  The assumption that vector mesons dominate the interactions of hadrons with
electromagnetism (vector-meson dominance - VMD) provides an important
phenomenological concept. On the other hand, a clear microscopic derivation is
still missing and there are cases where VMD drastically fails, e.g. for the
omega transition form factor. In principle, effective field theories with their
systematic expansion and power counting could provide a tool to assess the
validity of VMD and more generally to describe the interactions of vector
mesons at low energies. Though the systematic development is still in an infant
stage we present here a Lagrangian for light pseudoscalar and vector mesons
which is inspired by ideas from effective field theories. The Lagrangian is
used to calculate electromagnetic meson form factors. It turns out that one can
reproduce both the successes of VMD concerning the pion form factors and the
deviations from VMD concerning the omega transition form factor.
