Citizen Interests

A striking development is the ‘coming of age’ of citizen interest organization, mobilization, and representation at EU level. There is a dense landscape of NGOs organized and advocating at EU level for virtually every imaginable cause, from the unemployed to Muslim women to groups countering the long-held monopoly of producer groups in technical domains, such as financial services. There are over 50 women’s transnational advocacy organizations active at EU level. A number of EU NGOs are also relatively well resourced. One segment alone, environmental NGOs, has over 150 EU-oriented staff, and self-declares an annual spend on lobbying the EU institutions of well over €4 million. The WWF European Policy Office and the European Consumers Organisation each have a staffing complement comparable to the group of best-resourced business organizations, bar one (Table 4.1). The Eurogroup for Animals, and Friends of the Countryside, each declare a spending on lobbying the EU institutions of more than €1 million each year on their respective entries on the European Transparency Register. EU NGOs have located a variety of new wealthy foundations from which to draw financial support.