Getting a Seat at the Table: Capital, Capture and Expert Groups in the European Union

Abstract

European Commission expert groups provide powerful platforms from which interest organisations can steer the EU consultation process and weigh in on policy outcomes. Commission decision-makers and bureaucrats rely heavily on expert groups to provide expert policy advice on highly technical issues in the early stages of the policymaking process. Interest organisations provide this advice in order to have their voices heard at the EU level. But whose interests are being represented in these expert groups? Which types of interest organisations, in other words, get a seat at the table and why? This article, using data on over 800 expert groups and nearly 3,000 interest organisations, argues that expert group membership is largely a function of superior resources, EU-level interests and existing institutionalised ties to decision-makers. Far from simply addressing the Commission’s need for expertise, expert group membership is more a story of capital and capture.

Notes

1. As stated in a 2002 Communication, the European Commission ‘maintains a high level of in-house expertise, but also frequently calls on external experts’ (European Commission 2002: 3).

2. For a competing view (see Klüver 2011).

3. http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert/

4. The EU Transparency Register was downloaded on 16 November 2012 from http://europa.eu/transparency-register/index_en.htm

5. A recent conference paper presented by Rasmussen and Gross (2012) takes up this question, comparing those interest organisations that are represented in expert groups with the larger population of interest organisations in the EU’s Transparency Register.