The Europeanization of Maltese interest groups : a comparison between business and environmental groups

Abstract

European Union membership offers significant new opportunities for domestic actors, including interest groups. As policy making competences are transferred from the domestic level to the EU institutions, interest groups which traditionally had a sole focus on their national government will now have to contend with a new reality. Focusing on the national government alone may be an insufficient route to have a real impact on EU policy outcomes. In this dissertation we compared the Europeanization experience of Maltese business and environmental interest groups in terms of their lobbying efforts, through the use of desk research into available secondary sources on the topic, and original research in the form of semi-structured interviews with key personnel within our target groups. We found that their experience has been similar, with the key stumbling block across both types of groups being human and financial resources. Our findings suggest that the level of resources (resource endowments) and where these resources come from play a larger part in a group’s ability to Europeanize than the type of interest they represent. Furthermore, the Maltese lobbying culture built on informal networks and confrontation may be hindering both types of interest groups from taking full advantage of the opportunity structures presenting by EU membership. The Maltese government’s recent consultation paper towards regulating lobbying in Malta may improve this aspect.