Tunnel junctions are not needed to provide single electron effects in a met
allic island. Eventually the tunnel junction may be replaced by an arbitrar
y scatterer. To formulate this in exact terms, we derive and analyze the ef
fective action that describes an arbitrary scatterer. It is important that
even a diffusive scatterer provides a sufficient isolation for single elect
ron effects to persist. We also consider the fluctuations of the effective
charging energy.