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Between ‘Containment’ and ‘Transnationalization’ – Where next for the Europarties?

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Abstract

In September 2012, the European Commission called for ‘truly transnational European political parties’ yet it remains unclear if the Europarties have either the desire or the capacity to achieve such a status. Central to this story are two counter positions – realist and idealist – that differ over the extent to which the developmental potential of the Europarties should translate into actual development. The first, which is inclined to highlight their limited potential, places an emphasis on the need to contain developments with occasional minor cosmetic changes. The second continues to look for a more sustained process of party evolution driven by transnational developments that can strengthen their autonomy and ‘party-like’ qualities. Recognizing the Europarties to be in a ‘state of becoming’ this article will highlight the way in which these two positions are seeking to steer the ongoing evolution of the Europarties in the wake of the 2004 Party Regulation.

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Notes

  1. Sceptics, of course, represent an additional position, but the fact that they continue to doubt the whole philosophical basis of the Europarties, while this article is about the developmental potential of such entities, rendered such a position beyond the scope of the argument presented.

  2. Legally most of the Europarties are registered under the Belgian Law of 27 June 1921 on not-for-profit associations, international not-for-profit associations or foundations. The abbreviation AISBL – ‘association internationale sans but lucrative’ – can often be found on party documentation. Other places of registration include Malta, Denmark and the Netherlands and Paris.

  3. Article 138a of the Maastricht Treaty read: ‘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’. Ten years later at Nice, an additional paragraph was finally tagged to Article 138a (now renumbered Article 191) of the EC Treaty: ‘The Council, acting in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 251, shall lay down the regulations governing political parties at European level and in particular the rules governing their funding’.

  4. Some of the highlights from the Amending Regulation (EC, 2007) included: providing a surer financial footing with a rise in the minimum level of co-funding for the parties from 75 to 85 per cent; facilitating the means to initiate more debates via the establishment of the European political foundations; and perhaps, most significantly, securing the right to use funds for electioneering purposes.

  5. Some of the participants called for more federal qualities including the right to join a Europarty without joining a corresponding national member party (European Parliament News, 2011), whereas others maintained that ‘… the member states ought to remain the level for politically engaged citizens to voice their opinions because it is the only level where true demos exists. These attempts to artificially engineer a European demos will fail …’ (AECR, 2011).

  6. Some of the other Europarties were invited to lower-level briefings.

  7. The proposed amendment to Article 3(c) as contained in the Commission proposal presently reads: ‘it must observe, in particular in its programme and in its activities, and through those of its members, the values on which the European Union is founded, namely respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities’ (EC, 2012, p. 15). Article 12(3) reads: ‘a Member of the European Parliament shall be considered as a member of only one European political party, which shall where relevant be the one to which his or her national or regional political party is affiliated on the final date for the submission of the application’ (ibid, p. 21).

  8. The procedural timetable for grant applications usually commences with an official call in June (to be submitted by September) for the following financial year starting in January. The calls for funds for 2014 was therefore released on the basis of the present procedural rules (Official Journal of the European Union (2013)). The fact that 2014 is an election year and that any changes to the rules will also require the Europarties to change their statutes, necessitating a special Party Congress, means that the June 2014 call for grants is also likely to be on the basis of the present rules.

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Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to Simon Lightfoot and Natalia Timus for their support and patience. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, the interviewees who willingly gave their time and the Department of History, Exeter University and St Antony’s College, University of Oxford for hosting me during my sabbatical (2012–2013) from where I was able to write this paper. Some initial thoughts were presented at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) Conference, Chicago, April 2009 for which I received financial assistance from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) No. 19530112. Any shortcomings are purely the fault of the author.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Table A1

Table A1 Three generations of Europarties

Appendix B

Regulation (EC) No 2004/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 on the regulations governing political parties at European level and the rules regarding their funding

Table B1

Table 2

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Day, S. Between ‘Containment’ and ‘Transnationalization’ – Where next for the Europarties?. Acta Polit 49, 5–29 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.23

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