The Legitimacy of European Interest Groups: Perspectives from National Organisations

Defacqz, Samuel [UCL]

The aim of this paper is to identify how national interest groups (NIGs) legitimise European interest groups (EIGs) representing them at the EU-level. The paper proposes to unpack the concept of organisational legitimacy by processing an empirical analysis of European interest groups’ legitimacy. Analysing the structural arrangement between NIGs and EIGs is crucial to acquire a more comprehensive picture of the role and the input of national groups in the policymaking process of the European Union (EU). On one hand, the EU official discourse supports the view that EIGs endorse the role of legitimate transmitters of the opinions expressed by national groups. On the other hand, the normative literature asses negatively the intermediary role of EIGs. However, we know little about the views and perceptions of the members of these EIGs and if their opinion responds to the discourse of EU institutions or the conclusions of normative analysis. Therefore, in a bottom-up perspective, this article explores the perceptions of NIGs by asking the following question: which conceptions of “European interest groups legitimacy” do national interest groups have? Through a thematic analysis of interviews with staff members of NIGs from four EU Member-States, this article identifies the different elements in the discourses of national groups that legitimise EIGs. These discourses appeared to be not totally in line with the discourse of the EU nor with the output of normative research. In fact, if EU institutions assume that EIGs are ‘super-conducting transmitters’ between national groups and European officials, it appears that is not the role assigned to European umbrellas by their national members.