In 2014 Slovenia experienced ten years of full membership in the European Union (EU). In this way, more than two decades after independence a substantial share of legislation in Slovenia is being adopted at the EU level. National level no longer represents a monopoly in forming public policies (Beyers, 2002: 587). As a consequence national interest groups must follow dual strategy in promoting their interest in relation to national and EU institutions (Eising, 2008: 10) in order to impact the whole public policy cycle (Eising, 2004: 216). Although there is a division of work between national and European organisations, an important share of national organisations are multilevel players that regularly represent their interests at European and national levels. However presence at both levels is not yet a dominant strategy of organised civil society (Eising, 2004: 236). While important minority of civil society organisations represent their interests regularly to national and EU institutions, majority (including economic organisations) do not enter Brussels arena (Eising, 2008: 16). Due to national connections that tie domestic civil society organisation to its members and supporters, all organisations do not take advantage of the opportunities offered by the EU for inclusion in policymaking (Coen, 2007: 341). Presence at the EU level is also very demanding. Organised civil society needs resources and expert knowledge that they often lack (Lunberg in Sedelius, 2014: 332). EU policymaking is indeed very demanding in regard to knowledge that organisations need to use in order to gain influence (Beyers in Kerremans, 2007: 462). Even though national government no longer have a dominant role over the public policymaking, it still plays a decisive role (Beyers, 2002: 591). Differences are obvious also between member-states. Based on research results we know that organisations coming from Slovenia enter Brussels arena very rarely (Hafner-Fink, Novak, Fink-Hafner, 2014). In fact, Slovenian civil society organisations that practice dual strategy are rare exception. In this proposal our main research interest is thus to investigate what defines civil society organisations that use dual strategy to enter also EU level. Our hypothesis is that type of organisation, type of funding, and human resources may determine which organisations take advantage also of EU access points. We will focus on 97 conducted interviews with selected civil society organisations recognised as active in the policy process. Simple statistical analysis will be applied.
