Europeanization of Interest Groups from Central and Eastern Europe

EU enlargement in 2004 that included mostly post-communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe had an influence also on the development of interest group systems in these countries. While during the socialist times the interest groups system were closely dependent on the state with tendencies of countries to join EU their interest groups set up connections with alike organizations from EU Member States already before the membership. With the start of negotiation process interest groups had also become included in the adoption of the acquis. Since many interest groups operated on voluntary basis, organizations from EU Member States as well as from the EU-level, provided national organizations with important information, knowledge, and know-how on EU policymaking. In this paper we analyse the process of Europeanization of interest groups from Central and Eastern Europe since the beginning of accession process to the EU and compare the results with interest groups from Western Europe. Our main research question is: “How the Europeanisation process influenced the interest groups in the selected countries?” To answer our research question we will build on the typology of Europeanization of interest groups theoretically developed by Johansson and Jacobsson (2016) and focus on the following six explaining factors of the Europeanization of interest groups: (1) contacts with EU policymakers and institutions; (2) interest in EU policymaking; (3) funding by EU projects and programmes; (4) networking with EU umbrella organizations; (5) participation in open consultations; (6) relationship with members. We will analyse correlations between the various types of Europeanization. To study the effects of Europeanization process we will apply the Web survey data gathered among the population of national interest groups as part of Comparative Interest Group Survey project.