Polymer and use of the polymer as grinding and dispersing resin and binder for paint

Water-dilutable emulsion polymer prepared by multistep emulsion polymerization of ethylenically unsaturated monomers in the aqueous phase in the presence of an emulsifier or a plurality of emulsifiers and in the presence of one or more free radical-forming initiators, comprising the steps of

• 1) polymerizing
• a1) 0.5 to 5.0% by weight, of ethylenically unsaturated monomers containing carboxyl groups,
• a2) (i) from 0.5 to 2.5% by weight, of olefinically unsaturated carboxamides,
• (ii) up to 7% by weight of hydroxyalkyl esters of .alpha.,.beta.-unsaturated carboxylic acids
• where a total of from 1.0 to 8.0% by weight, of hydrophilic ionic and hydrophilic nonionic olefinically unsaturated monomers are employed, and
• (b) from 92.0 to 99.0% by weight, of further ethylenically unsaturated monomers which are copolymerizable with the above mentioned hydrophilic ethylenically unsaturated monomers and contain no further functional groups,
• where the total amount of monomers in the first step is 100% by weight, and
• 2) polymerizing ethylenically unsaturated monomers containing no further functional groups in the presence of the emulsion polymer prepared in the first step,
• characterized in that exclusively olefinically unsaturated monomers containing no further functional groups are polymerized in the second step of the emulsion polymerization, and the weight ratio between the monomers polymerized in the first step and the monomers polymerized in the second step is from 30-80%:
• 20-70% by weight.