Subnational Interest Representation in the EU: The Municipality of Oslo's Engagement in the EU's Waste Package

This paper asks how local governments go about representing their interest in the EU. We study the Norwegian municipality of Oslo’s engagement in the process of changing the EUs so called “Waste package”. This package contains four directives on waste that have possible implications for municipalities. We study how the municipality of Oslo has worked through the transnational municipal network Eurocities, to try to influence the final directives. We use process tracing to map the process and the important actors in this process, and we look into the strategies they have used and which institutions they have tried to influence. We also study how these actors view themselves and how the relevant institutions in the EU look upon them. Finally, we ask the question of how local governments act as lobbyists compared to NGOs or business interests. Little research has been conducted so far on the interest representation of subnational interests in the EU, and even fewer studies exist on the similarities and difference between functional and territorial interest representation. It should therefore be of interest to map such a process to uncover how subnational interests work and whether they as actors are treated differently from other stakeholders, given the attention they are often shown from the Commission and the increased urban and local focus that we have seen among EU institutions lately.