Pascal DELWIT, Erol KÜLAHCI & Cédric VAN DE WALLE (eds.) The Europarties Organisation and Influence Centre d’étude de la vie politique of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) Pascal DELWIT, Erol KÜLAHCI & Cédric VAN DE WALLE (eds.) The Europarties Organisation and Influence Brussels, 2004 Centre d’étude de la vie politique of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) © by Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles Avenue Paul Héger, 26 - B-1000 Bruxelles First published: Pascal Delwit, Erol Kulahci, Cédric Van de Walle (eds), Les fédérations européennes de partis. Organisation et influence, Bruxelles, Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2001. The European party federations. A political player in the making? Pascal DELWIT, Erol KÜLAHCI and Cédric VAN DE WALLE, Free University of Brussels (ULB) 1. “Political parties at European level”? The development of European party federations is experiencing new impetus nowadays following recent measures integrated into the Treaty of Nice. They aim at regulating the financing of these federations and assuring them a legal status. But for all that, the history of these transnational partisan organisations already goes back a long way. Considered as essential players in the smooth running of representative democracy, the parties have tried to adapt themselves to the new European environment. First, they did so by developing original structures within the European assemblies. From the founding of the Council of Europe in 1948, the national political groups sent their MEP’s into the midst of that which was only the embryo of a supranational parliamentary complex. In 1953, at the time of the first meeting of the Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the first transnational and parliamentary groups were formed at European level. In spite of the high expectations, these parliamentary groups did not give rise to more extensive developments. The ideological diversity, the partisan and national conflicts of interest and the election of MEP’s during the national elections (G & P. Pridham, 1981) maintained the national identity of the parties (Hix & Lord, 1997). After several years of indecision (Costa, 2001), the organisation of the first direct elections of the European Parliament did not occur until 1979. The contributions relating to the organisational evolution of the European party federations (EPFs) show it, the European institutional reforms have profoundly marked their history 1. The decision to elect the European 1 Other elements studied in the contributions to this work are also at the origin of the development of federations. Hence, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the successive enlargements of the EU have been important. Likewise, the increased political role of the European Council has pushed some federations to direct their actions towards 6 Parliament by universal suffrage implicitly recognised the seriousness of the integrating function of national parties within society, even if it were of European dimension. The political arena in which the parties evolved increased by an additional level of power that one had connect to the spheres already existing. The leaders of national party then tried to adapt their partisan structures to this new institutional environment. This Single European Act (1988), the Maastricht Treaty (1992) and the Amsterdam Treaty (1997) strengthened the European integration. Thus they offered the European party federations – or rather their constituent entities – opportunities to influence the European decision-making process. The introduction of Article 138A into the Maastricht Treaty explicitly recognised the role of “political parties at European level” 2, but provided neither legal status nor financial foundation to the European federations. The Treaty of Nice (2000) provides for the filling in these shortcomings, confirming the supposed place of European party federations within the European political system. “The analogy of words must not mislead” (Duverger, 1976: 23), said Maurice Duverger to open the introduction to his seminal work on the organisation of political parties. Along the lines of this judicious advice, we shall free ourselves much as possible this from this “nominal identity” in order to analyse the “political parties at European level”. Without entering into a long debate on the definition of parties at European level, we have wanted to analyse the essence of these supranational organisations (Delwit, De Waele, Külahci & Van de Walle, 2000). The work uses a transversal approach to each political family. In turn, we examine their organisational evolution and their influence on the decision-making process of the European Union (EU). The partisan phenomenon at European level includes numerous dimensions. The main part of the European elite stems from parties: members of the this “centre of power”, in particular by creating the leaders’ meetings. See in this connection S. Hix, “Parties at the European Level and the Legitimacy of EU Socio- Economic Policy”, Journal of Common Market Studies, 1995, vol. 33, n.° 4, p. 545. 2 The article 138 A of the Maastricht Treaty states that “Political parties at European level are important as a factor for integration within the Union. They contribute to forming a European awareness and to expressing the political will of the citizens of the Union”, Treaty on European Union, http://europa.eu.int/en/record/mt/top.html 7 Commission, European Council or Council of Ministers are part of the national partisan elite. The European members of Parliament are elected quasi exclusively on the basis of lists drawn up by the national parties. Nonetheless, the authors of this book devote themselves, firstly, to the examination of federations as extra-parliamentary party organisations at European level. In order to analyse them and understand the role they fulfil, they will follow the conventional approaches to the study of political parties. These consist in tracing the evolution of their organisation, in order to understand its origins and its functioning and to situate it within its environment. The choice to focus our analysis on the transnational party federations does not allow broaching certain facets of the European level partisan phenomenon. Its most extensive form was impossible to understand other than theoretically. The research of empirical data necessary for such an undertaking has not as yet been started. The political persuasions that are not endowed with a parliamentary group are not taken into account. We are focussing on the European People’s Party (EPP), the Party of European Socialists (PES), the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP), the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR) and the European Free Alliance-Democratic Party of the Peoples of Europe (EFA-DPPE). To present the development of their organisation enable us to understand better the manner in which these structures function. Moreover, in order to appreciate the role of European party federations within the European Union, we have also chosen to study the manner in which they attempt to influence European decisions. In particular, we examine the relationships they develop with other main constituents of the European decision-making systems, namely the Council of Europe, the Commission and the European Parliament. For some time, the research regarding the European party federations and the legitimacy deficit of the European Union has gained in vigour. The research works of Simon Hix, Robert Ladrech (Ladrech, 1999), David Bell and John Gaffney (Gaffney, 1999) have contributed to this. Nevertheless, this subject remains one that is studied very little, so much so that “the study of parties at European level remains poor in Political Science, including in the study of 8 the partisan phenomenon” (Delwit, De Waele, Külahci & Van de Walle, 2000: 125). The analysis of the EU legitimacy deficit also kept busy a growing group in scientific research. Let us mention, for example, the works of David Beetham and Christopher Lord (Beetham & Lord, Longman, 1998) as well as that of Fritz Scharpf (Scharpf, 1999). Apart from the differences in their approaches, these authors stress the “public policy” dimension of the EU legitimacy problem. It just so happens that at present, this aspect is rarely conceptualised in a scientific manner. Amongst the few researchers to take an interest in it, Jeremy Richardson distinguishes four stages in the EU policy-making process: establishment of the agenda-setting, policy formulation, policy decision and implementation (Richardson, 1996). For reasons of feasibility and relevance, it was important to choose one of these four dimensions. We have turned our attention to policy decision and have done so for two reasons. On the one hand, at present time, this dimension is the only one to have been the subject of an attempt at relatively significant conceptualisation, in particular in the reference work by Elisabeth Bomberg and John Peterson. On the other hand, this dimension is important in European governance, as was emphasised by two American political scientists: “Why study the decision-making process in the European Union? The answer is more complicated than it seems: because a large part of public policies affecting the 370 million European citizens (and even more beyond the borders) is decided at this level of governance” (Bomberg & Peterson, 1999: 4) 2. Controversies and theoretical debates Upon analysis of the theories of European integration (Rosamond, 2000), it clearly emerges out that