ABSTRACT
A large part of the activities that member states’ representatives undertake to promote national interests beyond the formal participation in Council meetings remains informal and does not leave behind any documents that could be studied. Any research on informal methods of interest promotion therefore has to rely on interviews with and surveys of direct participants.1 This research combines both interviews with participants that feed into the exploration of individual case studies in the following chapters and a survey of Czech representatives in selected Council working groups and committees that have served in Brussels since 2003.2
The survey presented and analysed in this chapter addressed working groups contributing to the four policy areas studied in this research, namely foreign trade (the Article 133 Committee, later the Trade Policy Committee at the level of deputies), European Neighbourhood Policy (COEST, MaMa), human rights and democracy (COHOM), and Common Security and Defence Policy (CivCom, PMG), as well as the respective senior committees COREPER II and the Political and Security Committee with their preparatory groups Antici and Nicolaidis. The choice of the particular working groups and committees was based on the following logic: the four policy areas are represented at the working level by formations whose members reside in Brussels permanently as part of the permanent representation and contribute most extensively to the creation of a particular policy.3 In addition, the more senior level was included (COREPER II, Antici, PSC, and Nicolaidis) to allow comparison between the working level that navigates within the framework of a single policy and the level at which several policy areas are covered simultaneously allowing for different negotiation styles and bringing more political clout to the table. Covering the period between 2003 and 2015, the survey also allows for comparison across time to capture whether the Czech administration has changed its working methods in Brussels.
