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Abstract

Authors have forwarded seemingly contradictory hypotheses on how European integration might impact on national interest intermediation. This paper advocates including the meso level in the analysis, i.e. looking systematically at the policy- and sector-specific characteristics in European governance. From that perspective, it seems that the impact of Euro-politics could be much more diverse (in the sense of differentiated between policy areas) than hitherto expected. In addition, we should pay attention to the existence (and limits) of different types of impact potentials of Euro-level patterns on the national systems. Although no uniform systems of interest politics can be expected, even in the longer run, persisting or even growing intra-system diversity of forms of public-private interaction might increasingly be accompanied by a trend of inter-system convergence of policy-specific networks due to Europeanisation.