Lobbying the European Commission: The case of air transport

Book abstract:

This title looks at the air transport industry from the perspective of lobbying the Commission, thereby providing some useful case study material of the influence of interest groups in the regulatory process.

Having set out the background and working definitions of both elite and non-elite representation in the European Union in Chapter 1, the developments in the responsibilities of the European Commission are examined in Chapter 2. The book uses the old numbering system for the European Commission's directorates, referring to DGIV which has been renamed as the Competition Directorate and DGVII which is now called the Energy and Transport Directorate.

Moving on from the theoretical models of interest representation and an analysis of the changing nature of policy formulation, Chapter 3 profiles the legislative background to the formulation process of the proposal for the ground-handling directive and the attempted formulation for a Regulation on slot-allocation. These case studies are used to test the theories put forward in Chapters 1 and 2 later in the book. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the EU air transport groups which were involved in the case studies above, detailing the membership composition of these groups, their decision making procedures, their interest representation activities and the positions that these groups took. Chapter 6 brings all the material of the previous chapters together, examining the European Commission's response to the interest representation of the air transport industry.

The conclusion highlights the different responses of the Commission's directorates to interest representation suggesting that the theory of neo-liberal intergovernmentalism exists when one focuses on the role of DGVII but not DGIV.

This book will be useful to those interested in the lobbying process in Brussels and specifically the representation of interests in the air transport sector.

Dinos Kyrou is a lecturer and research fellow at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.