In the 1980s, the European Economic and Social Committee issued the brochure The Other European Assembly, with which it unapologetically put itself on a par with the European Parliament (AEI, The Other European Assembly). Appearing just after the first European elections, the brochure clearly conveyed the message that the EESC was a representative institution too, voicing social and economic interests in the Community. As the powers of the Parliament grew, however, the contrast between the two institutions became increasingly marked. Above all, the Committee was an advisory institution that built on the experiences of the Consultative Committee, and therefore struggled to reconcile the ideas and practices underpinned by the repertoires of representation and expertise.

Because of the Committee's limited influence in European integration, few studies have delved into its functioning and history (Westlake 2016b; Varsori 2000). Part of the reason why it never achieved a more prominent status is that the promise of a social Europe, contained in the Treaties of Rome, never materialized (Andry 2022). The EESC therefore never became the central European locus for a social dialogue. Beyond narratives of a “failure of Euro-corporatism”, however, the Committee lends itself as a lens through which to study ideas and dynamics of political representation in the European Community (Streeck & Schmitter 1991; Van de Grift 2018). Also, the EESC is not some isolated example of institutionalized interest representation at the European level, but the largest of a host of committees, set up to assist the Commission in its decision-making. Many of the dynamics that characterized the functioning of the EESC played out in these committees on a smaller scale. As such, the EESC is indicative of the way in which the Commission shaped its relations with societal groups.

Where Chapter 6 showed how the Consultative Committee established a template for the institutionalized representation of socio-economic interests at a transnational level, this chapter looks at how the lessons of the Consultative Committee at the sectoral level translated to the breadth of policy areas the EESC concerned itself with. Taking a deeper dive into the machinery of the institution, it asks how and why it became, in many ways, an exemplar of the Community's consensus culture.