Strategies of Business Interest Associations in the Netherlands and Germany: European Priorities or Domestic Concerns?

This paper discusses the question of how business associations in the Netherlands and Germany are responding to the pressures of the Europeanisation of political decisionmaking. Does European unification promote convergence towards one organisational model and does it lead business associations in both countries to develop similar strategies to influence EU institutions? Alternatively, do these associations keep concentrating their activities on national agencies and authorities, maintaining much as it is of established – and diverse – modes of interest representation? It is argued that the transference of representational activities to the European level by associations is but one among many possible outcomes of the changes associated with processes of European integration. This argument implies that national alliances and partnerships most likely remain important for business associations when representing their members’ interests. Domestic institutions, then, will largely structure the way in which business associations can reorganise and adjust their representational strategies to a policy process increasingly taking place in a multi-level European system.