The signing of the Single European Act did not, however, make the internal market a fait accompli. Chapter 7 by Michael Nollert, in collaboration with Nicola Fielder, shows that this was also the view of the European Roundtable of Industrialists and that they continued to lobby for the goals set by the Act to be met. In studying the evolution of the Roundtable from the 1980s to the 1990s its extraordinary position becomes evident, especially when compared with the halfhearted EC policy of the main European umbrella business organizations. The Roundtables have been active ever since the early 1980s and even gained in membership as well as interlinked economic power. But, having successfully helped to push for the new European economic order, they had no comparable influence on other issues of the ongoing European integration.

Looking again beyond the Single Act, chapter 8 by Michael Nollert analyses the further development of European technology corporatism. He investigates in detail the European biotechnology policy – shaping an industrial branch predicted to be among the most dynamic of the twenty-first century. This chapter points to an enormous surge in funds provided by the Commission and to the established dialogue between the interest organizations and the Commission, which evidence the working of technology corporatism outside the information and communication sector where it was first established at the beginning of the 1980s. Yet, the limits of European technology corporatism already mentioned in chapter 4 by Simon Parker are also evident in Michael Nollert's chapter on biotechnology policy. The current challenges lie in transregional alliances of the leading enterprises and in the massive public reservations about EU biotechnology policy.