Public officials often count on the technical expertise of organised interests when designing policy and employ them as intermediaries to facilitate subsequent implementation. And since organised interests tend to depend on government’s financial support, we can observe that rules attached to government’s provision of funding shapes the advocacy behaviour of organised interests. While this relationship has been well-documented in national contexts, we know surprisingly little about the drivers of organised interests’ advocacy behaviour when they face funders at different levels of the EU’s multi-layered political system. In their article “Writing blank checks? How government funding affects interest organisations’ advocacy behaviour in a multi-layered context” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Frederik Heylen and Evelien Willems draw on a survey of 727 Belgian interest organisations as well as an analysis of relevant legislation and expert interviews to show that organised interests’ reliance on sub- and supranational funding induces fewer interactions with government officials at the national level. In contrast, organised interests depending on support of funders at the national level show no tendency to cut their ties with subnational governments. Frederik and Evelien argue that the specific funding rules employed at different levels of government account for this pattern: “Whilst national funding is used to incentivise cooperation across regions, subnational rules on funding are not conducive for multi-level advocacy behaviour”, often coming with stringent territoriality requirements.