Abstract
Party politics at the European level dates back to the 1950s when the first Members of the Common Assembly, as the European Parliament (EP) was then known, decided to sit in groups according to political affinity rather than nationality. Over the years extra-parliamentary party federations have formally transformed themselves into European-level political parties, with further consolidation likely as a result of the Lisbon Treaty. Nonetheless, they remain less influential than the party Groups, which enjoy considerably more resources. Taking the Liberal family as its case study, this article provides an account of the evolution of party ties and party formation at European level. It argues that the origins of party political cooperation were ideological but that repeated institutional reform created pragmatic reasons for them to consolidate and to expand, and ultimately to seek power. It argues that Europarties and EP party groups may not be part of an inexorable trend towards European political parties that replicate the role of national parties. Rather they form part of complex patchwork of party cooperation and interaction, vertical and horizontal, where different types of cooperation are suitable for different forums.
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Notes
The name Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe will be used in this article when referring to ongoing issues related to the Party and Group, but the terms ELD and ELDR will be used where appropriate in discussing the historical evolution of the Party and Group.
The best-known of the Internationals is the Socialist International, but both the Liberals and CDs created such bodies to bring together like-minded parties or individuals. The Liberal International was established in 1947.
The work of Simon Hix and others (Hix, 2001; Hix et al, 2005) may appear to downplay this fragmentation, as voting cohesion has risen over time. Yet Hix et al (2005, p. 209) do note that ‘The data show growing party cohesion despite growing internal national and ideological diversity within the European party groupings.’
As early as 1963, Leon Lindberg (p. 89) had argued that ‘real European political parties’ would only come about with the introduction of direct elections. In practice this was a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of such parties.
It is symptomatic of the somewhat complex nature of Liberal party politics that they should be considered of the right at all; whereas CDs are clearly centre-right and Socialists of the left, Liberals from different countries may be to the right of the CDs or to the left.
The Western European Union and, hence, its Assembly were wound up in 2011.
Until 1979, MEPs were national MPs nominated to sit in the parliament in Strasbourg at regular but infrequent sittings. Thus, there was a direct link between national and European parliaments, though in practice the MEPs from most Member States were a self-selecting band of pro-Europeans.
The party system in Ireland is sui generis and there is no liberal party as conventionally understood. However, Pat Cox, who was elected as an independent, sat for many years as a member of the ELDR group in the EP, rising to President of the EP as the nominee of the ELDR Group but with support from the EPP as part of a deal in the fifth parliament (1999–2004).
One former official remarked that the ‘R’ was introduced for parties that do not stay with the Liberal family, as shown by the case of the Portuguese Social Democrats in the 1990s. Source: Off-the-record interview with former ELDR official in February 2012.
The UK Liberals became the Liberal Democrats in 1988 following merger with the Social Democrat Party. The Dutch Liberal family also includes the more left-wing D’66, which subsequently joined ELDR. Similarly, the Danish Liberals include Det Radikale Venstre, which also joined ELDR.
Fontaine (2009, p. 271) asserts that ‘Giscard d’Estaing thought he could be more effective working within the EPP than as head of the Liberals, whose policy fluctuated between left and right’.
The fluidity of party politics in the emerging democracies meant that it was difficult to foster stable relationships in some cases; as former German Finance Minister and LI President Otto Graf Lambsdorff told the author in 1997 in an interview regarding LI, one week there might be three Liberal parties in Lithuania, the next none. A similar problem existed in relation to Poland. Two decades on, the situation had stabilised somewhat.
There are many different types of federation and interpretations of federalism differ considerably across states; here the term ‘federalist’ is used simply to refer to the way parties identify themselves in calling for a ‘federal Europe’, as the terms of such an entity are rarely defined by its protagonists.
As with party groups, there are minimum membership requirements for the formal establishment of European parties; the centrists had sufficient component parties to be eligible.
Such commitment was perhaps most clearly articulated in the seventh parliament (2009–2014) by the ALDE Group President, Guy Verhofstadt, as well as the Group’s spokesman on the EP’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, UK Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff.
This information draws on interviews undertaken by the present author with ELDR staff in March 1994 and with former staff in March 2012.
The author attended the 2007 ELDR Congress in Berlin where this position was outlined.
The author was part of these negotiations at the 2008 ELDR Congress in Stockholm.
This is in line with Hrbek (1988, p. 457), who argued that ‘transnational party organisations … help to establish and maintain links between different levels; they are a component of the socio-political infrastructure of the EC system which can be regarded as an emerging political system’.
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Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Graham Watson MEP, Geoffrey Edwards and two or more anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article, and to Claire Darmé for research assistance.
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Smith, J. Between ideology and pragmatism: Liberal party politics at the European level. Acta Polit 49, 105–121 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2013.28