appreciably the content of the declaration of ac-
tivities section to ensure "detailing, in particular, [of] any benefits, subsi-
dies, gifts or services of any nature rendered to Members, officials or assis-
tants."20 At this stage, reaction to the rough drafts circulating in the
corridors of Parliament were not provoking any tension and an agreement
looked to be in the cards.
Between April and September 1995 the text was examined by a number
of different parliamentary commissions, which substantially amended it
and tightened it up before it went to plenary session. A series of measures
restricted passholders' access to the Parliament: in particular, areas in which
members' offices and officials' offices were situated were to be excluded, ex-
cept for the holders of a written invitation; and a badge clearly specifying
the type of interest represented was to be worn visibly at all times. These
two measures were far from innocuous, the first hampering considerably
physical interaction between MEPs and pressure groups and the second un-
dercutting the discretion to which the latter are often so attached. In addi-
tion, the College of Quaestors would be given certain latitude both in issu-
ing passes and the use that could be made of them, a provision that caused
widespread concern about the potential for arbitrariness. The transparency
obligations were also scaled up: lobbyists would have to declare all benefits
provided to MEPs, officials or assistants in excess of 1,000 ECUs per person
and per calendar year, with the Parliament reserving the right to check the
veracity of the information supplied.
Most importantly, there was a decisive break with the spirit of the earlier
versions, as a clause relating specifically to parliamentary assistants was in-
troduced, obliging them to sign a written declaration to the effect that they
neither represented nor supported any interests other than those linked to
their post: "All other persons, including those working directly with Mem-
bers shall only have access to Parliament under the conditions laid down
for interest groupS."21 Thus their accreditation depended on compliance
with this provision that, had it been put into effect, would have cleared up
one of the main gray areas in parliamentary work by making a clear dis-
tinction between accredited assistants and the striving for influence by dif-
ferent groups among the entourage of MEPs and their teams.
The Ford Report was all the more exacting, and in many respects more re-
strictive, in that another project-the so-called Nordmann Report-was
drawing up proposals at the same time for declarations of interest by MEPs.
The measures put forward were draconian, including detailed public decla-
ration of MEPs' financial situations in the form of "disclosure of all assets
of movable and immovable property, including bank accounts." As for pres-
sure groups, all gifts in cash or kind provided to MEPs over 1,000 ECUs
were to be declared, opening the way for a cross-referencing process that
would constitute a redoubtable means of information checking. Examined
214 Chapter 9
in plenary session on January 17, 1996, both reports were rejected and sent
back to the Committee on the Rules of Procedure after stormy debate. This
exceptional state of affairs compromised the Parliament, which began look-
ing for a quick way out of its quandary. Working groups and commissions
were formed and new versions of the Ford and Nordmann Reports were put
together, with their most controversial proposals excised. Despite continu-
ing resistance both were finally adopted by the Parliament on July 17, 1996.
The Nordmann Report stipulated that every member had to declare in a
public register "his professional activities and any other remunerated func-
tions or activities; any support, whether financial or in terms of staff or ma-
terial, additional to that provided by Parliament and granted to the Mem-
ber in connection with his political activities by third parties, whose
identity shall be disclosed; and any 'significant' gifts." The exact meaning of
this term was not made explicit. Furthermore "They must refuse any gift,
payment or benefit which might influence their vote; and before speaking
in Parliament or in one of its bodies or if proposed as rapporteur, any Mem-
ber who has a direct financial interest in the subject under debate shall dis-
close this interest to the meeting orally."
Regarding the declaration of personal property, no special obligations
were imposed and MEPs were subject to the laws of the member state in
which they had been elected. All in all this was no mean set of rules, estab-
lishing a framework of required acts and basic transparency that had not ex-
isted before. At the same time it fell well short of the provisions of the first
report, using only the proposals allowing for the verification of information
given and suggesting no serious sanctions for breaches.
However, for a long time the vast majority of MEPs paid no heed what-
soever to the obligation to declare their financial interests. The situation im-
proved slightly in March 1999, when this document became directly con-
suitable on the European Parliament's website. Even today, however, most
members provide no more than a few handwritten and often illegible
words such as "RAS,"22 "Nothing to declare," or "As before," some reply in
a mother tongue unintelligible to almost everyone else. The case regarding
parliamentary assistants is even more opaque, despite recent progress. The
list of accredited assistants has recently become available on the Internet,
but the declarations of interest in which they state their professional activ-
ities and all other paid functions or work can only be consulted at the Par-
liament, where the request must first be justified.
Whether or not these declarations should be made public in the same
way as those of the deputies has been a matter of long and bitter debate,
and it has finally been decided that since the assistants hold no elected
mandate the information is of a private nature and as such protected. De-
spite its obvious limitations, this system at least enables ready identification
of each member's closest collaborators and, where applicable, their links
with lobbies. Nonetheless substantial gray areas remain, since financial dec-
larations are compulsory only for accredited assistants and are as perfunc-
torily filled out as those of members.
Lastly, since 2003, a record of accredited public and private interest
groups can also be accessed on the Net. Its usefulness stems not from its
paucity of information,23 but from the fact that registration carries entitle-
ment to a non-transferable pass, valid for a maximum of one year, renew-
able on demand and providing access to and freedom of movement within
the parliamentary precincts. Until recently this was a mere formality, with
requests being granted almost as a matter of course and with no checks on
the back-up information. Given the ongoing increase in the number oflob-
byists seeking this authorization, the rules are nonetheless tending to
toughen up and become more restrictive. 24
According to the Ford Report, pressure groups must sign into a public reg-
ister and will have to observe a code of conduct coming into force at a later
date; in exchange, they are given a pass. Parliamentary assistants wanting ac-
creditation must simply make a written declaration of their professional ac-
tivities or other functions, which means that the principle of incompatibil-
ity between their status and the defending of private interests, as embodied
in the first report, has been abandoned. The issue of gifts and! or benefits in
kind is ignored and the practice thus not expressly forbidden. 25 Even more
so than Nordmann, then, Ford has been voided of the essentials of its ini-
tial content.
As planned, in May 1997 a code of conduct for representatives of special
interests was adopted, in substance requiring them to behave in a frank and
fair way and to practice no dissimulation in respect of the parliamentary in-
stitution. The code drew word for word on the unofficial version already
used for several years by the College of Quaestors, itself based on the one
signed by public affairs consultants at the instigation of the Commission.
Thus it had taken seven years of prevarication for the code of conduct
"forced" on interest groups to be brought into line with the minimal crite-
ria laid down by those groups themselves and by the Commission. On the
same date, however, two amendments were rejected: 26 one would have
obliged lobbyists to draw up an annual report on the influence of their ac-
tivity on the parliamentary decision-making progress; the other stipulated
that only accredited assistants exercising no other functions should have ac-
cess to Parliament on the same basis as the political groups.
The upshot is that a parliamentary assistant, accredited or not, can now
enjoy free and unlimited access to Parliament, perhaps being paid for his or
her work there, while at the same time working for private interests. Simi-
larly nothing prevents an MEP from having private business interests at the
same time, as the press regularly points out. The Wall Street Journal ironically
noted that "In his job with a leading German patent-law firm, Klaus-Heiner
216 Chapter 9
Lehne advises corporate clients on European Union policy. In his second

job, as a member of the European Parliament, Mr. Lehne also shapes pol-
icy: in June, he helped rewrite a patent proposal more to the liking of big
software makers .... In May, legislators with outside jobs in the financial in-
dustry helped push through late amendments to European banking regula-
tions that were favored-and in some cases written-by the industry."27
The incredible difficulty involved in having the regulations passed and the
practical aspects of getting access to available information28 point to major
resistance. Despite these shortcomings, the creation of a system of regulation
and supervision oflobbying bespeaks a political will-extremely slow-mov-
ing, often thwarted and faced with multiple inertias-specific to the Parlia-
ment. At present, the Parliament is the only European institution to possess
a procedure for the obligatory registration and accreditation of pressure
groups. As such it appears extremely isolated and largely out of phase with
the Commission's concerns. Unlike the Parliament, whose functioning is
based on the sacred "elected member" -and which is thus responsible to its
electors for the way in which it exercises its mandate-the Commission is
above all an administrative institution that has always made receptiveness to
interest groups one of its hallmarks. It has thus always opposed a strict, com-
pulsory and binding system of lobbying regulation, while espousing trans-
parency in its relations with representatives of European civil society. In this
way it avoids the trap of excessively detailed and rigid rules which, for ex-
ample, could render it dependent on certain member states; and above all it
constantly broadens its range of expertise and arms itself with a highly com-
petitive economic policy. This doctrine goes back a long way, being clearly
stated in the preparatory work on the setting up of the single market. 29 Thus
the creation of an interest group register covering both the European Parlia-
ment and the Commission, with those listed subject to the same obliga-
tions-as was officially suggested by the Commission at the time-now
looks totally unrealistic, and the profound divergence of approach between
the two bodies in this respect is unmistakable.
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND THE

"ORGANIZED EUROPEAN CML SOCIETY"
While the Parliament was striving to regulate-and even curb-lobbying

within its precincts, the Commission continued to encourage the practice,
pointing to its vocation of dialogue with the European civil society30 and
even calling for new interlocutors in underdeveloped sectors. 31 In line with
this doctrine, it logically declined to impose compulsory registration or ac-
creditation on pressure groups, arguing that influence should not be the
prerogative of any organization in particular; this would, it said, guarantee
openness and pluralism of representation and provide a balanced response

to the demands of the different interest categories, whether economic, so-
cial, or civic.
The expansion of EU competences and the concomitant lobbying
nonetheless forced the Commission to rationalize its consultation proce-
dures-to select a number of privileged interlocutors-even if this function-
alist approach is not always made explicit, and certainly not highlighted, for
fear that it should reinforce the image of an institution committed to the
cause of the most powerful. This approach has three main objectives: not
only to facilitate the decision-making process, but also to improve the qual-
ity of lobbying described as unsatisfactory by those in positions of responsi-
bility in all EU institutions, and to establish the efficacy of the NCO subsidy
system gradually developed via partnerships. "At present it is estimated that
over€l,OOO million a year is allocated to NCO projects directly by the Com-
mission, the major part in the field of external relations for development co-
operation, human rights, democracy programs, and, in particular, humani-
tarian aid (on average €400 million). Other important allocations are in the
social (approximately €70 million), educational (approximately €50 mil-
lion), and environment sectors within the EU."32
The tension between these two agendas-receptivity towards interest
groups on the one hand, rationalization of consultation procedures on the
other-was resolved via some acrobatics with the notion of "organized Eu-
ropean civil society," which enabled the Commission to regulate its func-
tioning as an interface with interest groups while continuing to promote
the idea of broad, equitable and transparent participation. The designation
covered management and labor,33 organizations representing socio-
economic circles, NCOs and community-based groups regarded as Euro-
pean. Very strict criteria were drawn up by the Economic and Social Com-
mittee and used by the Commission: "In order to be eligible, a European
organization must: exist permanently at Community level; provide direct
access to its members' expertise and hence rapid and constructive consulta-
tion; represent general concerns that tally with the interest of European so-
ciety; comprise bodies that are recognized at Member State level as repre-
sentatives of particular interests; have member organizations in most of the
EU Member States; provide for accountability to its members; have author-
ity to represent and act at European level; be independent and mandatory;
not be bound by instructions from outside bodies; be transparent, espe-
cially financially and in its decision-making structures."34
It should be noted that the Commission adopted this definition word for
word, something which highlights the part the Economic and Social Com-
mittee is indirectly playing in regulating the forms of consultation and, con-
sequently, in the emergence of a European civil society. The role of the Eco-
nomic and Social Committee is thus not neutral; it is also problematical in
218 Chapter 9
that it systematically favors the representation of certain interests to the

detriment of others. As J. Greenwood stresses, "the composition of the ESC
has remained unchanged since its formation, based around producer inter-
ests. To be taken seriously as the representative organization of civil society
in a modern democracy, the ESC needs to embrace the full spectrum of
public interests. "35
An in-depth survey of dozens of civic NGOs in Europe has brought out
the bias implicit in the selection process and the apparent arbitrariness gov-
erning European institutions' choice of interlocutors, at least in this field of
activity: "What happens in reality is that these rules favor strong and well-
established organizations, to the detriment of small, new, local or special-
ized ones."36 The Commission in fact partly subscribes to this analysis and
"has played a role in encouraging NGOs to regroup into umbrella organi-
zations and to develop common networks across borders within the Euro-
pean Union, given that these forms of collaboration streamline the consul-
tation process. "37 It also recommends that they adopt a transparent modus
operandi and contribute to the democratization of the public arena.
These requirements add up to a system of evaluation which certainly en-
hances the dialogue the Commission is so keen on, but which also makes
the consultation procedures more rigid and reinforces their selectivity. In
particular, most of the civic and social interest groups do not have the crit-
ical mass to meet these requirements. In the same spirit the Commission
has been working for several years on drawing up a formal European status
for these associations, the initial version of which requires of non-profit or-
ganizations working for a public cause a minimum starting capital of
€50,OOO and a working presence in at least two member states. Should this
measure be adopted, it would also help structure the European civil society
space, but around only a handful of ultra-powerful actors. A vital question
here is that of the impact of these measures and the incentives they provide
on the development of community association life in the member states.
Given the mounting importance of EU subsidies for many NGOs, we can
expect that Commission support will go to the national civil societies that
show themselves the most dynamic and the most in phase with the ac-
countability and transparency criteria it espouses. In the longer term there
is the possibility of a change-currently slow and not very visible-in com-
munity association commitment, especially in the countries where civil par-
ticipation is most underdeveloped: these countries will have no choice but
to comply with European standards in order to obtain the hoped-for re-
sources. In both cases, European civil society, at least in its institutional
form, should focus on partner-based and participatory forms of action, at
the expense of reactive and protest-driven ones.
CONECCS, the database for "Consultation, the European Commission
and Civil Society" is a concrete expression of the Commission's concern
with providing the public with better information about its consultation
processes. Set up in 2003, it replaced the old interest groups list and marked
a step toward transparency. The information provided to CONECCS is de-
tailed and checked, and offers a relatively comprehensive picture of the ac-
tivity of the groups concerned. Even if the databank is voluntary and in no
way constitutes an official seal of approval, the distinction it makes between
"consultative bodies" and other "non-profit-making civil society organiza-
tions" strongly suggests that dialogue is becoming steadily more selective, is
relatively stabilized and bears the marks of a cooptation pluralism.
In April 2006 the first list comprised 141 groups and the second 706, of-
fering a fairly nuanced picture of the most influential European civil soci-
ety actors. While providing no form of accreditation, the database filters rig-
orously, allowing through those organizations considered by the
Commission as "open and responsible." The indications it accumulates al-
low it to assess groups' capacity to meet the criteria of transparency, com-
petence, and representativity, and thus form a seedbed from which actors
can be selected to participate in specifically orientated consultation proce-
dures. In other words, registration with CONECCS is de facto a decisive pre-
requisite for involvement in the European public policy decision-making
process.
INTEREST GROUPS, ETHICS, AND THE

CONSTRUCTION OF THE GENERAL INTEREST
The Commission's self-imposed emphases regarding representation of in-

terests, transparency, and sound administration for European citizens are
nothing new. But the number of lobbyists has risen considerably for some
ten years now. The recent enlargement of the EU generated a flood of close
to 3,000 lobbyists,38 bringing the total to some 15,000. 39 Lobbying meth-
ods have been professionalized, too, with the appearance of schools, train-
ing courses, and internships. Think tanks-permanent bodies specializing
in producing public policy solutions-have proliferated, offering the
wealthiest pressure groups a means of increasing their capacity for influence
and, above all, of using it discreetly and even sub rosa. In the interests of
greater efficacy and coordination, some have even grouped together: the
Pan-European Stockholm Network, for example, now comprises over 120
think tanks seeking to promote deregulation of the single market. 40 The fact
that very wealthy organizations with a relatively opaque modus operandi
pool part of their resources in this way is something of a challenge to the
functioning of the EU political system, even if the role of interest groups,
and especially economic ones, is questionable and should not be overesti-
mated. 41 American multinationals, too, are increasingly represented in
220 Chapter 9
Brussels, which takes think tank transparency into the domain of another
issue: that of economic competition between major world powers and the
capacity of the EU to clarify the forms of influence practiced by non-Euro-
pean interests, so as to ultimately limit their effects.
At the same time the rise of Euroskepticism, whose shattering climax was
the French and Dutch "no" to the proposed European Constitution in April
2005, inaugurated a period of uncertainty and political crisis. Weakened by
this situation, but also by the entry of ten new member states which, in the
short term at least, enfeebled the European edifice and fueled widespread
public fears-the Commission tried to get the integration process going
again. In a highly unfavorable context and very much aware of its shaky
democratic status, it embarked on an enormous program of self-
legitimation, emphasizing more than ever the cachet of its services and its
consultation/ communication procedures. More precisely, the issue of the
legibility and comprehension of the European mode of governance has be-
come a civic issue, with all eyes now on the relationships between interest
groups and political elites. In a way, the Commission has made trans-
parency, efficacy, and the ethics of public action core parts of the European
agenda and used them as the basis for specific discourses and measures. 42
It reflects a major trend, as indicated, for example, by the Commission's
creation in November 2005 of a register of expert groups43 that provides an
overview of all consultative bodies which assist it in its preparation of leg-
islative proposals and political initiatives. While providing no information
as to names, this new list throws extra light on the specialist environment
of the DGs.44 Furthermore, there is provision for consultation with the gen-
eral public via an electronic portal allowing any and every European to give
an opinion on a range of subjects relating to European policies. 45 Whether
one sees these measures as bogus or trifling, or as useful and substantial,
they testify to the ongoing extension of accountability procedures equally
applicable to European civil society actors and EU institutions.
The Commission has also endowed itself with a code of Good Adminis-
trative Behavior46 and a Code of Conduct for Commissioners47 whose suc-
cessive versions indicate a growing exactingness. These measures point
clearly to a determination to promote a body of standards and politico-ad-
ministrative practices fueled by a principle of excellence in contrast with the
slowness of certain member states in this field. In more than one respect
this line of conduct tends to generate ongoing criticism as it is put into ef-
fect, giving it the appearance of a high political risk spiral. By an odd para-
dox, many of the reproaches directed at the EU are provoked by the trans-
parency measures it is promoting, a situation which in turn feeds the
strictures of the media and public opinion.
Nonetheless, clearly established cases of corruption within the Commis-
sion are rare, first because job security and high salaries discourage it and
second because the risk is reduced by exposure to criticism. In 1996, the

weekly European Voice listed thirty-seven disciplinary proceedings in
1994-1995,48 the offences including use of official paper for private pur-
poses, cheating on travel expenses, accepting gifts, and sexual harassment.
The creation of the European Anti-Fraud Office in 2000 has helped rein-
force prevention tools and, when necessary, the sanctioning of ethical and
legal infractions, even if its limited resources and, above all, the fact of be-
ing a Commission service clearly undermines its efficiency.49
Without there necessarily being illicit practices involved, what stokes the
controversies is supposed conniving between business circles and the Com-
mission, as in the case of the Bilderberg Group conferences, which since
1954 have been bringing together personalities from finance, industry, pol-
itics, and international institutions. Bilderberg discussions take place in
camera and in the utmost confidentiality, most often in Europe. While no
formal decisions emerge from these encounters, they do enable preparation
of certain key stages in EU integration and are even said to have played a vi-
tal part in the gestation of the Rome treaties. 50 This clandestine intertwin-
ing of political and economic decision-makers is often taken by critics as
symbolizing the "Capitalist International" for whose benefit the building of
Europe is taking place.
Furthermore, proximity of interests between commissioners and lobbies
is relatively common and fits pretty much with the EU mode of gover-
nance. One of the best-known examples is that of Sir Leon Brittan, the for-
mer commissioner for external trade who, the year he left his post, became
a business consultant for the international law firm Herbert Smith, vice-
president of the UBS Warburg international investment bank, and a mem-
ber of the boards of directors of Unilever and International Financial Ser-
vices London. Similarly Etienne Davignon, after being commissioner for
industry, customs and internal markets in 1977-1985, soon took over as
head of the Societe Generale bank in Belgium. Former commissioner Yves-
Thibault de Silguy was made "European counselor" at the Lyonnaise des
Eaux, while two one-time members of his team were recruited by lobbying
consultancies.
The situation of EU institutions is less regulated-and thus less readily
identifiable-than in the United States, where the Regulation of Lobbying
Act (1946) and the Lobbying Disclosure Act (1995) have paved the way for
a regulatory system notably providing for compulsory registration of inter-
est groups lobbying Congress and a quarterly statement of their activities
listing the names of all clients, including politicians where applicable. Gifts
valuing over $250 are banned, with infringements bringing substantial civil
fines. These rules do not exclude all abuse and fraud; their major weakness
is that they do not apply to non-profit organizations, which means that cer-
tain lobbyists find ways around them.
222 Chapter 9
The offering of gifts and services to political decision-makers is frequent,

as is, to an even greater extent, help with the raising of campaign funds by
interest groups inevitably looking for a return on their investment. Accord-
ing to the Center for Public Integrity, under the Clinton and Bush adminis-
trations 620 White House members of staff accepted 2.3 million dollars
worth of free travel, while a number of politicians are currently being in-
vestigated on charges of fraud, corruption, and insider trading. On March
29, 2006, the conviction handed down in the trial of famously rich lobby-
ist Jack Abramoff called attention to the ramifications and reciprocal favors
between businessmen, magistrates, and members of Congress (and their
spouses and colleagues) that are such a blot on Congress's reputation and
credibility, and by extension on America's political leadership as a whole.
This kind of collusion is all the more problematic given the quasi-organic
osmosis between economic and political circles: about half all former con-
gressmen become lobbyists. 51
Although not necessarily strictly forbidden, the proximity between eco-
nomic circles and Ell executives also raises doubts as to the latter's honesty
and the impartiality of certain political decisions. In 2002, a lobbyist ob-
tained a contract thanks to information passed on by two former members
of the Commission whom he had just taken onto his team. Acknowledging
the conflict of interests, the Commission had the contract canceled. 52 Sim-
ilar cases can arise when the interests of someone close to a commissioner
are directly affected by the latter's activity. The press regularly highlights in
more or less suspicious tones the special relationships between some Euro-
pean executives and extremely rich businessmen. In 2005, the Times re-
vealed that the European Commissioner for Trade had spent New Year's Eve
on a yacht belonging to the joint founder of Microsoft, at the very time
when the multinational was being investigated by its services for alleged
breaches of the rules of competition. Commission president Jose Manuel
Barroso also found himself under investigation by the EP after spending a
brief holiday with a Greek businessman on the latter's yacht.
What are considered the aggressive or unethical methods of some lobby-
ists are also condemned, even though they are not always illegal. In one of
its lobbying training courses, the firm Kimmons & Kimmons teaches its
"gunship" strategy, which involves threatening political decision-makers
with, for example, relocation when other tactics have failed to win them
over. 53 Reputable press sources have reported offers of luxury holidays to
MEPs by Turkey and Taiwan, describing these practices as corruption. 54 De-
risive references are made to some lobbyists' lack of scruples, sometimes
leaving a woeful impression of the way the Parliament works: "The indus-
try hired a British lobbyist ... who met with patients' groups and helped
persuade 30 terminally ill patients in wheelchairs-people likely to benefit
from biotechnology research-to greet members of the Parliaments on the
days of crucial votes on the legislation"55
These anxieties have been heightened since the integration of ten new
member states whose political and administrative customs are in some
cases at a far remove from the EU's chosen standards of transparency and
equity. No European institution is immune to this near-universal suspicion,
public opinion not having a very clear idea of the differences between them.
In this context the Commission has no choice but to defend the overall im-
age of the EU, since even a scandal involving only one of its institutions is
going to tarnish the reputation of the system as a whole. This need to be-
have in an exemplary manner is intensified by the activity of corruption
watchdog units and independent international organizations who are de-
manding that a public register of all beneficiaries of European public fund-
ing be created and made the responsibility of the Commission.
The critical question here is obviously that of the distinction between the
private and the public and thus, more generally, of the definition of the gen-
eral interest. In several recent instances European projects for protection of
the environment and by extension people-projects relating to greenhouse
gas emissions, dangerous chemicals, and the rules for approval of new
drugs-have had to lower their sights considerably under pressure from,
notably, automobile manufacturers, the oil companies, and the big phar-
maceutical groups. This raises major doubts about the legitimacy of the Eu-
ropean decision-making process and its capacity to defend the "public
good" and thus limit the influence of the most powerful pressure groups.
TRANSPARENCY AT THE HEART

OF EUROPEAN "CULTURE SHOCK"
These controversies meet with a variable response from public opinion in

the member states according to different national notions of what is or is
not tolerable. In this respect they are a further sign of the emergence of a
European public arena: more or less stabilized, without doubt limited and
fragmented, but interacting at least from time to time with one or other of
the national equivalents. The northern European countries have the habit
of considerable transparency in the political and administrative fields, but
also of a fairly clear separation between business circles and the political
sphere, and are seeking to have the same distinction validated at European
level. In most of the other member states-especially the continental and
Mediterranean ones-these issues attract far less attention and are endowed
with less importance.
To this gap must be added another one, between the traditionally pro-EU
countries and those where Euroskepticism has more of a grip: in Denmark,
the UK, and to a lesser extent Germany the lack of transparency of European
institutions and the supposed collusion between political and economic
spheres are subject to vigorous and increasingly frequent press campaigns.
224 Chapter 9
While generating real and widespread public passion in some countries,

these bones of contention go virtually unnoticed in others, some of them
next-door neighbors. For example, debate over MEPs' salaries56 and al-
lowances and alleged irregularities has received considerable attention in
Germany, notably through coverage by Bild Zeitung, whereas in France the
matter has passed virtually unnoticed.
This diversity of political mores and cultures-which reflects the multi-
farious norms applying to interest group activity at the national level-
makes it difficult for the EU to find a middle path acceptable to all. The in-
credible slowness the Parliament-and the Parliament alone-brought to
equipping itself with lobbying regulation tools is largely explained by the
delay of a shared model for a political society. In most member states the
current rules in this field are weak and not binding, the exceptions being
the UK and, most of all, Germany. In the UK monitoring is mainly aimed
at parliamentarians, who since 1996 are subject to a code of conduct for-
bidding, among other things, the representation of special interests. This is
an interesting case in that it is conducive to the formation of interest
groups, known to be numerous and influential; to minimal forms of regu-
lation for these groups; and to real transparency in political life.
Overall this is the prevailing view of things in the EU, and British MEP
Glyn Ford drew on this regulatory framework, then under discussion in his
home country, for the reports that now bear his nameY In Germany provi-
sions are much stricter and apply directly to interest groups as such: the
Bundestag is currently the only European chamber in which these groups
must be listed in a public register if they wish to exert pressure in Parlia-
ment or on the federal government.
Overall, then, the question is one of two opposed agendas: one that de-
rives from the English-speaking and/or Scandinavian tradition and seeks to
establish a set of rules guaranteeing the legibility of the European decision-
making process for citizens; and the other which sets much less store by an
issue it sees as secondary and even incompatible with the exercise of power,
and adapts far more readily to a degree of opacity, along the lines of cen-
tralized administrative systems and/or countries where clientelism is com-
mon. The first system is no less well-disposed to lobbies than the second;
in fact the contrary is the case, for it organizes their role and recognizes their
usefulness in consultation in public life. Nor does this distinction necessar-
ily cover a gap between high-regulation and low-regulation countries: Fin-
land is one of the least corrupt countries in the world, with one of the most
advanced systems of political and administrative transparency, yet supervi-
sion of lobbying is all but nonexistent and involves no compulsion what-
soever. 58 Comparison of Finland with the rest of the EU thus demonstrates
that regulation of private and public interest can obey different rationales,
these tending to the consensual and self-imposed in the countries whose
civic norms are most strongly structural. In other words, common practice
is shaped at least as much by a widely shared civic vision as by restrictive
regulation. Products of their national habitus, EU actors embody, represent
and strive to impose59 their own conceptions of political and public life.
At present, and given the absence of consensus, self-regulation by lobby-
ists and codes of conduct have emerged as the only possible regulatory prin-
ciples for the Commission, while in the Parliament a largely emasculated
set of rules was adopted only with great difficulty. In parallel, at the IGCs
two very different administrative cultures clash regularly. Denmark, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland plead full-time for enhancement of citi-
zens' right to access European institution documents, while France, Bel-
gium, Luxembourg, and Germany try to block this shift. Seen in this light,
the European transparency model is drawing more and more on the first
group than on the second,60 with the entry of two Scandinavian countries
into the EU in 1995 bringing a marked change to the balance of power.
Thus it was at the instigation of the Finnish presidency in the second half
of 1996 that the transparency of European Council activities was put on the
EU agenda; as a major objective it should soon lead to Internet broadcast-
ing of the public debates the Council organizes and the availability of some
of its working documents. 61
EMERGENCE OF THE ALTER-Ell MOVEMENT
In Europe the alterglobalist movement was born and developed outside EU

institutions. Its capacity for challenge via the media and popular mobiliza-
tion is in marked contrast with the skepticism and even outright rejection
of these institutions by a growing section of the population, and highlights
the trend to significant dualization of the European public arena. The mat-
uration of this protest movement, now capable of exercising real influence,
and the increasing readiness of European spheres to listen to their critics are
giving rise to a frankly new configuration and the possibility of an inte-
grated political debate. What is interesting here is that the transparency of
European institutions and the regulation of lobbying are simultaneously
the cause of the emergence of a new alter-European actor and the frame-
work for the construction of the Commission's agenda.
The Alter-EU movement-the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and
Ethics Regulation-has gradually been taking shape since late 2004, its
main weapon being denunciation of collusion between business and Euro-
pean decision-making circles. Now presenting as a credible interlocutor, it
brings together the traditional alterglobalist actors-ATTAC for example-
with Eurogroups generally representing civic or social interests that see them-
selves as maltreated by the current EU style of governance, and journalists'
226 Chapter 9
assoCIatIOns, notably the European Federation of Journalists, concerned

about the influence of pressure groups on the media. In contrast with the
usual alterglobalist mobilizations and the European Social Forums, the in-
teraction here between Europe's governing elites and their challengers is di-
rect and internalized, in the sense that it is taking place in a shared institu-
tional space. Determination to counter the atmosphere of Euroskepticism
represents a window of opportunity for the Alter-EU movement, whose
leaders regularly meet with high-ranking Commission staff. Thus its influ-
ence depends less on its financial and logistical resources, or even the size
of its membership, than on overall alter-European protest power-of which
it is one manifestation-and, consequently, the more or less conciliatory at-
titude taken towards it by the European institutions. Despite this favorable
context, however, its political existence lacks stability and remains relatively
fragile.
Largely designed as an information network, Alter-EU makes enormous
use of the Internet to make an extremely precise and well-documented case,
grounded in research and often couched in humorous or satirical terms. Its
way of working is systematized enough to suggest a strategic positioning es-
pecially well adapted to its chosen vector and likely to catch the eye of net-
surfers and a broad audience. 62 Its aim is to solicit the attention of a public
with no specialist knowledge of European issues, while setting itself apart
from the jargon and hermetic style usually employed by EU institutions.
Just as social movements with little political or institutional backing spe-
cialize in spectacular activities, Alter-EU has opted for a distinctly original
style of action and argument, with humor and ridicule as its favorite
weapons. Basically it advocates a binding system of regulation applicable to
all special interest categories; exceptions would be made, however, for un-
structured groups with limited resources-no office in Brussels, for exam-
ple-for which the demand for a declaration of activity and/or transparency
obligations would involve administrative costs too heavy to bear.
And so, since late 2004 Alter-EU has set up a precise program that is
closely drawn on by the Commission for its thinking on lobbying regula-
tion and the transparency of European institutions. The most striking pro-
posals bear on establishment of an independent public body with the pow-
ers needed to act as a public guardian of lobbying transparency and ethics;
for lobbyists, a mandatory system of electronic registration and reporting to
ensure transparency in EU decision-making (including the names of their
clients); rules of conduct for lobbyists and EU officials, notably including a
revolving door system imposing a period of transition before any move
from the private sector to posts of responsibility within the Commission
and vice versa; and an obligatory declaration of personal financial interest.
Furthermore, immediate family members of a covered official should be
prohibited from lobbying for compensation from the agency on which the
covered official serves; lobbyists and their clients should be prohibited from
offering gifts with a value of more than €150-they must declare all reim-
bursement to an official; for each policy proposal the EC should publish a
list of organizations it has consulted on this proposal. 63
This impressive list of measures also deserves attention in that it repre-
sents the background to the European Transparency Initiative, officially
launched in March 2005 by the Vice-President of the European Commis-
sion and Commissioner for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud.
Stressing the majority of citizens' loss of confidence in the EU, especially
over the recent period, Siim Kallas announced a set of measures aimed at
reversing this state of affairs and intimating for autumn 2006 possible leg-
islative action at the Community level and recommendations to member
states and other stakeholders. Core parts of the system currently being
drawn up are far more stringent regulation oflobbying-covering every sec-
tor-and clarification of the activity of MEPs, their assistants, and Com-
mission personnel. This has even led the Commission to officially consider
a complete change of doctrine in which "one option would be to transform
the existing 'CONECCS database' into a compulsory registration system for
all interest groups and lobbyists, including public affairs practitioners, trade
unions etc. "64
Lobbyists' associations-the Society of European Affairs Professionals,
European Public Affairs Consultancies' Association, Association of Accred-
ited Lobbyists to the European Parliament-reacted sharply to this initia-
tive, arguing that existing codes of conduct provided adequate safeguards
and that their contribution to European democratic life should not be in-
terfered with. They also asserted that a more restrictive system would work
against civic and social interest groups, for whom access to European
spheres would be rendered even more difficult.
The existence of several such organizations-mostly very recent, display-
ing no distinctive ideological differences, and embracing only a hundred or
so mainly Commission-oriented groups-might seem surprising in that it
would seem to weaken the groups' position and capacity for influence. In
fact the situation presents a number of advantages: each professional asso-
ciation can claim to speak on behalf of a category-interest groups-and so
enjoy a significant place in the public micro-space made up by the Euro-
pean institutions; at the same time they do not have to submit to the obli-
gations of a representative body, the latter being considered a vital inter-
locutor and so obliged to work on binding rules and ultimately impose
them on its members. Here private sector interest groups can put together
all the codes of (good) conduct, codes of ethics, and codes of practice they
like, without getting too involved in formal consultations procedures that
might turn out to be restrictive, while still enjoying freedom of expression
and a real right to a hearing.
228 Chapter 9
As previously, European lobbyists riposted by creating, on January 28,

2005, a new organization-the European Public Affairs Consultancies As-
sociation-whose task was to draw up a new code of conduct while de-
fending the principle of self-regulation for the profession. However, this
"touch of deja vu" is not likely to prevent regulation that is tighter, capable
of throwing new light on the part played by private sector actors in Euro-
pean governance, and in doing so, meeting some of the demands voiced by
citizens.
Initially scheduled for late 2005, the Green Paper: European Transparency
Initiative did not appear until May 3, 2006, the delay resulting from the ex-
treme difficulty of defining a framework for the resultant public consulta-
tion. 65 Even so, this new stage marks a significant advance: first because the
issue under consideration has never been set so directly at the core of the
European political agenda; and second because the Commission itself ac-
knowledges having "launched a review of its overall approach to trans-
parency," with an explicit emphasis on "the need for a more structured
framework for the activities of interest representatives."66
Partisans of strict regulation will doubtless be disappointed to find that
in the final document compulsory registration for interest groups has once
again been postponed-even though it had been seriously suggested by top
Commission officials-and they may see this as a retrograde step: "A tighter
system of self-regulation would appear more appropriate. However, after a
certain period, a review should be conducted to examine whether self-reg-
ulation has worked. If not, consideration could be given to a system of com-
pulsory measures-a compulsory code of conduct plus compulsory regis-
tration."6? Those of a pessimistic-or realistic-bent might point out that
this was exactly the Commission's line in 1992. And they will not be well
pleased to see the issue of the recycling of senior European bureaucrats in
the business world totally ignored.
Even so, the Commission's proposals are not entirely without weight.
With its plan for a Web-based voluntary system with incentives to register
for all lobbyists who wish to be consulted on EU initiatives, the Commis-
sion is aiming at making public the activities of all interest groups-think
tanks, companies specializing in European affairs, legal consultancies, em-
ployer organizations, and so on-that do not appear in the CONECCS
databank and currently operate for the most part in secret. The effectiveness
of the rules of transparency is also slated for improvement, with plans for
an independent authority in charge of monitoring the system and impos-
ing sanctions in cases of misleading registration and/or violation of a code
of professional ethics ultimately applicable to all lobbyists. Such a system
would provide the general public with a fairly comprehensive information
tool, one enabling a better understanding of the rationale of representation
of European interests and at least partial clarification of the EU decision-
making process.
CONCLUSION
Where the regulation of interest groups is concerned, the European Parlia-

ment and the Commission have historically adopted largely contradictory,
competing lines of conduct-the former laboriously putting together a
compulsory system of registration, and the latter, in favor of self-regulation,
settling for incentive measures. The issue is now a crucial one given the in-
tensification oflobbying since the early 1990s, and even more importantly,
the EO's political fragility and democratic deficit. Gravely weakened by the
"no" vote to the European Constitution and keen to revive public confi-
dence, the Commission cannot afford the risk of a case of corruption, or
even a scandaL which would destroy the ethical credibility of the European
project.
More than just the status of pressure groups, what is ultimately at stake
here is the model of political representation and the conception of Euro-
pean society currently under construction. The challenge is amplified by the
fact that European governance has always made the interweaving of private
and public interests one of its salient characteristics, even though the trans-
parency principles it promotes can be used to its disadvantage. In this do-
main, very different notions of public life clash in more or less concealed
ways, and this largely explains the extreme difficulty of establishing a sys-
tem of regulation worthy of the name. The influence of the English-speak-
ing-and even more so the Scandinavian-countries appears to be a grow-
ing factor in the orienting of the EO's political agenda and standards, and
this suggests the possibility of a more rigorous system for the not too dis-
tant future, one that would enhance the legibility of the European decision-
making system and the role of its various stakeholders.
At the same time the rapprochement between some of the demands of
the alter-European movement-notably in the fields of ethics and trans-
parency-and the political policies laid down by EO institutions is opening
up a critical period for the future: a period that will provide vital indications
of Europe's capacity to meet the aspirations of those calling for a more vir-
tuous democracy.
NOTES
Our warm thanks to the documentalists at the Information Office of the European
Parliament in Brussels, who helped us considerably in our investigations.
1. Written question no. 2325/84 (85/C 228/25).

2. Written question no. 893/89 (90/C 117/20).
3. Examples include interest group representatives masquerading as parliamen-
tarians and the theft and/or sale of official documents.
230 Chapter 9
4. European Parliament (Committee on the Rules of Procedure, the Verification

of Credentials and Immunities), Proposals with a View to Laying Down Rules Govern-
ing the Representation of Special Interest Groups at the European Parliament, 2, 8 Octo-
ber 1992, PE 200.405/fin.
of Credentials and Immunities), Public Hearing on the Representation of Special Inter-
est Groups to Be Held on 22-23 January 1992, 5 December 1991, PE 154.303.
6. European Parliament, Public Hearing on the Representation of Special Interest
Groups.
7. Lobbyists are considered as "Anybody who acts on the instruction of a third
party and set out to defend the interests of that third party to the European Parlia-
ment and other Community institutions or who regularly distributes information or
arranges or maintains regular contacts for that purpose with MEPs and staff work-
ing within the institution." (European Parliament, Proposals with a View to Laying
Down Rules Governing the Representation of Special Interest Groups at the European Par-
liament, 3).
8. European Parliament, Proposals with a View to Laying Down Rules, 4.
9. European Parliament, Proposals with a View to Laying Down Rules, 6.
10. Commission of the European Communities, An Open and Structured Dialogue
between the Commission and Special Interest Groups, December 1992, SEC (92) 2272
final.
11. Cf. Andrew McLaughlin and Justin Greenwood, "The Management of Inter-
est Representation in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, 33,
no. 1 (1995): 143-53.
12. The Commission reserved the right to impose its own set of rules if attempts
at self-regulation failed.
13. Draft versions of several ready-made codes of conduct were drawn up by the
Commission's departments and presented to lobbyists at the various meetings or-
ganized by the Commission.
14. Public affairs shall: (a) Identify themselves by name and company; (b) De-
clare the interest represented; (c) Neither intentionally misrepresent their status nor
the nature of enquiries to officials of the EU institutions, nor create any false im-
pression in relation thereto; (d) Neither directly nor indirectly misrepresent links
with EU institutions; (e) Honor confidential information given to them; (f) Not dis-
seminate false or misleading information knowingly or recklessly and shall exercise
proper care to avoid doing so inadvertently; (g) Not obtain for profit to third par-
ties copies of documents obtained from EU institutions; (h) Not obtain information
from EU institutions by dishonest means; (i) Avoid any professional conflicts of in-
terest; (j) Neither directly nor indirectly offer to give any financial inducement to
any EU official.
15. A few dozen.
16. According to Justin Greenwood, an influential member of the College of
Quaestors at the time had close contact with the business world and realized the ad-
vantages that could accrue from a formality having little application to the lobbies
(cf. Greenwood, "The Regulation of Interest Representation," Representing Interests in
the European Union, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1997, 86).
17. During this time only one lobbyist was refused a pass!
18. Greenwood, "The Regulation ofInterest Representation," 87.

19. European Parliament, Working Document of the Committee on the Rules of Pro-
cedure, the Verification of Credentials and Immunities, 3, 15 March 1995, PE 212.085.
20. European Parliament, Working Document of the Committee on the Rules of Pro-
cedure, 3.
of Credentials and Immunities), Draft Report on Special Interest Groups in the European
Parliament, 25, 25 September 1995, PE 212.411/rev.
22. French: "Rien 11 signaler" ("Nothing to declare").
23. Only the names of the organization and its representative( s) are mentioned.
A slightly more comprehensive print version containing the group's address and cor-
porate name is obtainable directly at the Parliament.
24. In 2005 the required submission was more detailed and demanding, calling
for proof of the applicant's identity. Above all the Parliament would accredit only
groups with an address in Brussels; this constituted a major filter and contributed to
the formation of a "political center."
25. Even if the practice is partly regulated by the obligations applying to MEPs,
the cross-checking that would have enabled comparison between the two declara-
tion registers is no longer possible.
26. At the request of the PPE group.
27. Mary Jacoby and Glenn Simpson, "Politics, Business Mix Freely in Europe
Parliament," Wall Street Journal,S July 2005, 10(N).
28. The obstacle course begins with the Kafkaesque business of getting permis-
sion to enter the Parliament. To receive a pass, the ordinary citizen must first be in-
vited by a European functionary, who vouches for his or her behavior. Inside the
building the citizen is supposed to be accompanied at every moment, as a rule by
the person with whom he has an appointment. Finally he must consult the docu-
ments that interest him wherever he can find room to do so, as there is no space set
aside for this. Photocopying being strictly forbidden, there is no choice but to copy
out by hand the information sought. A policy of transparency is certainly to be eval-
uated in terms of practical application as well as its general principles.
29. Paul Sutherland (Report to the EEC by the High Level Group on the Opera-
tion of the Internal Market), The Internal Market after 1992: Meeting the Challenge,
Brussels: EEC, October 1992, SEC (92) 2004 final.
30. Commission of the European Communities, Towards a Reinforced Culture of
Consultation and Dialogue-General Principles and Minimum Standards for Consultation
of Interested Parties by the Commission, December 2002, COM (2002) 704 final.
31. Especially in the new member states.
32. Commission Discussion Paper, The Commission and Non-Governmental Orga-
nizations: Building a Stronger Partnership, January 2000, 2, COM (2000) 11 final.
33. Other than the European social dialogue groups, whose status was set in the
treaties.
34. Economic and Social Committee, Opinion of the Economic and Social Commit-
tee on European Governance and White Paper, 5-6, 20 March 2002, CES 357/2002.
35. Justin Greenwood, "The White Paper on Governance: Implications for Ell
Public Affairs," www.lib.gla.ac.uk/sjmc/WhitePaperonGovernancearticle.doc (ac-
232 Chapter 9
36. Active Citizenship Network, Participation in Policy Making: Criteria for the Se-
lection of Civic NGOs, September 2004, 94.
37. European Commission, The Commission and Non-Governmental Organizations, 9.
38. According to the latest edition of the European Public Affairs Directory.
39. European Commission estimate. If this figure is compared with the number
of European bureaucrats, estimated at around 26,000 in 2004, the ratio is consider-
ably higher than for the American Congress in Washington, so often cited as the po-
litical system the most open to lobbyists.
40. www.stockholm-networkorg (accessed 21 April 2007).
41. Emiliano Grossman, "Bringing Politics Back In: Rethinking the Role of Eco-
nomic Interest Groups in European Integration," Journal of European Public Policy,
11, no. 4 (2004): 637-54.
42. In this respect we should mention the collective resignation of the Commis-
sion under J. Santer on 15 March 1999, in response to the accusations of fraud, ad-
ministrative incompetence and nepotism leveled at four commissioners. While
open to interpretation as a sign of ignominy and bankruptcy, this act also-and per-
haps above all-testifies to the Commission's sense of responsibility, and more
broadly to the determination of EU institutions to be judged according to principles
and political morality. No national government in Europe faced with a political or
financial scandal has reacted in the same way in the recent years.
43. ec.europa. eu/ co mm/ secretariacgeneral/ regexp / index. cfm ?lang= EN ( ac-
cessed 21 April 2007). Three broad categories are used: governmental experts and/or
academics; specialists and interest groups; and NGOs.
44. It intersects partially with CONECCS, but is different in that, unlike the lat-
ter, it also lists groups with "non-civil society" participation, such as public author-
ity representatives and personal experts.
45. europa.eu.int/yourvoice/consultations/index_fr.htm#open (accessed 21
April 2007).
46. ec.europa.eu/comm/secretariacgeneraljcode/index_en.htm (accessed 21
April 2007).
47. ec. europa. eu/ commission_barroso/ code_oCconduct/code_conducCen. pdf
(accessed 21 April 2007).
48. www.europeanvoice.com (accessed 23 April 2007).
49. ec.europa.eu/comm/dgs/ olaf/ (accessed 21 April 2007).
50. Belen Balany'a, Ann Doherty, Olivier Hoedeman, Adam Ma'anit, and Erik
Wesselius (in association with Corporate Europe Observatory), Europe Inc.: Regional
and Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power, London: Pluto Press, 2000.
51. Philippe Gelie, "Le prod~s des lobbies secoue Washington," Le Figaro, 4 Jan-
uary 2006, 2(N).
52. Dan Bilefsky, "Lobbying Brussels: It's Getting Crowded," International Herald
Tribune, 29 October 2005, www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/28/business/wblobby
.php (accessed 21 April 2007).
53. Corporate Europe Observatory, Lobby Planet: Brussels, the EU Quarter, Amster-
dam: CEO, 2005, www.corporateeurope.org/docs/lobbycracy/lobbyplanet.pdf (ac-
54. Karel Bartak, "Les institutions europeennes sous influence," Le Monde diplo-
matique, October 1998, 12-13(N).
55. Bilefsky, "Lobbying Brussels."

56. At present these are based on the different national scales, which explains the
marked disparities in the remuneration of parliamentarians from different coun-
tries.
57. See Justin Greenwood, "The Regulation ofInterest Representation," 91.
58. Cf. the two European Parliament studies: Lobbying in the European Union: Cur-
rent Rules and Practices, Luxembourg: European Parliament (Constitutional Affairs
Series), 2003, 46; Rules on Lobbying and Intergroups in the National Parliaments of the
Member States, Brussels: European Parliamant (National Parliament Series), 1996,
11.
59. This was particularly well illustrated in 1999 by the stances of parliamen-
tarians in the J. Santer Commission controversy. The motion of censure moved by
the Socialist group received extensive support from German, Swedish, Austrian,
and Dutch MEPs, who were notably opposed by their Spanish, Portuguese, and
Italian counterparts; the motion ultimately failed to gain the necessary two-thirds
majority.
60. The EU might now be playing the high priest of transparency, but its ances-
tor-the ECSC-had developed a very elaborate strategy of control and even ma-
nipulation of information. It handsomely remunerated the few journalists special-
izing in European matters, bought thousands of indulgent articles and equipped
itself with a news department that had, according to an in-house memorandum,
"the responsibility for opportune information and the monopoly of orthodoxy"
(quoted by Gerard de Selys, "La machine de propagande de la Commission," Le
Monde diplomatique, June 1996, 8-9 (N)). These practices largely reflected the poli-
cies of information control applying at the time in most of the six founder coun-
tries, and notably in France and Germany.
61. The prospect of these new rights is also the result of pressure from civil so-
ciety actors in these countries, who for several years now have been making their
case to European institutions. Thus it is significant that it is the newspapers the
Guardian and lournalisten-English and Swedish respectively, and from the coun-
tries with the most highly developed tradition of investigative journalism-who
lodged two complaints against the European Council at the Luxembourg Court
of Justice. This happened after the Council had refused to supply them with
working documents. Although twice rejected, these cases contributed to the re-
cent decision.
62. For instance Lobby Planet: Brussels, the EU Quarter follows the Lonely Planet
guidebook model, providing a very comprehensive set of indications on the geog-
raphy of the main interest groups in Brussels and using their cartography to stress
their nearness to European institutions. There is also an annual "Worst EU Lobby
Award" for a group using tactics regarded as especially unacceptable.
63. Alter-EU, Recommendations on Lobbying Transparency and Ethics in the European
Union, www.alter-eu.org/files/recommendations-20060113.pdf (accessed 23 April
2007).
64. Communication to the Commission from the President, Ms. Wall strom, Mr.
Kallas, Ms. Hubner and Ms. Fischer Boel, Proposing the Launch of a European Trans-
parency Initiative, 6, ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/kallas/doc/etik-communication_
en.pdf (accessed 23 April 2007).
234 Chapter 9
65. Commission of the European Communities, Green Paper: European Trans-

parency Initiative, 2006, COM (2006) 194 final.
parency Initiative, 3.
parency Initiative, 10.
Conclusion
European Democracy
and Social Justice
This book proposed an extensive analysis of collective action-understood

as a range of mobilizations and forms of interest representation-and its
transformations associated with European integration. Our principal un-
derlying hypothesis was that the different means by which influence is ex-
erted-the relatively discreet avenues of lobbying or more openly assertive
protest demonstrations-provide an outline of emerging European democ-
racy. Putting these phenomena into an overall perspective necessarily in-
volved not only perceiving them in their constantly evolving diversity, but
also describing the relationships between them in such a way as to offer for
consideration a global configuration, as complete and as interactive as pos-
sible (chapter 1).
European democracy is not totally in the hands of big industrial groups
or financiers operating behind the scenes in EU institutions. Nor does it
come down to the protests of social movements or street demonstrators.
What emerges clearly is that while interest representation in the EU works
more to the advantage of economic actors, civic and social groups are also
well established: they account for a third of the Eurogroups registered with
the Ee, with the gap showing a tendency to close over recent years (chapter
3). Similarly, while EU has always made the building of the single market a
priority, this has been accompanied by a significant and increasingly sub-
stantial social chapter and an ambitious procedure for negotiations be-
tween management and labor that point up Europe's attachment to a social
model that respects citizens' fundamental rights (chapter 4).
Power struggles between interest groups take place both within European
Union spheres and within the member states, whose still-dominant insti-
tutional systems remain highly specific and different from each other. The
235
236 Conclusion
picture is thus a complex, not to say a composite one, highlighting the ef-
fects of integration-via, for example, the creation of a system of interest in-
termediation for EU institutions-but also, and perhaps mainly, via the in-
fluence of national rationales far from disappearing. The resources for
action and civil society dynamism vary widely from one country to another,
as do member states' contrasting, stabilized traditions (chapter 2). The re-
sults set out here are permeated by this phenomenon and make it clear that
two collective action rationales-one oriented towards European institu-
tions, the other rooted in national spaces-overlap to a considerable extent.
One of our main goals was to identify the processes transforming collec-
tive action in relation to European integration. We first build on findings
presented in the preceding chapters to elaborate a typology of the key pat-
terns of Europeanization of social interests' mobilization. We also intended
to explore in detail how interests influence is exerted at the European level.
We then use the analytical categories of resources, opportunities, and fram-
ing exposed in chapter 1 to compare and synthesize our case study findings.
Equally important to us was the issue of the impact of changing collective
action on power relations and cleavage structures among European inter-
ests, addressed in the third section. We eventually turn to the insights
brought by this analysis on EU policy performance, and in particular to the
understanding of the democratic deficit.
PATIERNS OF EUROPEANIZATION OF COLLECTIVE ACTION
By "Europeanization" we refer to the emerging process by means of which

the forms of social conflicts existing in the member states are progressively
transformed with the constitution of a complementary political level, and
by the development of interdependencies between groups from different
national societies. Such a process does not result from a single and uniform
causal mechanism, but rather from a series of new interaction patterns that
we try to identify in this section.
The question of differences and bias in the access of different groups to
the EU institutions relates to the cleavages structuring European interests'
mobilization. Cleavages are understood as the lines of sociological or ideo-
logical fracture around which policy issues are defined and interest groups'
mobilizations are organized. The effects of European integration may be
considered within each cleavage, in order to examine whether the definition
of stakes and the balance between groups differ from their expressions in
national contexts. They may also be seen in the relations between cleavages,
in order to estimate their respective weight in the political arena. In the lat-
ter perspective, one may summarily oppose Rokkanian cleavages, deeply
anchored in the social structure and having laid the foundations of repre-
European Democracy and Social Justice 237
sentative governments in Europe, with more recently constituted divides,

defined by the affirmation of new values in the political debate.
EU policies indeed impact upon the political equilibriums established
around traditional cleavages in the member states. They tend to favor capi-
tal accumulation over labor protection, and purchasing power of urban
consumers over revenues of most producers in agriculture. They erode in-
stitutional arrangements in coordinated market economies, and lead to ad-
justments in center-periphery relations, less state-centered than in the past.
They also open political spaces to the benefit of relatively recent issues such
as the environment or women's rights, in turn fostering policy changes in
the member states. But some problems, despite patently transnational di-
mensions (migrants' rights), do not give rise to significant policy develop-
ments, due to the lack of mobilizations and public support. For others, their
essentially national handling (unemployment and exclusion) does not pre-
vent them from successfully using media opportunities at the European
level in order to question political leaders and public opinion. To summa-
rize, the EU political development favored a more market-oriented balance
of interests within European countries, and selectively supported some ad-
vances on progressive social issues, to the exclusion of others.
Does European integration favor one collective action regime over an-
other? A large number of corporatist arrangements have been established
around the EU institutions, particularly at the initiative of the Commission.
But collective action in Europe today takes a more pluralist form, with a
greater variety in institutional venues (European Parliament, Court of Jus-
tice), and with a differentiation and gradual aperture of public policy net-
works. In the same light, policy communities in the member states are also
more diversified, subject to decentralization and transnationalization, and
more open to newcomers. The relative development of protest at the EU
level also testifies to a politicization of European decision-making, not any
more confined within bureaucratic and professional expertise.
Building on the categories proposed by O. Imig and S. Tarrow,l collective
action in Europe may be distinguished according to the types of actors in-
volved and the institutional targets towards which their mobilization is di-
rected. These dimensions allow us to distinguish between four main pat-
terns of interaction in the Europeanization of collective action.
Europeanization may first be realized by means of domestication, with the
development of essentially local or national mobilizations (in terms of ac-
tors involved, the repertoires in use, and the targets aimed at). These mobi-
lizations are nevertheless constructed around European issues, most often
in reaction to decisions made by the EU. Collective action by hunters or
fishermen and local demonstrations of farmers contesting the CAP reforms
are a part of this reactive and protest-based mode of collective action asso-
ciated with European integration. Europeanization is minimal at this level,
as only the issues involved have a proper European dimension.
238 Conclusion
A second process can be identified with extemalization. Whereas in the

first case it is by the importation of EU norms that political stakes of mo-
bilization are constructed, this second case relies on the political opportu-
nities provided by the European institutions, primarily in the domains of
legal action towards the ECL EU regulations, or distributive policies. Local
or national actors (businesses, interest groups, local governments) expand
their repertoire and project themselves in EU policymaking, most often by
means of lobbying, in order to bypass national obstacles or to take advan-
tage of complementary resources to improve or protect their situation.
Whereas the first two patterns deal with local or national agents, the
transnationalization of collective action relies, in contrast, on a transforma-
tion of actors themselves, crossing national boundaries to take in two or
more countries. Multi-national corporations and, more generally, the dif-
ferent agents operating in the single market such as SMEs and cross-border
unions, transnational regional organizations, and social movements strate-
gically seek to orient the EU normative production, on the ground of eco-
nomic or political reasons. The targets of such mobilizations are essentially
at the EU level, and they most often make use of lobbying. They may also
take the form of protest, as the marches of the unemployed or the farmers'
demonstrations, or even the Vilvorde strike have sometimes managed to do.
Finally, the most integrated form of collective action in the sense defined
here is supranationalization. It corresponds to a strong institutionalization of
actors at the European level and, practically, to their formal cooptation at
the heart of the decision-making process of the Union. The Eurogroups, the
ESC and the COR figure in this category. The social dialogue, the transat-
lantic dialogue, the implementation of the Common Market the essential
components of the CAP, and the environmental policy are to be found in
this pattern where the consultation of interests is highly developed, and
where sector-based corporatism progressively leaves ground to more plu-
ralist forms of influence.
These different patterns of Europeanization show in the first place that
the EU and national interest intermediation systems are not exclusive, but
rather tend to supplement each other in a multi-level polity. Until 1993,
with a significant acceleration in the 1980s, externalization and suprana-
tionalization of interests at the EU level prevailed. However, the beginning
of the 1990s and the immediate aftermath of the Maastricht Treaty wit-
nessed a stepping-up in international trade negotiations within the WTO.
These developments transformed the European agenda and imposed much
more liberal pressures than in the preceding period. Corporatist regulations
lost both in legitimacy and in efficiency at the very moment when the sin-
gle market came in full implementation. Domestication of European issues
mainly developed to contest the single market regulations, in particular re-
lated to the competition policy, the fiscal austerity imposed by the stability
pact, and the reform of the CAP. At the same time, the main target for so-
cial movements opposing neo-liberalism moved from the EU to the wro.
Transnationalization and globalization of protest took over the perspectives
of supranationalization at the European level. As a consequence, the EU
contributed to a process of politicization where its own position became
only relative.
INTERESTS' INFLUENCE AND THE EUROPEAN POLITY
Table C.l summarizes the findings from the different policy case studies de-
veloped in the previous chapters. Due to the importance of agriculture
within EU policies, it also includes farmers as an indicative reference for
comparison, based on secondary analysis of the literature.
Considering resources, it should first be noted that most interests are
segmented at the national and/or sector level. None of them is integrated
and concentrated at the EU level as they may have been in the historical
national neo-corporatist model. This feature reflects the large diversity of
interests indeed included within categories such as business, unions, or
territorial governments, as well as the structuring effect of national insti-
tutions on the organization of interests. Two categories of exceptions are
worth noticing. Business, although equally segmented along national and
sector-based lines, mainly exerts its influence for structural reasons, as
economic growth, government revenues supporting distributive policies,
and employment are directly related to business operations and perform-
ances. Governments' policies are occasionally damaging for some cate-
gories of firms, but they cannot infringe upon the key interests of most
businesses most of the times without undermining the conditions for po-
litical consensus. Therefore market-oriented policies are not primarily
adopted under the pressure of business, but rather as a convergence of in-
terests and preferences between governments and large corporations lead-
ing the economy.
By contrast, the unemployed and migrants exert no structural influence
in economic or political terms. As opposed to wage earners, or recipients of
health-care benefits or pensions, they remain marginal in the constitution
of political majorities, or excluded from citizenship. Therefore they need to
deploy very significant mobilizations for their claims to be considered.
However, their capacity for organization remains deeply hampered by the
diffuse structure of their interests. Not only are they scattered in the differ-
ent member states, they also hardly form any type of community due to
their various national, occupational, and residential backgrounds. They
also lack cognitive and material resources, and as a consequence, rarely en-
gage in collective action.
Table C.l. Case Studies Summary
Mobilization Structure
Resources Opportunities Threats at the EU level Framing Strategies
Business Structural Single market access Increased competition; Euro-business International free Mercanti I ism at the
Social regulation associations trade national and EU
level
Unions Segmented Social dialogue at Deregulation of labor ETUC and European social Preserve welfare at the
the EU level markets; Welfare transnational model domestic level;
retrenchment mobilizations Promote EU social
policy
Unemployed Diffuse Few except media Reduced Unemployment European marches Neo-liberalism as National and European
coverage benefits (domestic level) causing social protests
exclusion
Territorial Segmented Structural funds Delocalization of fiscal European interest Social cohesion at Lobbying at the
Governments basis groups the European national and EU
level level
Environmentalists Segmented EU environmental Conservative legislation; Eurogroups Sustainable Lobbying at the
regulation Deficient policy development and national and
implementation in the Green Europe EU level
member states
Women's Rights Segmented EU equal rights Conservative legislation; Eurogroups Equal rights and Euro-Iobbying and
policy; ECJ Deficient policy gender judicial action
implementation in the
member states
Migrants Diffuse Equal rights Restrictive migration European Human rights and National and European
policy policies Parliament globalization claims
Farmers Segmented Market access; Increased competition COPA and other European social Euro-Iobbying;
CAP subsidies on domestic markets; Eurogroups cohesion National and
Reduced EU and transnational protest
national subsidies
Alterglobalization Segmented Media coverage Development of free World (or European) Global justice Transnational protest
trade at the regional social forum
and global level
All of these interests managed to deploy a mobilization structure at the

EU level, although in significantly different settings. Most of them formed
Eurogroups, gained access to the formal decision-making process of the EU,
and joined established policy networks usually based on corporatist
arrangements at the sector level. Again, the unemployed and migrants, to-
gether with the alterglobalization movements, did not obtained equivalent
privileges. Their mobilizations nevertheless unfolded through marches, fo-
rums, and relay by the EP.
Significantly, collective action is structured by a series of cognitive frames
varying with policy issues. These frames can be listed as international free
trade and growth, the European social model, European social cohesion,
sustainable development, equal rights, human rights and globalization,
and neo-liberalism as the source of inequalities and exclusion. Although
they sometimes partially overlap, they tend to remain issue-specific. But
they also form the different components of a patchy European public space,
and significantly expanded and transformed collective action and policy
frames within the member states. The identification of strategies developed
by interests shows that in most cases they are jointly deployed at the EU and
national levels, along the lines of a multi-level and predominantly pluralist
system of governance.
INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS
Overall, then, we can distinguish between categories of actors whose situa-

tion in terms of influencing European spheres is relatively favorable, stabi-
lized, and institutionalized (business, unions, territorial governments, en-
vironmentalists, women's rights, and farmers), and those who lack official
access, are not recognized as legitimate interlocutors and are thus not at all,
or only marginally, integrated into the EU consultation and decision-mak-
ing process (unemployed, migrants, and alterglobalization movement). The
first are involved in fields of activity that are the subject of relatively long-
standing European policies. Mainly acquired at a national level, their re-
sources have enabled them to react positively to the new political opportu-
nities and in return to benefit from the leverage accruing from access to EU
institutions.
These groups now seem to enjoy privileged status to the extent that the
consultation procedures via which they exert their influence are globally
well-defined and their political legitimacy is taken for granted. Their posi-
tion cannot strictly be likened to that of a corporatist model-not, at least,
in the highly developed form to be found in some member states-but in
each of the activity sectors studied, a small number of groups is in a very fa-
vorable position within the EU, even blocking representation of other in-
terests which then find themselves relegated to the national sphere.
242 Conclusion
One critical issue for the interest representation system in the EU, and
above all, for the future of the European project lies with the capacity of
these organizations to establish a connection between European institutions
and the driving forces of democratic debate as it takes place in the member
states. At present the mechanisms ensuring this interface are underdevel-
oped. Power games taking place around European institutions are almost to-
tally dissociated from national forms of participation-whether based on
politics, trade unionism, or community associations-and very largely fall
outside the processes of media coverage and exposure structuring public
spaces. Consequently, while the representation of interests at the European
level is closely tied to the implementation of EU public policy, it has a very
tenuous connection with the effective mechanisms of representative democ-
racy; this is even truer with respect to existing social and political mobiliza-
tion structures, mostly situated within the nation-state framework.
The insider position these actors enjoy hinges on a more or less explicit
consensus regarding basic EU emphases, notably the free market principles
that have represented a major line of action since the Treaty of Rome. While
firms are the most overt supporters of unshackled competition, all groups
with strong EU representation are working to promote their interests in
terms of compatibility with the free-market rationale, even when they criti-
cize some of its aspects and seek to channel its effects. Their frames for ac-
tion fit with the economic liberalism promoted by the EU and raised to the
status of a constitutional principle in the opening lines of the document re-
jected by France and the Netherlands in 2005. All these interests already
have their place, in varying degrees, on the European agenda of public pol-
icy and are favorably known to the general public and the political elites.
Logically enough, their mobilization strategies are not especially reactive;
rather, they resort to lobbying, expert opinions, and legal action, methods
the EU institutions accept and even encourage. The more resources the
groups have and the sooner they become involved in the EU consultation
process and pursue aims compatible with those of EU, the less need they
have (as in the case of firms) of strategies of protest and challenge at popu-
lar and media level. As a result, the types of action and the role of certain
collective actors undergo considerable modification, such as in the case of
trade union organizations. Forces for mobilization and frequently forces of
protest within national systems, they emphasize at the European level con-
sultation and a much more partnership-based approach which, while not
excluding demonstrations, sees them as a last resort rarely adopted. This
change has major implications for the evolution of collective action and Eu-
ropean democracy.
At a period of marked decline in trade union mobilization in the mem-
ber states, the same organizations are behaving more and more, at the EU
level, like social policy managers, for the most part cut off from any mili-
tant grassroots movement. The social dialogue procedure offers social part-
ners interesting prospects for negotiation. Collective bargaining even
bounced back a little recently, somewhat reviving the EU social model at
the sector level (chapter 4). These advances are not, however, the outcome
of mass militancy and are not an expression of a part of public opinion, as
were the great social victories of the first part of the twentieth century. They
are, rather, the result of negotiations held in camera, or almost, in the re-
stricted setting of the European spheres. As a regulatory body the EU may
well be satisfied with this situation. But it is unlikely that a political entity
aspiring to develop a sense of citizenship and claiming a degree of demo-
cratic legitimacy feels the same way.
The groups under study-the best-represented at European level-do not
necessarily settle simply for taking part in negotiations. They can also ex-
press disagreement. Those who feel let down by European integration can
both try to influence decision-making and, if necessary, make their dissatis-
faction known and protest at the national or European level. This is espe-
cially true of the farmers, long directly concerned by the CAP; one of the
most assertive professional groups, they regularly and sometimes violently
throw down the gauntlet to the authorities. In the great majority of cases the
protest is internalized, in the sense that national political targets are chosen
in order to denounce measures taken in Brussels.
This configuration illustrates perfectly the distance between places where
decisions are taken-increasingly the European level-and the sites where
collective action takes place, most frequently within the framework of
member states. This gap reduces the credibility of national governments,
whose decision-making autonomy is diminishing in line with the expan-
sion of EU prerogatives. But it also affects the legitimacy of European insti-
tutions, increasingly cut off from citizens and whose role, paradoxically, is
never so fully identified than when it raises problems and sparks opposi-
tion. The case of the farmers is exemplary in this respect and points up
some of the relationships that are developing between collective action and
the building of European democracy. Even if these two phenomena have
their own logics, they also interact as part of a co-building relationship.
Thus the emergence of the EU is generating protest mobilizations and a spe-
cific system of interest intermediation, with the two processes contributing
to the definition of the European agenda and fueling the different phases of
European political decision-making.
The dynamics at work in these phenomena are many and often contra-
dictory, constantly mixing the national and European levels on the one
hand with, on the other, a complex interplay of influence involving coop-
eration, confrontation, and indifference. What needs to be stressed here is
the compartmentalization of the public policy sectors examined, which
serves as an indicator of the composite character of the EU and the sheer
244 Conclusion
diversity of its integration mechanisms. Due to the longstanding character

of the CAP and its importance in European policy, and to the powerful rep-
resentation of farming interests through a vigorous corporatist unionism
able to mass-mobilize at the national level, farmers are involved simulta-
neously in forms of collective action and European decision-making
processes.
Even though the actors concerned are not always the same, this configu-
ration offers a close association of collective action and European democ-
racy. In other fields such as women's rights and environmental protection,
this trend is less pronounced, mainly because the policies implemented by
the Ell are less developed, and therefore do not have the same influence on
the target populations, whose interests remain largely dependent on na-
tional contexts. As a result, the national and European spheres of action are
less interrelated than in the case of the farmers, representation of interests
around Ell institutions being relatively disconnected from protests organ-
ized at the national level. Varying from one sector to another, these dis-
junctions indicate the extent to which collective action directly or indirectly
echoes Ell institutions and policies, and testify to the fragmentation of na-
tional and European spaces.
Another set of actors (unemployed, migrants, alterglobalization move-
ment), this time with much more difficult and limited access to European
spheres, stands out in our analysis. Their basic activity takes place outside
or on the periphery of European institutions and runs counter to them. The
unemployed and the alterglobalist movement adopt an explicit stance of
opposition to the institutions, calling the economic liberalism of interna-
tional organizations into question. As things stand, their struggle focuses
less on the content of European policies, with which they have virtually no
involvement, than on the cognitive construction of a possible alternative,
"another Europe." This focus works largely through summonses to the me-
dia and public opinion, mainly in the form of calls for their support, with-
out intending to take any direct part in the shaping of political decisions.
While the status of unemployed people and the benefits paid to them fall
outside the scope of Ell social and economic policy, based as it is on the la-
bor market and, especially, employment incentive measures, the case of im-
migrants is different. European policy regulating migration has recently
considerably expanded. By a curious paradox, one group-the unem-
ployed-whose situation relates to no Ell area of authority, has succeeded
in carving out a place for itself in the public arena and in relation to Euro-
pean institutions via the European marches against unemployment and so-
cial exclusion. Meanwhile migrants, whose fate is being more and more de-
cided by the Ell, are experiencing enormous difficulty in asserting their
interests at this level (see chapter 7).
This contrasting state of affairs is mainly a matter of differing contexts

and, more precisely, of the backing each group has been able to find. The
matter of their respective resources does not seem to have had a discrimi-
natory effect, but at European level the unemployed have had access to
greater political opportunities than the migrants. Unemployed mobiliza-
tion has benefited from a fortuitous but decisive alliance with certain Alter-
EU leaders and from a strategy of challenge to the European Council which,
in the short term at least, has really paid off. Similar circumstances for mi-
grants might have helped them break out of their isolation, but instead they
currently face the rise of xenophobia increasingly contaminating public
opinion. Of all the groups examined, migrants have the most limited
means for taking action, barely succeeding in having any real impact at na-
tional or European level. The very conditions of their political existence
come up against the prerogatives of the member states, which either indi-
vidually or as part of the EU strive to keep control of their own borders.
In different ways, the mobilization of the unemployed and migrants
places at the forefront issues relating to social exclusion and/or poverty,
which have great difficulty in taking shape as enduring political cleavages
within the EU. Thus European democracy is being built without being ca-
pable of resolving the social questions gnawing at it, or in any case without
finding the forms of expression and political articulation they deserve. This
is currently a problem in many member states and the EU as such, in par-
ticular weakening the latter to the point of jeopardizing the continuation of
the integration process.
The gulf between the economic liberalism promoted by European insti-
tutions on the one hand and the displays of incomprehension and rejection
this agenda occasions on the other, casts an undeniable shadow over the fu-
ture of the EU. While there is no massive increase in inequality in the EU,
anxiety is more and more marked and more widespread, with many people
seeing the promised better future as highly uncertain and even illusory.
Rightly or wrongly the EU is then perceived, especially among the working-
class groups who have most to lose from international competition, as
partly responsible for this downturn and as contributing to an increase, if
not in poverty, at least in social instability and insecurity (see chapter 8).
Sociologically speaking, the alter-European movement is quite different
from the unemployed and migrant movements, drawing its militants from
the protected salaried classes and possessing more resources for action.
While fiercely opposed to the principles of the free market and a champion
of certain social demands, it cannot really be considered the mouthpiece or
the representative of globalization's losers. The movement testifies to the in-
creasing strength of mobilizations transcending the nation-state framework
and, by extension, the shaping of an emerging political actor, with the two
246 Conclusion
combining in a call for European and world governance that is more fair,
equitable, participatory, and transparent.
While its resources in terms of militants, finance, and logistics remain
mostly national, its domain of action is largely supranational. Relatively
young, heterogeneous, and little-institutionalized, it is currently more a
force for protest than for proposals, as it distrusts the traditional forms of
social and political participation. The European and world forums it regu-
larly organizes allow for sporadic but powerful mobilization beyond the
ambit of political parties and trade union organizations, as it strives to
spread its ideas through the public arena. Thus its influence on political de-
cision-makers is rarely direct and falls for the most part outside the classic
national and-even more so-European representational structures. Yet its
capacity for mobilization is considerable, feeding as it has since the mid-
1990s off the very Euroskepticism it fuels, and stands in singular contrast
with the public's general lack of interest in the EU.
The alter-European movement has an increasing influence on national
political systems and on the EU. On the Left, in particular, it structures the
interplay and positioning of actors. The Ee, too, has recently come to seem
more receptive to some of its aspirations, one example being the way trans-
parency and public action ethics have been set at the core of the EU agenda
(see chapter 9). Beyond this, the fundamental issue for European democ-
racy is its capacity to instigate dialogue with trans-European protest move-
ments and, above all, to make dialogue a part of institutionalized proce-
dures. Like the national democracies, for whom building and stabilization
were long and difficult processes, the EU, by integrating into its state appa-
ratus the bodies that challenge it, now seems more ready to listen to its crit-
ics and to admit Alter-EU representation within its institutions.
The system of representation practiced by the EU favors the longest-es-
tablished groups, whose aims involve no challenge to the market-oriented
policy it intends to pursue. Plurality of interests is effective from this stand-
point and, far from being limited to the economic and financial areas, ex-
tends to numerous other civic and social causes. The terms of access to Eu-
ropean institutions seem heavily dependent on the resources available at
the national level. Sometimes specifically European windows of opportu-
nity open-women's rights and the environmental protection movement,
for example-and receive EU backing for consolidation of their position in
the member states and more effective assertion of their rights.
While procedures for consultation, and in some cases cooptation, are
now relatively stable and seasoned, this system seems largely, and increas-
ingly, dissociated from the national spheres and their issues and from the
actors mobilized in this context. With the exception of farmers, in all the
other areas examined two spheres of action tend to become autonomous,
one emphasizing direct access to the EU, mostly via lobbying, and the other
preferring peripheral or alternative avenues for the exercise of its influence

at national and/or European levels. In the latter case the forms of action are
generally reactive and far removed from the consultation and decision-
making processes. The difficulties encountered result in part from a lack of
internal resources, but also vary according to the aims and causes-more or
less in conflict with EU policy-promoted by the groups concerned.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AS A CHALLENGE FOR EUROPE
Overall, European democracy characterized by this analysis of collective ac-

tion appears to face serious challenges. European integration went through
the establishment of an interest group system at the EU level, important
transformations of interests' representation in the member states, and the
development of significant protest movements on a European scale. The
making of the single market has been accompanied by a relative increase in
pluralism at all levels of European political institutions. It also preserved
the bulk of the European social model in economic or political terms at the
macro level. Thus, regulation of the economy is still comparatively impor-
tant, welfare expenditures were not significantly reduced and in some cases
continued to grow, and institutional arrangements regarding welfare, labor
markets, and intergovernmental relations remained predominantly path-
dependent at the national level.
At the micro level, however, the picture significantly differs. The relative re-
duction of income inequalities and poverty during the 1990s, largely unno-
ticed, coincided with a persistent high level of unemployment, less protective
employment status, less effective community solidarities, and less generous
welfare benefits for each claim at the individual level. The European moral
crisis lies more with a more diffuse risk of social exclusion expanded to the
whole middle classes than to the increase of inequalities. Under the scissor ef-
fect of growing needs and cost containments, such a reality has been a com-
mon feature for European countries. The integration of political institutions
and policy networks across Europe did not prevent a growing social and po-
litical fragmentation of societies at the national and local levels. In this sense,
policy performance of the European Union-that is, social opportunities pro-
vided to the majority of its citizens-has been in decline, as the implementa-
tion of the single market and of the single currency did not deliver significant
changes from this point of view. Certainly this poor general policy perform-
ance has been aggravated by the bureaucratic origins of the EU and, despite
its slow political developments, by its feeble electoral connection and corre-
sponding prevalence of interest group politics.
The difficulties exposed here in regulating lobbying activities are ex-
tremely revealing of the political imbalances associated with the institutional
248 Conclusion
design of the EU, in the long run undermining its own legitimacy. The par-
adox is that national and EU politics are sufficiently integrated so that the
process of representative democracy in the member states is far from im-
mune from this tendency, and indeed bears the main part of this discon-
tent. The European democratic deficit does not lie primarily with a lack of
citizens' interests or participation, but with the fact that the European pub-
lic space, most of the time disjointed between national and EU spheres on
the one hand and between EU institutions and critical social movements on
the other hand, has failed so far to secure a sense of commitment to social
justice among European citizens.
NOTE
1. Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow, eds., Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in
an Emerging Polity, Lanham, MD: Rowman &. Littlefield, 2001.
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Index
Agenda 2010,131 Charter of Fundamental Rights, 168,

agriculture, 95-96. See also Common 192-93, 195, 196-200
Agricultural Policy; farmers Chirac, Jacques, 7
ALTER-EU Movement (Alliance for civil society, 45-72, 233n61, 236. See
Lobbying Transparency and Ethics also CONECCS
Regulation), 209, 225-27, 229 cleavages, 55-60, 236-37, 241-47
alter-European movement. See global collective action: definition, 28;
movement regimes, 28-35, 237
alterglobalization movement. See Commission Nationale Consultative
global movement des Droits de I'Homme (CNCDH),
Amnesty International, 77, 182 198,200
Association of Accredited Lobbyists Commission of the Bishops'
to the European Parliaments, Conferences of the European
227 Community, 200
Association pour I'Emploi, Committee of Permanent
l'Inforrnation et la Solidarite des Representatives (COREPER),
ch6meurs et travailleurs precaires, 86-88
130 Committee of Professional Agricultural
ATIAC (Association pour une Taxation Organisations in the European
des Transactions financieres pour Union (COPA), 77
I'Aide aux Citoyens), 208n34, 225, Committee on the Rules of Procedures
249 (European Parliament), 210-12,
214
Bangerman forum, 101 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 3,
Barroso, Jose Manuel, 222 83-84,88,94-95,103,107,
Blair, Tony, 150 145-46, 153
Brittan, Leon, 221 Competitiveness Advisory Group
business groups, 77-82, 99-100 (CAG),101
263
264 Index
CONECCS (Consultation, the European Council, 122, 135, 148, 152,

European Commission and Civil 167-68,172,179-80,187,191,
Society), 218-19, 227-28 193-94,197,200,203,207,225
Confederation Generale du Travail European Council on Refugees and
(CGT), 78, 105, 131 Exiles (ECRE), 182
Consultative Council of Regional and European Court ofJustice (ECJ), 7, 76,
Local Authorities (COR), 16, 152, 88,90,171-72,187,203-4,
204. See also territorial: 208n31, 237
representation European Employment Strategy (EES),
contentious politics, 28. See also 120, 122-23
protest European Environmental Bureau (EEB),
corporatism: competitive corporatism, 78
lll-12; corporatist regime of European Federation of Journalists, 226
collective action, 33-35; neo- European Marches against
corporatism, 8-9, 22, 55-58, 98. See Unemployment, Job Insecurity and
also industrial relations Social Exclusion, 133, 139n38
Council of Europe, 134, 167,205 European Migrants' Forum, 181
Council of Ministers, 86, 88-89, European Network of the Unemployed,
151-52, 155 134
European Parliament (EP), 7, 16, 18,
Davignon, Etienne, 221 76,87-88,90,104,152,167-68,
de Silguy, Yves-Thibault, 221 172,179-80,197,202-4,210-16,
Delors, Jacques, 102-4, 122, 155, 222-29
167 European Public Affairs Consultancies'
democratic deficit, 2, 4, 14-15,202-4. Association, 227-28
See also Euroskepticism; policy European Regional Policy, 145-50
performances European Round Table of Industrialists
Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), (ERT), 101
132 European Social dialogue, 103-7,204,
243. See also Social Europe
Economic and Social Committee European Social Forum (ESF), 16, 136,
(ESC),152,203-4,217-18 182,188,204-5,207,208n33,
environmental mobilization, 172-78, 208n35,226
241,244,246 European Trade Union Confederation
Eurogroups, 3, 77-81, 89. See also (ETUC) , 16, 77-78, 89, 103-8, 134,
interest groups 195,199,200-201,204
European Anti-Poverty Network, 134 European Transparency Initiative,
European Bureau of Consumers 227-28,231n28,233n60
Unions (EBCU), 77 European Women's Lobby (EWL),
European Central Bank (ECB), 7 167-68
European Centre for Enterprises with European Work Councils (EWC), 104,
Public Participation (CEEP), 16, 77, 106,108
104, 10~ 195, 199-201 Europeanization: of capitalism,
European Constitution, rejection of, 109-13; of collective action,
125-28, 193, 220. See also European 236-39; of industrial relations,
Convention 107-8, Ill; of migration policies,
European Convention, 194-95 178-83, 186; of protest, 82-85
Index 265
Euroskepticism, 2, 155, 186, 193, 195, League of Polish Families, 124

202-4,220,223,226,242,246 Lisa Grant affair, 88
Lisbon strategy, 122, 150, 171, 173, 186
farmers, 84, 239,240,241,243-44,246 lobbying, 3-4, 77-82, 87, 209-34;
financial services, 96-97 Disclosure Act, 221; and European
framing, 239-42; cognitive framing, Parliament, 210-16; national
32-35; frame analysis, 26-28; policy regulations, 223-25; regulation and
framing, 35-39 ethics, 219-23, 233n62
Friends of the Earth, 172-73
migrants mobilization, 239, 240, 241,
Galle Report, 210-12, 230n11 244-45
Giscard d'Estaing, Valery, 191 migration policies, 183-85
global movement, 136,204-7,240, Mitterrand, Fran<;ois, 7
241,244-46 Mouvement National des Ch6meurs et
Gonzalez, Felipe, 7 Precaires, 130
growth (and protest), 67-68 multi-level governance, 39-40, 150-51,
154-55
HCR (United Nations High
New Politics, 58-60
Commission for Refugees), 181
Nordmann Report, 213, 214-15
industrial conflicts, 11, 108
organizational capacity, 29-35
industrial relations, 98, 106-8, 111-12.
See also corporatism Parti Communiste Fran<;ais (PCF), 131,
industry, 95-96 206
inequality: gender, 169-71; income, Permanent Committee for Women's
109-10; and protest, 67-68; Rights, 167
territorial, 155-59, 160-61 Permanent Forum of Civil Society, 202
information technologies, 11 pluralism, 33-35, 55-58, 185-88,206,
interest groups, 22-24, 35-39, 77-82, 239-47
86. See also lobbying; repertoires; policy performances, 4, 23-24, 241-47
strategies political opportunity structures (POS),
International Confederation of 25-26,30-35,69-71,79,239-41
Christian Trade Unions (ICCIU), 77 political parties, 5-6
International Confederation of Free poverty. See social exclusion
Trade Unions (ICFTU), 77 professional groups, 80-82, 84
International Federation of Human protest, 3, 10-11,33-35,60-72,
Rights Leagues, 81 82-85. See also repertoires; social
International Labour Organisation, 168 movements; strategies
public expenditures, 96, 109
Jospin, Lionel, 3 public interest groups, 80-82
judicial action, 88, 108. See also public policy: EU policy structure,
European Court of Justice (ECJ) 75-77; interests and policymaking,
35-39; policy networks, 85; and
Kohl, Helmut, 7 political legitimacy, 6
labor instability. See social exclusion qualified majority voting (QMV), 40,
labor market, 55-57, 97-98 7~ 8~ 106, 179, 199
266 Index
Regulation of Lobbying Act, 221 Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue,

religious: membership, 50-53; values 101
(and the EU constitution), 196-202 Trevi Group, 178
Renault Vilvorde, 3, 83, 105-6, 108
repertoires, 9-12, 31-35, 60-62, 186, unemployed: electoral behavior of,
236-48 123-24; mobilizations of, 128-36,
resources mobilization, 24-25, 65-67, 138n33,237,239,240,241,
239-41 244-45
Round Table of European Industrialists, unemployment: benefit, 120-21; level,
202 117-18,247; policies, 120-23
Round Table of European Social Union of Industrial and Employers'
Charity Associations, 81 Confederations of Europe (UNICE),
1~ 7~ 10~ 105, 10~ 108, 195,
Schengen agreement, 141, 178-79 196, 199
services, 95-96 unions, 239-42: membership in, 8,
Services for General Interest, 200-201 53-60; mobilization of, 62-65,
Social Europe, 93-94, 99, 103, 107, 77-82, 103-7, 198-201
113 United Nations High Commission for
social exclusion, 107-12, 117-20, Refugees (HCR), 181
137n6,245
social movements: and policymaking, values (of the EU), 196-202
35-39; theory, 24-28. See also varieties of capitalism, 93-99, 107-13
contentious politics; protest voluntary organizations, 8-9, 45-72.
social pacts, 111 See also civil society
state-building, 12-14 voting,S; and policymaking, 35-39;
strategies (of influence), 239-47 and unemployment; 123-28
strikes. See industrial conflicts;
industrial relations; unions: welfare: and European integration,
mobilization 103-14; regimes, 98, 109; state,
subsidiarity, 150-51 12-14
women: mobilization, 166-71, 240;
territorial: boundaries, 160-61; rights, 166, 168,241,244,246
organization, 141-45; World Trade Organization (WTO), 76,
representation, 151-54,239,240, 84,89,101,153,207
241. See also inequality World Union Federation (WUF), 78
Thatcher, Margaret, 7, 38 World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF),
Trade Union Congress, 134 172
About the Authors
Richard Balme is professor at Sciences Po, Paris, and at the School of Gov-
ernment, Peking University. He was head of the Department of Government
and International Studies at the Hong Kong Baptist University from 2003
to 2006. He teaches and writes about European politics, comparative pub-
lic policy, and globalization. Among his recent works are (with B. Bridges)
Asia-Europe Relations: Building Multilateralism? (2008).
Didier Chabanet is Fernand Braudel Senior Research Fellow at the Euro-

pean University Institute in Florence. He is also research fellow at the Ecole
Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'Etat and associate research fellow at the
Ecole Normale Superieure (Lettres et Sciences Humaines) in Lyon. He has
established himself as a well-known international scholar in the field of so-
cial movements, collective action, and European integration. Recent publi-
cations include "When the Unemployed Challenge the EU: The European
Marches as a Mode of Externalisation of Protest," in Mobilization (June
2008) and (with N. Shintaro) Dictionary of the Enlarged European Union
(2006).
267

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Richard Balme

Regional Integration and Democracy: Expanding on the European Experience

Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet

ROW MAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Published in the United States of America

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

@r The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

List of Figures and Tables Xl

Structure and Change in Civil Societies 55

5 The European Burden: Unemployment and Political Behavior 117

7 Collective Action and New Rights 165

1.1. Structuring Collective Action 32

1.1 Union Membership as Percentage of Eligible Workforce 8

2.1. Correlation Table between Protest and Socio-economic

After several years of erosion ofthe general public's "permissive consensus"

The collaborative research presented here originated several years ago, in a

We benefited from discussions and exchanges with numerous scholars of

Richard Balme and Didier Chabanet

ECJ European Court of Justice

POS Political Opportunity Structures

exceptions. Its principle remained obviously less acceptable in certain mem-

When interests' representation and mobilization are considered, contem-

organized at European level, were estimated at around 500 in 1985,2700 in

of corporatist systems of intermediation, and the development of new

PARTY DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

While participation is a key element of political integration in inputting cit-

INTEREST GROUP POLITICS BEYOND CORPORATISM

Due to the structuring of political conflicts and partisan systems in indus-

Table 1.1. Union Membership as Percentage of Eligible Workforce

CHANGING FORMS OF CONTENTION

of new forms of mobilizations along the lines of "coordinations," the term

evance of these national patterns of protest. Recourse to the different forms

role in this juridicization of interest politics, a theme to which we shall later

COLLECTIVE ACTION AND STATE BUILDING

From a historical perspective, nation-states provided the dominant frame-

and professional unions became organized on a national scale, within the

and political science, we do not think of social conflict as an anomaly, nor

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY

national structure of the Ell institutions therefore affects interests' mobi-

METHODOLOGY OF THE BOOK

Chapter 1 reviews the literature in order to specify an adequate perspective

The term "collective action" is used primarily by economists, sociologists,

THE POLITICS OF ORGANIZED INTERESTS

tures on the one hand, or in constitutional arrangements on the other

hand. We do not apprehend performance in strictly quantitative terms, but

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

The second research tradition we borrow from is the sociology of social

and strategies as part of a historical analysis of protest movements and po-

discourage them to use their internal resources to form social move-

systems of arguments are developed and confronted. These operations in-

archetype, became less central. The continuum in the repertoires of collec-

PLURALISM, CORPORATISM, AND PROTEST:

On this basis, our perspective conceives collective action as interactive be-

political forms of mobilization such as voting, party membership, and elec-

rather than universal, or when a fiscal advantage is reserved for a particular