  We report the first results of a study of a sample of 20 galaxy
mergers/interacting systems, using the VIMOS and PMAS integral field
spectrographs. For each object, we extracted the integrated spectrum of the
central regions and analyzed the ionization state using classical diagnostic
diagrams (Veilleux & Osterbrock 1987). There is evidence of AGN ionization in 4
of the objects, i.e. 20% of the sample, a considerably higher fraction than
found in previous studies ~4%
