Bringing Politics Back In:Rethinking the Role of Economic Interest Groups in European Integration

This paper attempts to lay the ground for an alternative view of economic interest groups’attitude toward European Integration. It starts by presenting a largely sceptical view on interestgroup power which contrasts with both works in the intergovernmental and in thesupranationalist tradition. Drawing on research on banking interest groups, we argue that economic interest groups are unable to state their interests in a changing political environment. Put differently, in an unstable political system, stable variables, i.e.: national variables, remain central.