Introduction

Every political party can be considered a network, a movement, an ideology as well as an organization.Footnote 1 Political parties are first and foremost organizations. Gradually, a certain organization crystallizes. When it comes to the transnational parties at the European level, the Europarties, their development will reflect the circumstances in which they find themselves.Footnote 2 But as we show in this book, the Europarties themselves have strongly influenced these circumstances. They both structure and are structured or restructured.

This chapter elucidates the evolution of Europarties in their organizational aspects and offers insights into pivotal moments in their development. We look at how Europarties organize and how identity ties them together. We grapple with the question of how profoundly they have evolved into proper ‘political parties at the European level’. However, our main purpose is not so much a detailed description of the Europarties as an explanation for why they have developed as they have over the decades. We are also exploring broader trends: how the ambitions to build Europarties and efforts to forge transnational links within them interact with institutional factors. We argue that this development represents an evolutionary logic reflecting incremental growth and adjustment best explained in terms of collective action and identity. Political scientists tend to analyse organizations, including parties, as a way of organizing collective entities for collective purposes rather than how they may form collective identities. We try to do both.

A distinction can and should be made between ‘organization’ and ‘institution’. In brief, organizations can be understood as material entities whereas institutions, by contrast, are values, rules, or conventions governing relations. According to this distinction, a political party is an organization, while a practice or a principle is an institution. Institutionalization, then, means that practices or principles become embedded within an organization. They become standardized ways of doing things. This process of institutionalization is another aspect explored in this chapter.

Three major questions are addressed in this chapter: (1) What are Europarties for? (2) What is the organizational evolution of the Europarties? And (3) What is the organizational structure of the Europarties? This chapter explores these questions in the context of evolving practices and regulations, with the goal of trying to understand the multi-layered organizational complexity characterizing and inherent in transnational parties and in political organizations more generally. At the centre of our interest are the actual dynamics and consequences of these developments. Arguably, Europarties were created as an organizational response to changing systemic and societal conditions at the national and European levels (Bardi & Calossi, 2009).

Overall, this chapter aims at a better understanding of the evolving nature of the Europarties in the European Union (EU) polity, through an analysis of how they organize and why they organize the way they do. In line with the delimitation in this book, we keep the empirical focus on the three largest and most significant Europarties: the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the centre-left Party of European Socialists (PES), and the centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). They share one thing in common: over time, they have grown into much more complex organizations. We have sorted through older and more recent academic studies as well as primary data to grasp the complexities of evolving practices and regulations. We both introduce and challenge the literature, which has only rarely placed organization as the primary unit of analysis.Footnote 3 While organizational aspects are of course noticed, the existing literature in the field has provided only limited insights into the organizational process within the Europarties separately or comparatively. Europarties constitute instances of transnational organizing.

The remainder of the chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section, we offer answers to the question of what Europarties are for. In the second section, we outline the organizational evolution of Europarties more generally, with particular attention to their regulation. In the third section, we turn to the Europarties’ organizational structure. Finally, in the fourth section, we conclude this chapter with a summary of central findings and with reflections on what lessons these findings hold for scholarly understanding and the future of the Europarties.

The Rationale Behind Europarties

This brief section seeks to answer a fundamental question about Europarties: what are they for? To find answers, it may help to look at the literature on political parties in general. One major reason why political parties have been formed is that they are institutional solutions to handle internal collective action problems within or outside the legislature—to reduce transaction costs of collective decision-making and coalition-building (Aldrich, 2011). Building a coalition requires effort and time and therefore involves transaction costs. In this vein, we use the idea of ‘collective action’ to explain why national parties get together and involve themselves in transnational coalitions (cf. Bartolini, 2005: 340). It is one reason why political parties freely choose to organize, and to coordinate, themselves collectively in transnational parties, gravitating them towards acting collectively at the transnational level. It emphasizes interests and politics as rational action. Leaving less room for ideology and the role of ideas, the short, and rationalist, answer is that they are formed to increase prospects for winning desired outcomes.

A second potential explanation is that political parties reflect shared identities and ideologies. This emphasis on ideas may explain the commitment to common principles and transnational engagement within political families. Accounts that fail to take account of ideology and history do not capture how principles and norms—that are central to constructivist theories—may evolve over time and what drives transnational engagement and exchange, other than interests. Participation in transnational parties might give a sense of community and belonging. Identity may tie member parties together and is a contributing reason for why they coalesce. In a historical-institutionalist perspective, patterns of institutional development constitute the accumulated product of practices evolving and consolidating over time. We conceive these two broad explanations as complementary; both help to understand the rationale of Europarties, their evolution, and their structure. We explore the extent to which initial moves to organize Europarties were subsequently supported by positive feedback mechanisms. These developments are reflected in how organizations have evolved, including the functional specialization within them.

Europarties are both an indication and facilitator of the integration in Europe. We find a strong normative commitment to European integration in the main Europarties, advocating substantive Treaty reforms and further institutional development of the EU. Over time, this is particularly true of the EPP, whose identity is strongly associated with the Christian Democrats who in the 1950s were the early primary advocates of integration and since then have succeeded in mobilizing a transnational coalition supportive of deeper integration (see Chapter 4). Under the EPP’s ideological ‘pillars’ the willingness to form the United States of Europe was explicit in its statutes. While that exact wording was gone by the early twenty-first century, the EPP remains committed to a federal European Union, an ever-closer Union. EPP and the other Europarty elites have clearly played a significant role in shaping the institutional environment of the EU. Their motivation may be ideational, in the sense of being rooted in their principles, or it may be interest-based, insofar as it entails a desire to alter the institutional setting for their own ends. Or some combination thereof. In any case, Europarty activists have contributed to the political and institutional environment in which the Europarties exist.

Organization is everywhere a powerful tool for activists to achieve their ambitions. Regardless of the context or level of governance, political parties are policy-motivated actors seeking to influence outcomes. Like parties at the national and subnational levels, Europarties, in the EU context, seek to have direct input into policymaking and are therefore driven by the goal of shaping outcomes (e.g., Külahci, 2002; Lightfoot, 2005; Van Hecke, 2010). But to explain political action we need to also consider incentives structures and opportunities. There certainly are incentives involved in transnational organization and action. But incentives are not only material. They can be social. And incentives can be created. Political actors such as Europarties have incentives and objectives and operate within governance structures. Over time, opportunities arise for reaching their goals, and this is where the concepts of agenda-setting and advocacy are crucial. Political parties are ultimately expressions of both organization and power (Panebianco, 1988), with ideological similarity facilitating collective action and achieving desired outcomes.

Working through Europarties has significant advantages for national parties and their elites, not least the vast partisan networks that connect them vertically and horizontally in Europe. These networks offer a way of reducing transaction costs for individual national political parties and elites when acting at the European level, as our colleague Robert Ladrech (2000, 2006) has acutely observed. For these national parties regular coordination with sister parties from other member states, not to mention interaction with EU-level entities, would be nearly impossible on a unilateral basis. Europarties fulfil therefore an important network and coordination function, as we discussed in Chapter 1. In the process, Europarties may establish additional independent authority and growing policymaking capacity.

Organizational Evolution and Regulatory Framework

Over the past five decades, since they were founded, the Europarties have evolved in tandem with their institutional environment. It can be described as a gradual institutionalization and an embedding of the Europarties in a common regulatory framework.Footnote 4 We will pay particular attention to this changing institutional environment of the Europarties. The most significant observation concerns the interplay between the institutional changes in the EU and the evolution of the Europarties themselves. They have actively contributed to those changes. Beyond the regulations, the most important change pertains to the gradual strengthening of the European Parliament (EP).

To begin with, the Maastricht Treaty, which finally entered into force in November 1993, contained an article (Article 138a) on ‘parties at the European level’.Footnote 5 The initiative originated in cross-party support among EPP, PES, and European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR, forerunner to ALDE); on a mission to recognize the role of Europarties in the Treaty. However, the president of the EPP, at the time also prime minister of Belgium, Wilfried Martens, was instrumental in convincing other participants at the December 1991 European Council in Maastricht to endorse the party article (Martens, 2008: 181; see also Jansen & Van Hecke, 2011: 194). Seeking legitimacy for the initiative, a reference by Martens and others in the Europarty circles was made to the article (Article 21) on political parties in the German Basic Law. As a result, the party article in the EU Treaty resembles the one in the German Constitution. Before the Maastricht Treaty was formally signed in February 1992, the precise wording was decided. According to Hix and Lord (1997: 190), the commitment to include an article on parties at the European level ‘was the first clear indication of the party federations attempting to alter the institutional environment for their own ends’. For the first time, the concept of ‘political parties at the European level’ was formally introduced in an EU Treaty and constitutionally recognized. It was symbolic of the role of political parties in a supranational polity. But for the time being the ‘party article’ was declaratory without a concrete legal basis. Nonetheless, this was an important first step, generating a momentum for further steps towards a regulatory framework for Europarties. Hence, the significance of the decision first made in Maastricht was greater than perhaps recognized at the time.

As Raunio (2006: 250) observed, their constitutional recognition in the form of the party article in the Maastricht Treaty ‘is directly linked to the subsequent development of Europarties’. In the interval between the Maastricht Treaty and the Treaty of Nice a decade later, there were renewed efforts at party regulation, and efforts aiming at restructuring the existing transnational party federations. Apart from the EPP, which had already been founded as a ‘party’ in 1976, the (con)federations of national parties were quickly turned into Europarties. The Confederation of Socialist Parties of the European Community (CSP), founded in 1974, was transformed into the Party of European Socialists (PES) in November 1992. Founded in 1976 as the Federation of European Liberal and Democrat Parties, it was reconstituted as ELDR in December 1993. It appears that the EPP, ‘party’ by name since its inception in 1976, provided a model for the other families not least in its organizational aspects.Footnote 6 By the mid-1990s all three main Europarties seemed to have an identity of themselves as ‘parties’. Building on their long-standing transnational cooperation—political groups in the EP had existed since the early 1950s—it seemed a natural move towards stronger organization.

In the 1990s the introduction of the ‘party article’ in the Treaty of Maastricht, a more powerful EP, and new waves of EU enlargement created ‘a new opportunity structure of internal and external stimuli’ (Van Hecke, 2006: 159). It led to what Van Hecke (2006: 159) calls the ‘rebirth’ of transnational party federations, particularly the EPP which emerged as the largest Europarty. Back in the 1970s, similar ‘stimuli’ were created by the enlargement of the then European Community (EC) and the introduction of direct elections to the EP which is the institutional arena most friendly to the idea of ‘political parties at European level’. Ahead of the first direct elections held in 1979, each of the three main party families established a transnational party organization as explained above. It looked like the formation of the EU party system in which a trio of nascent Europarties—EPP, PES, ELDR—first formed.

However, while recognizing Europarties, the Treaty of Maastricht—or the Treaty of Amsterdam—did not provide a legal basis for financing the Europarties. That materialized with the Treaty of Nice (Article 191), which came into force in February 2003. This led to an agreement later that year over regulations governing them and rules regarding their funding. These regulations were then implemented in 2004, in view of the EP elections that year. Again, there was considerable activity within and around the Europarties with the aim of a proper EU regulation of political parties. Elsewhere we have explored the process resulting in the incorporation of the party article in the Treaty of Maastricht, the subsequent clause in the Treaty of Nice, and the regulation on the introduction of public funding of political parties at the European level adopted in 2003 (Johansson & Raunio, 2005). Applying insights from rational choice and historical institutionalism, we showed how the Europarties consistently and determinedly exploited the ‘incomplete contract’, the party article in the Maastricht Treaty. Together they formed an influential cross-party advocacy coalition. The concepts of agenda-setting and advocacy coalition frameworks help to understand cross-party actions like those relating to party regulation in the EU. The Europarties are well-placed to establish such a common frame of debate. The regulation of Europarties is also a good example of positive spillovers, as predicted by the neofunctionalist explanation of European integration—vertical and horizontal integration.

While this regulation about funding was another significant achievement for the Europarties, they aimed for a proper ‘statute’ for political parties at the European level and this was not yet achieved. Eventually, the regulation was amended in 2007. The revision allowed all European-level political parties to campaign in EP elections and to establish European political foundations (Bardi et al., 2014; Gagatek & Van Hecke, 2014; Wolfs, 2022). Europarties thereby gained additional resources. European political foundations could be used for a range of activities such as organizing events, forging links, and producing and distributing information. There have been subsequent rule changes—amendments—in 2014, 2018, and 2019. And in 2020 the Commission presented an initiative for a new Europarty regulation. It failed to reach an agreement, and at the time of writing, there were still ongoing negotiations over such new regulations intended to be in place in view of the 2024 EP elections. Reforms to the rules governing political parties in the EU might clarify their role in relation to election campaigns, among other things.

Since 2004 all recognized Europarties have a legal personality (in the country where they are registered) and receive public funding from the EP/EU—subject to certain conditions.Footnote 7 As of early 2024, there are ten registered Europarties (see Chapter 1). The regulations have served the interests of the existing Europarties well also by structuring the EU political party system, by limiting the available choices. And most importantly, the regulations have advanced the development of the Europarties themselves. In the words of Van Hecke (2018: 12): ‘Their development, especially in relation to the affiliated EP political groups and alongside European political foundations, has been impressive, both legally and politically’. Through the regulations the Europarties have moved on to further stages of development. The legal framework has contributed to additional authority, resources, and discretion of the Europarties. They have achieved a greater independence from EP political groups as well as from national member parties. As Ladrech (2006: 497) noted: ‘In the longer term, the new circumstances in which the party federations find themselves promote a more independent position than they have experienced to date’.

Overall, the constitutional (Treaty) recognition and subsequent legislation are a development towards more regulated and institutionalized Europarties. Why so? It clearly is a development which is driven by the dynamics of European integration. But we also argue that it has a lot to do with ideas and policy objectives and with key activists within the party families and the Europarties. Since the first formal introduction of the party article in the Maastricht Treaty there was tireless and coordinated work to achieve rule changes through a proper legal basis. These episodes illustrate how much change has been brought about by the actions of people like Martens. The development perfectly demonstrates how such activists can play an important role as both agenda-setters and norm or policy entrepreneurs. There is no escaping that dedicated and persistent ‘entrepreneurs’—in line with our theoretical discussion and conceptualization in Chapter 2—are behind the various initiatives for the recognition and regulation of Europarties. Unsurprisingly, these actors are found within the circles of the Europarties and within the related EP political groups, with further support obtained from within the Commission. The concepts of agenda-setting and advocacy coalitions help explain why the Europarties have succeeded in their pursuits of the regulatory framework, which in part reflects their ambitions to build an ever-closer union.

Characteristically, the key champions of the Europarties have highlighted and consistently referred to the argument that Europarties are crucial to democratizing the Union. The democracy argument is then used to further legitimize the Europarties. They saw the regulatory framework of Europarties, including the funding regime which they benefit from, as an opportunity to expand their role in the EU political system, and as a development they could take advantage of for their own ends. In sum, as we noted at the beginning of this chapter, Europarties both reflect and create the circumstances that affect their existential conditions. And the regulations also have consequences for the Europarties also in terms of organization. How they are organizationally structured is the subject of the next section.

Organizational Structure

This section addresses the organizational trajectories of the three main Europarties: EPP, PES, and ELDR/ALDE. The paths they have followed—from the 1970s to the 2020s—are broadly similar. We find substantial similarities between the Europarties.Footnote 8 By the mid-1990s, they had broadly the same organizational structure (Hix & Lord, 1997: Ch. 3). And they reminded of traditional party structures with the presidency, bureau or council, congress, working groups, and so on. In other words, they had a common structure of activities.

Things have changed since the 1990s, when the party article was introduced in the Treaty of Maastricht. Today’s Europarties are fundamentally different from the looser transnational party federations or confederations that emerged in Europe in the 1970s. The Europarties are more regulated and institutionalized. The party regulation decided in 2003 prompted organizational consolidation inside the main Europarties and the creation of new Europarties, thereby making it another important step in the development of Europarties (Lightfoot, 2006). The regulation helped to clarify the role of the Europarties within the EU political system. It allowed for a clear—or clearer—differentiation of roles between the EP political groups as well as the national parties and the Europarties.

The new regulatory framework was expected to give a strong impetus to the further development of the organizational structures of the Europarties (e.g., Bardi, 2002, 2006). As Bartolini (2005: 339) wrote in relation to the new regulation:

As a result of the need to formalize the conditions of financing and of operational survival, the organization of political parties may experience a further institutionalization moving from the current network form to a more hierarchical and authoritative organization at the EU level. Europarties may become more organized because this is the only way to legally obtain the money they need to survive.

The party regulation therefore suggested a potentially major impact on the organizational development of Europarties; on their institutionalization and increasing ‘systemic integration’ (Bardi, 2004: 319; Lightfoot, 2006: 311). The new circumstances in which the Europarties found themselves could promote a more independent position.

But while they became better equipped for organizing, the Europarties remain constrained by parties at the national level and face obstacles to developing their actorness. As a result, they do not automatically assume a more significant role and develop into more hierarchical organizations. In addition to regulations and resources in general, authoritative leadership is required. Over five decades, the Europarties have evolved into larger and more complex organizations. This organizational growth increases the need for internal coordination, which in turn consolidates the structures of the Europarties. However, national member parties have their own identities and interests to protect, and when combined with the further moves towards deeper European integration, they have an incentive to both advance their objectives through the Europarties and also to safeguard their own positions in decision-making.

Turning to comparison of the organizational components, there is clear adaptive pressure, and this is a key reason for why the Europarties very closely resemble each other, in the same way as national parties within one country often have almost identical organizational structures. Functional requirements and other institutional factors explain why the Europarties’ organizational structures resemble each other. In the early 2000s, three close observers (Delwit et al., 2004b: 10b) wrote: ‘A kind of mimicry, in actual fact strongly encouraged by the European institutional context, has had an effect in the structuring of European federations. They all have nearly the same internal organs’. These organs included the congress, the council, the general secretariat, and, in the cases of the EPP and PES but also in the then ELDR, a meeting of party and government leaders (see also, e.g., Hix & Lord, 1997: 183–195; Jansen & Van Hecke, 2011: Ch. 8; Van Hecke & Johansson, 2013a, 2013b). At the same time, while the organizational components among the various European party federations were virtually identical, their ‘methods of functioning’ were nonetheless different (Delwit et al., 2004b: 11). The membership and internal ideological cohesion impacted on the organizational crystallization. As noted above, internal divisions, primarily between national member parties, can create obstacles to building consensus and reaching agreements.

While Europarty organizations are often depicted as similar, they are not identical. In a rare study of Europarty organizations, Gagatek (2008) demonstrated the existence of important organizational differences between the EPP and the PES relating, among other elements, to their structure, the design of their decision-making process, membership policy, and how party goals were specified. In line with Gagatek, we concur that there are organizational differences between the Europarties. Yet, on the structural level, we simultaneously find significant similarities. And institutional factors suggest that the similarities are unlikely to decrease, but rather increase. In this vein, as Smith (2014) argued in the case of the liberals, while the origins of transnational party-political cooperation were mainly ideological, repeated institutional reforms, whether within the EP or through revisions of the Treaties more widely, created pragmatic reasons for Europarties to consolidate and to expand, and ultimately to seek power.

In the 2020s, the Europarties are more institutionally embedded in the EU political system and procedurally better equipped for acting independently from EP political groups and national parties—an important step in their institutionalization. The structuration of the organization is a central indicator of institutionalization and reveals a lot about the networks of these Europarties. Over time, they have built stronger organizational structures and their staff have increased considerably, although as reported in Chapter 1 the EP political groups nonetheless have much stronger resources. The key organs inside the Europarties are the congress, presidency, executive committee (or similar), secretariat, and leaders’ meeting (and ministerial meetings where relevant). Their highest decision-making body is the congress, formally at least. Other organs include the council or political assembly and the presidency. The EP political groups are integrated into the Europarties and there are also close connections between the Europarties and the affiliated European political foundations.Footnote 9 Their collaboration encompasses everything from organizing events and preparing publications to more direct contributions to policymaking. Viewed together, this means that Europarties have generated resources, capacity, and networks.

In addition, there are associate members such as those for youth and women. And it is worth noting that these Europarties, in somewhat different forms, allow for individual membership through which grassroots party members can engage within the organization of the Europarties. Even so, although to varying extent, individual members have until now had little if any influence over drafting manifestos and selecting leaders and candidates in EP elections and, arguably, should be granted real participatory powers (Hertner, 2019). Engaging with grassroots members makes sense given that Europarties are expected to—as stated in the ‘party article’ in the Treaty of Maastricht—‘contribute to forming European political awareness and to expressing the will of the citizens of the Union’. However, the natural habitat of Europarties is rather the Brussels-based institutions than the more national societal spaces in the respective countries.

The Europarties have also introduced internal organizational reforms, which to some extent reduce their dependence on their individual member parties. Although the constitutional provisions of the Europarties allow for majority voting, they tend towards consensus to avoid internal conflict—a recognition of the ‘transnational’ character of the Europarties and the strong position of national member parties. Tackling larger collective problems requires consensus or then some issues are postponed or not brought up as a matter for discussion. However, what ‘consensus’ means in practice may vary both across cases and time. Within Europarties, there is a tendency to claim that decisions have been reached by consensus, unanimously, when in fact the controversies behind the decisions have not necessarily been completely solved. That may also reflect asymmetric power within the Europarties. In principle, however, these Europarties can take decisions and adopt policies, programmes, and manifestos based on some kind of majority vote. It is in these contexts that they exercise their essential coordinating function, with continuous exchanges of views and sharing of information to facilitate collective agreements.

What also emerges from this overview is the leaders’ meeting as one of the most significant activities of the Europarties and a key element of their organizational identity. Such meetings have become increasingly common. Since the 1980s, the EPP since 1983, Europarties regularly organize summit meetings of party and government leaders prior to, but also independently of, the European Council. Involving politicians at the highest level brings legitimacy and purpose to the Europarties. The question about real impact of the summit meetings will be discussed in the next chapter. Another question, outside the scope of this book, is how Europarty activities and specifically meetings of leaders influence the policies or identities of national political parties. More generally and amidst the backdrop of the evolution of the Europarties, the literature on the ‘Europeanization’ of political parties should not dismiss such potential Europeanizing effects.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have sought not only to describe but also to explain why Europarties are organized the way they are. Despite their complex operating environment and their characterization as transnational rather supranational actors, the institutional development of the EU and added impetus through their regulatory recognition and funding have helped Europarties to evolve further, not least in their organizational capacity. It also illustrates the vital role of advocacy coalitions in the processes.

We have discussed the organizational evolution and structure of the Europarties, using the examples of the EPP, PES, and ELDR/ALDE. We find organizational continuity in these Europarties and similarities across them. They have broadly the same internal structure, and we have uncovered a pattern of increasingly institutionalized Europarty organizations. The Europarties have manifested a significant organizational development through considerable organizational growth and strengthening. Europarties—as seen over the past five decades—both in terms of identity and structure are very different from the much looser transnational parties or confederations that emerged in Europe in the 1970s. Their evolution reflects incremental growth and adjustment and can be explained by a combination of collective action and collective identity. Their very close resemblance in terms of organizational structure can be illustrated by the party and government leaders’ meetings organized by each Europarty. The EPP stands out because it has been most effective in organizing such meetings alongside other internal bodies. It has set an example for the other Europarties, which became evident in the context of the transformations in the 1990s. The PES and ELDR both turned their party federations into actual ‘parties’, and the change was not just symbolic but carried implications for how they structured themselves internally.

We distinguish two underpinning elements of Europarty organization. The first is the way organization is used to structure activity and mobilization, through different bodies and layers, in the pursuit of a common cause. Europarties must organize support (at different levels)—with coordination from party headquarters in Brussels. It is here that Europarties are vehicles for mobilizing their networks and providing pathways to having an impact. The ability to mobilize is crucial; willingness to work together, acting collectively. So is serious political will, especially when considering the strong role of national member parties inside the Europarties. The second is the importance of collective identity, the EPP’s connection to Christian Democratic founders of European integration being an excellent example of such legacies.

The Europarties have displayed the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. But a more pertinent conclusion, and one that is central to the argument advanced in this book, is that they have shaped the circumstances of their own existence. They interact with the environment—and alter it to their own benefit. Evidence shows how closely linked the organizational evolution of the Europarties is to major institutional reforms such as the introduction of direct elections to the EP, successive Treaty reforms, and not least the empowerment of the Parliament, as well as EU enlargement. And with the introduction of public funding of Europarties from the EU budget, they became less financially dependent both on EP political groups and national member parties. EP political groups may want a strengthening of Europarties as a counterweight to national parties (and governments), however.

Not least because of the regulations the Europarties find themselves in a better position to perform their functions than t in the late twentieth century. They carry more authority and have more discretion over their actions, even if there still are considerable limits to the powers of the Europarties. They have increasingly moved away from reliance on national member parties yet remain heavily reliant on the latter. The Europarties’ power still depends on close coordination with national capitals and on national member parties supporting various initiatives. These vertical relationships are continuously negotiated and evolving.

Our analysis of Europarty organizations also improves scholarly understanding of transnational organizing and reveals some interesting patterns. Cooperative habits across the Europarties have shifted decisively. One possible reason is that the Europarties offer incentives, related both to policy-seeking and identity, for continuing interaction. Another is regulatory frameworks. But the underlying challenge is that national parties, whether in government or opposition, constrain Europarties’ options by making non-binding commitments to reconcile views and positions. National member parties may have varying ambitions for ‘political parties at the European level’. For the future, there remain questions about the Europarties’ role as campaign organizations in EP elections and about their overall independent authority and discretion. The Europarties continue to be dependent on the support and commitment of national member parties, which generally want to run their own election campaigns and determine their own policies. If Europarties become more autonomous and influential, therefore, the likelier it is that they will be closely scrutinized from the headquarters of national parties—a theme that we shall return to in Chapter 6. A similar situation applies to the EP political groups and their members. Nonetheless, the organizational evolution of Europarties suggests they have become better placed to shape their own futures and that the Europarties are so entrenched in the EU political system that they will probably move forward along their existing trajectories.

This chapter has shown how the Europarties have acted as agenda-setters and advocacy coalitions regarding their own legal status and organizational development. The integrationist logic of the EU system, again shaped by Europarties themselves, helps explain the development of Europarties and their incremental growth as organizations. In the next two chapters we will approach Europarties less as a dependent variable and more as an independent variable—studying them as agents of integration and highlighting their impact on Treaty reform processes and beyond.