ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how much the rising influence of the European business associations owes to the way in which the new administration was structured and acquired authority. International, bi- and tri-national business associations had existed in some economic sectors long before 1957, and some coincided more or less with the perimeters of the six founder nations. The Directorate General (DG) Internal Market sought to study each branch through contact with business representatives, in order to describe the state of the future "Common market". Continuously funded by the European Commission, in the 1960s Union of Industrial and Employer Confederations (UNICE) provided an important basis for the development of a Europeanised business discourse adjusted to the expectations of EEC officials. In the run-up to the trade negotiations of the Kennedy Round, the "non-food" sectors made the Commission aware of their fears of seeing the rest of industry sacrificed in international agreements for the sake of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
