Civil society and interest group activity has come to play an important role in the EU. Scholars have increasingly explored the importance of interest group participation in EU politics. An important avenue of study is scholarship that asks how such access has a direct impact on EU politics. However less explored is how interest group access to the EU has consequences indirectly through domestic politics. While we often think civil society and interest groups exert influence through supranational political processes, influence might occur via domestic processes. Specifically, participation in EU politics can enhance the “European-mindedness” of interest groups, which affects how they behave in domestic politics. More importantly, European-minded interest groups might transmit EU law to domestic politics and thus enable legal integration. In this paper, I explore the behavior of interest groups at the national level on the issue of age discrimination. Civil society actors have been engaged at EU level in the formation and enforcement of EU non-discrimination law. Does this participation traverse back to domestic politics and facilitate the transmission of EU non-discrimination law into domestic legislative outcomes? I look at three cases of domestic legislative processes concerning age in employment to examine if and how interest groups active in EU politics facilitate the transmission of EU law into domestic politics. Looking at cases of age-based labor legislation in France, Germany and the UK, I examine whether “European-minded” interest groups bring EU law to the table and shape legislative outcomes.
