Gaining access to the EU institutions

This short chapter is intended to function as an outline for my master thesis. During the course of this project, I have studied the subject of interest representation in the European Union. The purpose of my research is to find out if access theory explains the degree of access of diffuse interest representation to the three major EU institutions in the EU energy sector. In order to answer this question, I have developed an access theory for diffuse interest representation. This theory covers the exchange relationship between the three major European institutions (the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers), and diffuses interest representatives, such as environmental organizations in the European energy sector. The institutions, in exchange for three different kinds of information or access goods, grant access to those organizations seeking it. Each institution has a critical access good, which is determined by its role in the EU legislative process. It will grant the highest degree of access to the actor that provides this critical access good. For each institution, hypotheses on a ranking of dependencies for access goods are established. Conversely, diffuse interest representatives can organize themselves in different organizational forms. For my thesis, I make a distinction between individual organizations, national associations and European associations. Each organizational form is better equipped to provide certain access goods, and therefore supposed to have a higher degree of access to certain institutions. To find out if my hypotheses could be confirmed, I conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with respondents from each of the EU institutions. They were asked, among other things, to provide a ranking of their preference for each one of the organizational forms of diffuse interest representation. My research findings show that the hypotheses about the relative access of diffuse interest representation to the Council of Ministers were confirmed. In the case of the European Commission, the hypotheses on the relative access were disconfirmed. For the European Parliament, neither the hypotheses on access, nor on their ranking of dependencies were confirmed. My research-findings show that individual organizations enjoy the highest degree of access to the Parliament, European associations the highest degree of access to the Commission and national associations the highest degree of access to the Council. Ultimately, it can be concluded that access theory has a potential to explain diffuse interest representation to the three major EU institutions, however additional research needs to be done to ultimately confirm this.