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Introduction
The European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) is a big business association most often presented as one of the most influential economic lobbies at the European level by the media and the literature (Banlanya et al , 2005). The ERT was created at the beginning of the 1980s by Pehr Gyllenhammar (CEO of Volvo) with the help of the European Commission, and particularly Etienne Davignon (Commissioner for Industrial Affairs). The original group was composed of 17 leading European industrialists. The goal was not merely to create another typical lobby group, but rather to develop projects to promote the setting up of the internal market and more generally to relaunch Europe with an industrial initiative.
Nowadays, the ERT gathers about 45 bosses of European multinational industrial firms from 18 different European countries. It is a selective club, relying on co-option and one to which the CEOs and/or chairmen commit themselves personally. The current chairman of the organization is Jorma Ollila (Nokia) and the two vice-chairmen are Peter Sutherland (BP) and Leif Johansson (AB Volvo). The ERT has a small Secretariat general office in Brussels headed by Wim Philippa.
European interest groups have been a central object of analysis since the first studies of European construction (Haas, 1958; Lindberg, 1963), and this work has left a durable mark on the field of European studies. The role played by leaders of big business in European construction has always been at the core of the academic debate.1 Neofunctionalism considers them as a leading force in the elite bargaining that carried forward the process of European integration (Sandholtz and Zysman, 1989). By contrast, intergovernmentalism underscores the predominance of national governments in this process (Moravcsik, 1998). The small number of studies that focus on the ERT are anchored in this debate and deal mainly with its 'influence' on the process of European integration. They notably underline the important responsibility of the ERT in the creation of the Single Market (Cowles, 1995; Nollert and Fielder, 2000).
It cannot be denied that European economic lobbies are powerful in terms of financial means and people employed (Greenwood, 2007), but the concept of 'influence' remains vague and difficult to operationalize (Offerlé, 2009). In addition, rooted in the theoretical debate about the European construction,...