High Professionalization, Low Participation? Exploring the (non-)Activities of EU-level Interest Groups’ Membership

Civil society organisations besides influencing legislative outcomes of EU policies should also educate its constituency about EU policies and structures as well as permit its supporters to have an active part in formulating positions of the organisation towards current policy issues at EU level. One of the characteristics of civil society today is increased professionalization and weak connections with constituency. Organised civil society is thus structurally distant from supporters and members. Most of decisions taken in the organisation are formed by organisational staff and not in correspondence with members and supporters. Inner leadership of the organisation is often too elitist which prevents members from taking part in organisational activities of organisation. Interest organisations at EU level are thus more political organisations than organizations that would provide services to its members. Elite pluralism is most noticeable in high professionalization of European civil society which doesn’t let active inclusion of members in formulating positions, policies, campaigns and strategies of the organisation. According to Warleigh (2001) organised civil society cannot act as agent of Europeanisation of civil society until it will be ready to act completely in democratic way and be a tool of political socialisation. Due to lack of resources and focus of organisations on finding additional financial resources it seems that organisations won’t be ready on this democratic role soon. The main aim of this paper is to verify the thesis about elitist civil society at the EU level. Our research questions are: (1) to what extent membership-based interest groups active at the EU level include in their activities its constituency; (2) in which activities is the constituency predominantly included? The analysis will be based on data collected in frame of INTEREURO project. A web survey has been conducted among 846 membership interest groups active in EU policymaking process.