Sectoral Employer Strategies in the EU. Lobbying by partners?

The aim of this chapter is to examine the specific features of a little-understood social player: sectoral employers’organisations at European level. We shall, in particular, question how representative they are, and what strategies result from this in the context of social dialogue. Given the central part played by employers at European level – especially following the establishment of the Single Market (1985) – one might expect to find a consistent academic literature on employer representation at EU level. But scientific analysis of this subject turns out to be extremely scanty when compared with that related to the Europeanisation of trade unions. There is a scarcity of empirical discussion, and a general lack of interest in this field of research. For the purposes of this volume, we have decided to look at the numerous sectoral organisations, which up to now have been studied even less than the others types and levels of European employers’ groupings : European cross-industry representative body and lobbys.