At Europe’s Service Thomas Jansen • Steven Van Hecke At Europe’s Service The Origins and Evolution of the European People’s Party Thomas Jansen Dr. Steven Van Hecke [email protected] University of Antwerp Sint-Jacobstraat 2 2000 Antwerp Belgium [email protected] Centre for European Studies, Rue du Commerce 20, B-1000 Brussels The Centre for European Studies (CES) is the official think-tank of the European People’s Party dedicated to the promotion of Christian Democrat, Conservative and like-minded political values. For more information please visit the CES website: www.thinkingeurope.eu. This publication receives funding from the European Parliament. The European Parliament assumes no responsibility for facts or opinions expressed in this publication or their subsequent use. ISBN 978-3-642-19413-9 e-ISBN 978-3-642-19414-6 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-19414-6 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011927265 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: WMXDesign GmbH Photograph on the cover: European People’s Party 2009 Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Preface This year the European People’s Party (EPP) celebrates its thirty-fifth an- niversary – an excellent moment to look back on what has been achieved thus far. From its birth on 8 July 1976 as the Federation of Christian De- mocratic parties of the European Communities, the EPP has been a factor in shaping European integration. At the time of its origins, it was one of three partly overlapping party organisations of Europe’s centre right, along with the older, continental European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD) and the European Democratic Union (EDU), a loose association of right- of-centre parties. It was by no means clear in 1976 that by the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century the EPP would have grown far beyond its original Christian Democratic core, absorbing the other two organisations and continuing as the strongest political force, both in the European Parliament (EP) and in most of the European Union Member States. Consequently, it has not only become the definitive party family on the centre-right, but also a truly European party, closely cooperating with, but distinct from, the EPP Group in the EP. This happened earlier in the EPP’s development than in that of the respective organisations of the Liberals, Socialists and Greens. Today, the EPP family consists of Christian Democrats and many other non-collectivist strands, encompassing a broad range of political tenden- cies and identities of the centre-right. Many of them, both in Western Europe and especially in Central and Eastern Europe, do not fit the classic labels of Christian Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals, but are woven of combinations of those threads. In that sense the EPP in its own expan- sion mirrors the enlargement of the EU, and the strengthening of EPP structures over time mirrors the institutional deepening of integration over VI Preface recent decades. The EPP has always been, more than anything else, essen- tially at Europe’s service. The EPP family has faced many decisive challenges. From the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism and the unification of Ger- many, to the accession of Central Europe’s new democracies to NATO and the EU, to the financial and economic crisis, the EPP has time and again played a key role in defusing conflicts of interest, creating synergies be- tween people and between institutions, always taking European integration another decisive step forward. This skill is again in demand in the severe crisis that surrounds the euro today. We can prevail only by relying on the fundamental values that have nurtured us through our history: the Christian image of man as a point of departure, human dignity, freedom in responsi- bility, solidarity, subsidiarity – and the recognition that only a strong EU guarantees Europe’s future in the world. Drawing on these values, the EPP family will be able to master present and future challenges: the euro crisis, climate action, demographic change, immigration and integration, and re- gaining competitiveness in the globalised economy. This book describes how the EPP was created and how it developed into its present shape and structure. Co-authored by Thomas Jansen, the former Secretary General of the EPP, and Steven van Hecke, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Antwerp, the book is based on an original text from 1996 by Jansen, which appeared in an updated version in 2006. For the 2011 edition, the entire text has been reviewed, restructured and once more updated, and now includes an account of the creation of the EPP’s political foundation, the Centre for European Studies (CES), in 2007. I have been closely involved with the development of the EPP as de- scribed in this book, not only as its President since 1990 but also in its founding stage in 1975 and 1976. I am proud to present this revised text on the origins and evolution of the EPP. My thanks go to the authors for their tireless work, and to the CES for editing and coordinating this volume. Wilfried Martens, EPP President and CES President, Brussels, March 2011 Acknowledgements This book is a revised and updated version of The European People’s Party: Origins and Development by Thomas Jansen (2006), published by the EPP in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish on the occasion of the party’s thirtieth anniversary. The 2006 edition was based on the original version of the book, published in German by European Union Verlag in 1996, then translated into English by Edward Steen and pub- lished by Macmillan in 1998. The current revising and updating (to 1 March 2011) was done by Ste- ven Van Hecke, assisted by Tom Roels. For this purpose interviews were conducted with EPP President Wilfried Martens (1 September 2009), Sec- retary General Antonio López-Istúriz (13 January 2010), Deputy Secretary General Christian Kremer (17 December 2009) and Deputy Secretary General Luc Vandeputte (13 January and 10 February 2010). Chapter 12, on the establishment of the Centre for European Studies (CES), is a new chapter and was written by Tomi Huhtanen, with research support from Elaine Larsen. The text of the book was approved by Thomas Jansen and edited by Marvin DuBois and the Communicative English editing team. Nicholas Alexandris, Roland Freudenstein, Katarína Králiková, Vít Novotný and other CES staff members were involved in the revision of the original version of the book. The final responsibility for the book lies with the CES. Authors Thomas Jansen was Secretary General of the European People’s Party (EPP) and the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD) between 1983 and 1994. Before he took up this position, he had been head of the Rome office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. After serving as Secre- tary General, Jansen worked in the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission. Before his retirement in 2004, he served as head of the Of- fice of the President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). Steven Van Hecke is a Senior Research Fellow at the Political Science Department of the University of Antwerp and at the KADOC Centre for Religion, Culture and Society of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He teaches comparative and European Union politics. His area of research is European integration and political parties, and he has also published on transnational party federations. Contents Part I – Origins and Development Chapter One – Paving the Way: The SIPDIC, NEI and EUCD ............... 3 Chapter Two – The Founding of the EPP ............................................... 29 Chapter Three – Rapprochement Towards Conservative and Other Like-minded Parties ................................................................... 49 Chapter Four – Eastward Enlargement ................................................... 67 Chapter Five – Merger with the EUCD and EDU .................................. 85 Part II – Party Organisation Chapter Six – The Congress .................................................................. 109 Chapter Seven – The Political Assembly and the Presidency ............... 137 Chapter Eight – The Summit ................................................................ 149 Chapter Nine – The General Secretariat ............................................... 165 Chapter Ten – Working Groups and Member Associations ................. 173 Chapter Eleven – Statute and Financing ............................................... 187 XII Contents Chapter Twelve – The Centre for European Studies ............................ 205 Chapter