The paper starts from the premise that policy framing is a political strategy. Interest groups employ policy frames and highlight certain policy arguments in policy debates to impact on policy outcomes. In our study, we analyze the variation of frames that EU and national level interest groups use in support of their positions. We test if the selection of frames and policy arguments is influenced by contextual factors. Our study provides for variation across the EU and the national levels, four member states (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), as well as across and within the two policy areas: environment and economy. We relate the variance of frames that emerged in these policy processes to factors like the national conditions under which the debate took place, the level at which the debate took place, European vs national, as well as, the differences between the policy areas under consideration.
