How to understand Europarties

Deutsch

By Karl Magnus Johansson and Tapio Raunio

European integration simply cannot be understood without paying attention to the agenda-setting and advocacy of the Europarties.

It is striking how Europarties – political parties at the EU level – have been overlooked and underappreciated in much of the literature on the European Union and European integration. At the same time, a growing number of researchers are exploring Europarties, including their possibility of influencing EU decision-making. Europarties matter not least in terms of their extensive but often hard-to-trace networks that they utilize for political ends. These networks join together political parties and their leaders, political foundations, interest groups, and even some grassroots activists across Europe.

Our core argument is that Europarties make a difference to decision outcomes. They have shaped both the course of integration and standard legislative processes. Europarties have been instrumental in expanding the competences of the EU and in moving the EU regime in a more supranational direction.

We make the case that Europarties should be studied more in their own right. To exercise agency, to wield influence, the Europarties must have capacity to act. On the one hand, the deepening of integration – very much initiated by the Europarties themselves – creates formidable challenges for their cohesion and efficiency. On the other hand, it also necessitates, and even more than before, an effective centre, not least for purposes of coordination, a key rationale for their existence.

Transnational advocacy coalitions

Europarties can be explored through agenda-setting and advocacy frameworks. It means capturing essential drivers of decision outcomes, spanning everything from framing to beliefs and coalitions. Europarties are engaged in continual advocacy and agenda-setting about key European matters – and the future of Europe is at the heart of their advocacy. Added to those frameworks is a transnational partisan dimension of European integration, which we conceive of as a central mechanism through which the EU evolves. Combining these approaches helps in understanding Europarties, their actions, their limitations, and the extent to which they have shaped European integration.

Europarties should be viewed primarily as transnational partisan actors that operate both at the intergovernmental and supranational levels of EU politics. The multilevel nature of the EU polity provides several channels for advancing policy objectives. Advocacy coalitions work on many levels and their impact is cumulative. The transnational character of the Europarties, rather than a weakness, has enabled them to influence European politics in ways that are hidden from public view.

It is important to note that Europarties have capitalised on a regulatory framework which involves their funding. In fact, after first being constitutionally recognised in the Maastricht Treaty, they worked together to write and then rewrite the rules that govern them and secure funding. This illustrates how individual Europarties often join forces behind a common cause. The regulation has served them well in strengthening organisational structures and generating overall capacity. To achieve more ‘agency’, capacity had to increase.

Assessing the effectiveness of Europarties

To assess the effectiveness of Europarties is far from straightforward. And there is marked variation in their influence. A fundamental challenge facing students of Europarties is that party politics is ever-present in EU governance, but measuring its precise impact vis-à-vis other factors is inherently difficult. For every issue where Europarties have directly shaped outcomes, there are other processes where such partisan influence is weak or indirect. However, European integration simply cannot be understood without paying attention to the agenda-setting and continuous advocacy of the Europarties.

The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is a case in point. The EPP demonstrated its effectiveness in the Treaty reforms in 1980s and early 1990s. By contrast, in the second half of the 1990s the EPP was no longer in ascendancy and suffered from ideological divisions following its expansion to parties from other origins than Christian Democracy. All in all, however, in crucial ways and through collective action, the EPP has been able to alter the EU’s constitutional and institutional foundations. And provided the EPP is cohesive, the current situation – where the EPP is going to have 14 out of the 27 Commissioners and remains as the largest group in the European Parliament – should prove conducive to its continued influence.

Strength, cohesion, and institutional frameworks matter

But all Europarties face significant constraints on their agency and their influence is conditional. A quick look through the conditions highlights that the effectiveness of Europarties, in general terms, largely depends on their European Council presence and relative numerical strength in EU institutions, internal cohesion, and ability to mobilise their networks of political parties and government leaders for the party cause. Internal fissure weakens the capacity to coordinate positions and hence reduces Europarty influence. Effective mobilisation within the advocacy coalition is hard to achieve when the national member parties disagree about basic values and goals. The rather generic and vague manifestos of the Europarties in the 2024 EP elections suggest such fissures, not least inside the EPP.

In addition, when it comes to Treaty reform, our research shows that the format or institutional framework of the constitutional process matters. The ‘Convention’ model, which provides political families a clearer link to deliberations and negotiations, is more likely to facilitate Europarty influence. Intergovernmental Conferences, on the other hand, are more a battleground of national interests, although Europarties have also managed to directly shape the contents of the Treaties.

Transnational, not supranational actors

Europarties have proven to be influential and continue to wield influence. They have influenced both every round of Treaty reform as well as day-to-day legislative processes. They are engaged in continuous agenda-setting and advocacy in support of the EU and the further development of European integration. Europarties have both shaped their institutional environment and are shaped by it. Europarties are both enabled and constrained.

Our argument should thus not be misunderstood as an unconditional claim about the independent effect of the Europarties. Rather, their influence is conditioned by factors such as numerical strength and internal cohesion. We recognise that the influence of Europarties is likely to be mediated by domestic institutional and political conditions. While Europarties have become more independent actors, they remain reliant on national member parties, especially in terms of adopting programmes and policies. Europarties are transnational partisan actors, not supranational. That reflects reality.

Paths for future research

There remains a lot to learn from in-depth analyses of European level policy processes and how the Europarties have attempted to shape their outcomes. We strongly encourage case study or comparative research into individual political processes in the same way as scholars have examined legislative bargaining between EU institutions – bargaining where Europarties are obviously present, at least through their EP groups.

Yet we particularly urge scholars to ‘dig deeper’ into the internal mechanics of the Europarties. Obviously informal ties and personal contacts matter also inside national parties, but they acquire particular significance inside the Europarties because of their transnational character. Informal coordination and repeated personal interactions acquire special relevance.

Much of it happens outside of formal Europarty meetings, is informal, bilateral, and even spontaneous. Informal contacts are facilitated by formal meetings, with friendships formed and alliances built. Views are exchanged during coffee breaks in Council and European Council meetings, and Europarties convene regularly with ‘their’ Commissioners, both in more formal events and informally via lunches, emails, and phone calls. It is not possible to determine which ‘hat’ national leaders wear – the national (or in the case of Commissioners, the EU) or the Europarty hat –‍, and in the end, it may not matter that much. What matters is that individual politicians meet and that positions are coordinated.

The question of democratisation

The interesting question now is whether and how core Europarties will try to contribute to future constitutional change and to democratising the EU itself. In recent years we have seen increasing divisions inside the Europarties, which has in turn resulted in reluctance to debate constitutional reform, probably because of the inability to articulate a coherent vision for such reform.

Constitutionally, however, the Europarties are designated not only as a factor for integration but also for democratisation. In both respects there is much still to be done.

Karl Magnus Johansson was formerly Professor and is now Affiliate Professor of Political Science at Södertörn University, Stockholm.

Tapio Raunio is Professor of Political Science at Tampere University.

This article is based on the authors’ open access book “Transnational Parties and Advocacy in European Integration”, published by Palgrave Macmillan in July 2024. The book analyses the role of Europarties in the deepening of integration and the debates on the future of Europe.

Pictures: EPP flag: European People’s Party [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr; portraits Karl Magnus Johansson, Tapio Raunio: private [all rights reserved].