Introduction

When studying Europarties, scholars are not just analysing the organization and influence of political parties. Instead, and perhaps unintentionally, it means exploring the very essence of European integration and European Union (EU) governance. The EU is commonly viewed as a combination of intergovernmental and supranational features. On the one hand, successive Treaty reforms have significantly empowered both the Commission and the European Parliament (EP), while increasing the use of qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council. Gradually, the competence of the EU has come to cover essentially all policy areas, although in several sectors the role of the Union remains very limited. On the other hand, the member states are still the ‘masters of the Treaties’ through their veto power, and the European Council is where (arguably) the most important decisions are taken.

This book has advanced the argument that the transnational character of Europarties is both the consequence of the development of European integration and a factor facilitating and constraining their influence. Europarties have both shaped their environment and are shaped by it. Regime type is a key variable explaining the balance of power inside political parties, and the ‘in-between’ nature of the EU shapes the way the Europarties organize, campaign, and take decisions. Within Europarties, national member parties retain significant authority and their own identities despite the gradual financial and legal consolidation of the Europarties (Wolfs, 2022). But more important for our argument is how the transnational aspects of the Europarties enable these partisan actors to wield influence in both intergovernmental and supranational arenas. The actual extra-parliamentary Europarties are more present in intergovernmental domains such as Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC), while their political groups and members of the EP (MEP) are more at home in normal, day-to-day EU policymaking.

Europarties are constantly engaged in agenda-setting and advocacy in support of a stronger EU. The main Europarties do this individually, but also together in the Parliament and more broadly in the framework of EU institutions. This applies particularly to the three largest Europarties analysed in this book—the European People’s Party (EPP), the Party of European Socialists (PES), and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). Over the decades, the Europarties have campaigned for and achieved stronger legal status for themselves while extending their networks of like-minded actors. These actors are found both at European and national levels and comprise Europarty organizations, EP political groups, European political foundations and their affiliates, national member parties, and grassroots activists. The networks operate as advocacy coalitions, building support for initiatives about the ‘future of Europe’.

This concluding chapter returns in the next section to the research questions outlined in Chapter 1, summarizes the main findings, and reflects in the concluding section on the current state and future prospects of the Europarties. It argues that Europarties are likely to remain in the background—and largely invisible and unknown to most Europeans—without institutional reforms to the electoral system or the institutional set-up of the EU, but they nonetheless continue to wield strong influence on the ‘future of Europe’ through multiple channels and in ways not recognized even by students of EU politics. The challenge is to bring the Europarties closer to the citizens and to avoid decoupling between national and European politics which may also erode the internal cohesion of the Europarties.

Lessons Learned and Avenues for Future Research

When contemplating our research design, we opted against a more empirically ambitious approach. To be sure, there remains a lot to learn from in-depth analyses of European-level policy processes and how the Europarties have attempted to shape their outcomes. We strongly encourage case studies or comparative research into individual political processes in the same way as scholars have examined legislative bargaining between EU institutions—bargaining where Europarties are obviously present, at least through their MEPs. Yet, such research designs are always selective and run the risk of scholars either underestimating or exaggerating the impact of the Europarties on the basis of case study evidence. In some processes, the Europarties are probably even decisive, in others their role is negligible or even non-existent.

As a result, we chose to formulate three broad research questions that have structured our book. Let us now return to those questions and elaborate on our main findings. Our first research question ‘what strategies Europarties utilize for advancing their visions of Europe?’ was particularly broad, and the answer to it contains two interlinked elements. First, let us not forget the sheer existence and organizational weight of the Europarties. As discussed in Chapter 3, the organizations of the Europarties have developed and matured over decades, and there is certainly continuity within those structures. And they are not just organizational structures, but also expressions of common identities—and these two are in constant interaction and evolution. We are not claiming that each national member party would have joined the Europarty due to a strong sense of ideological solidarity, but over time such ideological convergence may develop, and, in any case, national parties learn to use the Europarties for pursuing their objectives. The organizational reach of the main Europarties has also been extended to cover associations for youth, women, and select other groups of citizens, while the Europarties are present in parliamentary organs of various international organizations such as the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The second element is constant agenda-setting and advocacy. The Europarties and the European Parliament adopt annually a wide range of documents, decisions, and resolutions that deal with the broad theme of the ‘future of Europe’. Particularly the congresses of the Europarties are important in this respect, as they gather chairs of the national member parties and, at least occasionally, also receive media coverage. Future research should investigate in detail the discourse and contents of the speeches held in these congresses. Even casual browsing through the material of the congresses reveals the noticeable degree of commonality in the speeches. We certainly found strong evidence of shared values and core beliefs in the congresses we have followed and analysed.

But a much more significant behavioural pattern—and one that is tricky to trace and measure—is all the regular and even daily interactions occurring bilaterally and multilaterally inside the Europarty networks. Much of it happens outside of formal Europarty meetings and is informal and even spontaneous. Informal contacts are facilitated by formal meetings, with friendships formed and alliances built. For example, when two prime ministers belonging to the socialist/social democratic political family meet, they are of course leaders of their respective countries but also PES comrades. Views are exchanged during coffee breaks in Council and European Council meetings, and Europarties convene regularly with ‘their’ Commissioners, both in more formal events and informally via lunches, emails, and phone calls. It is not possible to determine which ‘hat’ national leaders wear—the national (or in the case of Commissioners, the EU) or the Europarty hat, and in the end, it may not matter that much. What matters is that individual politicians meet and that positions are coordinated.

The Europarty network consists of many layers and branches, it is a complex system of interconnected elements. Even though we explored in Chapter 4 the case of the employment title in the Amsterdam Treaty, where ideas originate inside the network can be difficult to identify. But gradually through informal negotiations and even hard bargaining support is gained for the initiative, and formal Europarty decisions are taken. The relevance of this informality, as well as the challenges it throws at researchers, is effectively captured by Chryssogelos (2022: 455–456):

The main difficulty in the study of transnational party politics in the EU is establishing their tangible impact. Much of the alleged influence and practices of party families, Europarties and EP groups is predicated on high degrees of informality, which is difficult to be captured in transparent and quantifiable ways akin to EP voting records. … Perhaps the main change required for future research is one of mindset: appreciating that party politics can influence things in much more indirect but no less important ways than formal policymaking, EP votes or official decisions.

Obviously informal ties and personal contacts matter also inside national parties, but they acquire particular significance inside the Europarties because of their transnational character (see below). National-level political parties are on average quite centralized and hierarchical, with party leadership allowed at least some discretion in intra-party decision-making (e.g., Aylott & Bolin, 2021; Katz & Mair, 2018; Koskimaa, 2016; Passarelli, 2015). But such independent ‘actorness’ is very limited in the case of Europarties, and hence informal coordination and repeated personal interactions acquire special relevance. Decisions are based on unanimity or broad consensus, and the Europarties can hardly order the national member parties to implement or advance the agreed positions. In line with the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) approach, it is therefore a process of continual advocacy on different levels of the EU polity.

The second research question asked ‘what is the relative influence of the actors in the networks of the Europarties?’. Here we compared two different forums, the IGCs and Treaty reforms versus the more supranational ‘convention’ or ‘conference’ format. Theoretically, the comparison drew on the argument about venue choice, with political actors seeking to shape the decision-making environment in their favour. To follow Princen (2011), ‘venue shopping’ means that actors seek a venue that is receptive to their objectives, while ‘venue modification’ occurs when actors alter the existing venues so that it serves their interests better. As we argued in Chapter 4, IGCs are rather inhospitable to partisan politics. European Council summitry in general and Treaty reforms in particular are the domain of national executives that further their national preferences. However, as explained below, we contributed to the line of inquiry uncovering significant party-political presence in such top-level meetings. But more pertinent here is the division of labour inside the political families. In IGCs and ‘summitry’ the Parliament is not present, and the whole process leans towards intergovernmentalism. As a result, the EP political groups do not really get involved at all, whereas the actual Europarty and its central office coordinate positions among the national member parties and particularly the heads of government representing their countries in the negotiations.

The story is very different in the context of the ‘convention’ format. A brief analysis of the Convention on the Future of Europe held in 2002–2003 (Chapter 4) displayed considerable partisan influence organized around political families. Particularly the EPP managed to shape discussions in the Convention. There we also found significant ex-ante preparatory work carried out by the partisan actors ahead of the start of the Convention, with again agenda-setting and advocacy both in ‘Brussels’ and among national member parties. But the main lesson emerging from the Convention was the highly influential if not leading role of MEPs, with the extra-parliamentary Europarties remaining largely more in the background.

The in-depth examination of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE) held in 2021–2022 repeated the same pattern (Chapter 5). Both President Emmanuel Macron through his concrete ideas and the Commission through its wide-ranging citizens’ consultations were important in initiating the process, but the Europarties and their EP political groups, benefiting from their decades-long advocacy in support of deeper integration, did not hesitate to join them in calling for a novel European-level deliberative conference. In late 2010s, the Europarties and the EP began adopting positions and resolutions about both the format of CoFE and its contents. Not surprisingly, and surely still remembering the Convention on the Future of Europe held two decades earlier, the transnational partisan actors were consistently championing the ‘convention’ format, with the multilingual digital platform and citizens’ panels complemented with a full plenary (as in parliaments) and an executive board through which the EU institutions oversaw the proceedings.

In terms of content, the Europarties and especially the political groups as well as the Commission were claiming that CoFE should proceed ‘without taboos’ and that all issues were open for debate, yet the various documents and speeches identified topics—including transnational lists for EP elections and the Spitzenkandidaten mechanism—that could or should be debated in the Conference. This is where we come to the concepts of negative and positive power. The partisan actors were shaping the agenda by bringing up certain matters and leaving out others. Agenda-setting and advocacy around CoFE provided further evidence of the importance of framing and discourse (e.g., Daviter, 2011). The terminology employed by the MEPs and the Europarties drew on big words such as democracy, representation, participation, citizens, and transparency, linking them often to major societal challenges such as climate change or economic governance. These terms appear in essentially all position papers and are particularly utilized to defend the further empowerment of the Parliament and to make the EP elections more ‘European’ (see below).

In CoFE we saw again MEPs as driving forces of partisan activity, with the contribution of the actual Europarties more visible in the run-up to the Conference. To be sure, the Europarties provided the broader setting for partisan coordination, but the main movers were the EP political groups and especially select key ‘entrepreneurs’ within them. The analysis of Parliament’s proceedings brought up time and time again not just the group chairs but also other well-known advocates of a stronger and even a federal Europe. This has important implications for future constitutional reform processes. Clearly, the Convention format is more conducive to transnational partisan influence. The composition is diverse, bringing together representatives of the EU institutions and national governments and parliaments. Such diversity of membership facilitates organization along partisan lines—and this is where the Europarties, drawing on their already existing coordination structures and common identities, are at home. To simplify: IGCs centre around national governments, the Convention format around transnational partisan coalitions.

The political foundations should not be forgotten. Their contribution is constant and multidimensional—the foundations, drawing on collaboration with national and EU-level partners, academic experts included, produce a wealth of material from brief press releases and policy briefs to longer reports and organize a variety of events that bring together key Europarty figures, MEPs, and other members of advocacy networks. The impact of foundations is also difficult to pin down, but in our opinion, their role has been underestimated and future research should pay them more attention (Gagatek & Van Hecke, 2014). What struck us particularly was their ability to forge links between different actors and potentially also extend their respective political families through involving individuals and associations across Europe in their work.

The answer to the second research question therefore depends on the venue or forum. On the other hand, we can see this as a neat division of labour—the Europarties focus on coordination positions more broadly in the EU political system while the EP political groups manage affairs in the Parliament and in day-to-day legislative bargaining among the EU institutions. Yet, future studies should examine the relations and policy coordination between the Europarties and their political groups—based on a combination of formal procedures and informal understandings—in more detail, as there are also unresolved questions and tensions between the two sides, for example over the selection of the Spitzenkandidaten (Ahrens & Miller, 2023; see also Wolfs et al., 2021). MEPs often prioritize their own institutional agenda, and this may not always please all national member parties of the Europarties, especially those that favour more intergovernmental solutions.

Our third question, ‘how successful have the Europarties been in shaping the future of Europe?’, receives an answer that is perhaps not surprising and largely confirms those reported in the previous literature. European integration has a significant transnational partisan dimension, but the extent to which the Europarties shape EU policymaking is conditional on their internal cohesion and capacity to mobilize their member parties in support of the initiatives. Obviously much depends also on numerical strength in the European Council, the Parliament, and in the Commission. Yet, every round of Treaty reform from the 1950s to the present day has been influenced, even significantly, by the Europarties and their predecessors. We must emphasize that Europarties adopt positions not just regarding institutional questions but also about the role of the EU across different policy sectors. Hence, the footprint of the Europarties is visible throughout the Treaties. Viewing European-level constitutional processes and Treaty outcomes as simply the product of intergovernmental bargaining is misleading and fails to capture the interdependence between the formation of national preferences and the agenda-setting and advocacy of the Europarties.

European integration is very much the lifeblood or raison d’être of the Europarties. This applies arguably most to EPP, which more than the other Europarties underlines its historical importance as an engine of integration. The speeches and resolutions adopted by the EPP are full of such discourse even as the political family has become less cohesive due to the inclusion of more conservative parties in its ranks. Overall, the Europarties appear to be increasingly struggling to maintain cohesion. Their memberships have become more diverse through the enlargement of the EU and changing cleavage structures, and at the same time many of the earlier goals of the Europarties have simply been metFootnote 1—the EU in the 2020s is a fundamentally different polity than the European Community (EC) of the 1980s. These days we do not hear much of any explicitly federalist ambitions. We detected a tendency that is of course typical also in the case of national parties: the Europarty leaders or political group chairs proclaim consensus and unity, while tensions beneath the surface were clearly evident.

When reviewing our findings in comparison with the literature from the 1990s and 2000s, it is remarkable how much similarity comes through (see for example Bardi, 2002; Bell & Lord, 1998; Delwit et al., 2004; Hix & Lord, 1997; Johansson, 1997; Johansson & Zervakis, 2002; Ladrech, 2000; Lightfoot, 2005). That earlier scholarship characterized the Europarties by and large as transnational partisan actors whereas the literature on the EP political groups has referred to them as supranational actors—even though also inside the political groups the negotiations often take place between national party delegations (e.g., Ahrens et al., 2022). In addition to being described as ‘transnational’, the Europarties were seen as party federations, coalitions of national parties, or ‘parties of parties’. More recent contributions to the debate—including Van Hecke (2010), Day (2014), Johansson and Raunio (2019), Kinski (2022), and Wolfs (2022)—have followed along similar lines, often emphasizing the continued importance of national member parties.

In terms of subsequent research, it is important to examine further those political families that have limited or no representation in the European Council and whose MEPs sit in smaller political groups in the Parliament. For them, the chances of directly impacting IGCs or European Council summits are essentially zero, although our analysis did show that MEPs from such political groups contributed actively to the debates on CoFE in the Parliament. As a result, their activities and organizational choices should differ from those of the three largest Europarties, EPP, PES, and ALDE. Overall, their Europarty structures tend to be looser and less institutionalized. The situation is even more challenging for the Eurosceptics given their internal disunity—which has hampered group formation in the EP—and the fact that such parties are to varying extents opposed to European integration. In the Parliament, these smaller political groups have either chosen to cooperate with the mainstream groups or have voted against them. Particularly the Eurosceptic groups have tended to favour the latter alternative, voicing their opposition to the adopted measures, or using the Parliament and the job of an MEP primarily as a platform for providing information about the EU (and its failures) to their electorates. On the other hand, a more coherent, transnational Eurosceptical alternative would certainly liven up EP election campaigns.Footnote 2

Summing up, while our central argument has focused on the transnational partisan dimension in EU politics, and more specifically on European-level constitutional processes, we are not in any way neglecting the relevance of national parties and identities.Footnote 3 Quite the opposite, that is why we have deliberately used the term ‘transnational’ throughout the book. The independent actorness of the Europarties has grown but remains limited. Europarties are influential when they have the necessary numerical strength, are cohesive, and overall can mobilize national member parties and their networks behind the common positions. But, overall, in line with the agenda-setting and ACF approaches, it is the ever-present networking and coalition-building that matter more and in ways that easily escape scholarly attention. Returning to the multiple streams framework (MSF) scheme, the temporal dimension is therefore significant:

What emerges as a potential solution in response to the opening of a policy window is the result of prior advocacy for ideas and proposals by entrepreneurs, in particular their skill, persistence and resources in pushing particular project. For MSF applications to the EU, it is their ability to sell these ideas to policy makers in response to policy windows—and thereby couple the politics, problems and policy streams—that explains whether windows of policy opportunity actually result in policy change. (Ackrill et al., 2013: 880)

What Next for the Europarties?

That the future trajectory of the Europarties is firmly tied to the institutional development of the EU is self-evident. And currently, there are big question marks hanging over European integration. The multiple crises have resulted in increasing top-level summitry, with European Council meetings held much more frequently than before. At the same time, the crises have brought about further transfers of authority to the EU institutions, especially the Commission but also the Parliament (e.g., Beach & Smeets, 2020; Bickerton et al., 2015; Costa, 2022; Hodson, 2023; Smeets & Beach, 2020). Amidst recurring talk of Treaty change, there is a notable diversity of preferences among the member states about the future of Europe (e.g., Góra & Zgaga, 2023; Góra et al., 2023). It is difficult to see European integration taking great leaps forward any time soon even though the Europarties, MEPs, and the more integrationist member states are guaranteed to keep up the pressure. And should the EU acquire considerable new powers, the more likely it is that the Europarties and their MEPs would be closely scrutinized from the headquarters of national parties.

If the status quo persists, and even allowing smaller modifications to the EU regime, the Europarties are likely to remain rather invisible among the large majority of Europeans. It is perfectly possible that even most activists within national parties lack a genuine understanding of what Europarties stand for and how they operate. According to the ‘Party Article’ in the Treaties, the European-level parties should ‘contribute to forming European political awareness and to expressing the will of the citizens of the Union’. That, however, is a tall order. And it has also normative dimensions. A wide range of scholars, think tanks, political foundations, and indeed the Europarties themselves have recommended a variety of reforms that would elevate the status of the Europarties in EU governance. Instead of discussing them in any detail, we concentrate in the final paragraphs of our book on larger questions that impact the future of the Europarties.

The first concerns the European elections—or, specifically, how to make them more European. The Europarties and the EP have for long advocated both the institutionalization of the Spitzenkandidaten mechanism and the introduction of transnational lists, although particularly the latter has divided opinions. The ‘added value’ of the Spitzenkandidaten remains doubtful,Footnote 4 with the lead candidates not really utilized by national parties or individual candidates in their campaigns. Moreover, even though the lead candidates have engaged in serious campaigning across the Union, with informative websites, active social media profiles, and visits to member states, their faces and names are primarily known only in the countries they come from and among those already following (EU) politics more closely.

However, we see the Spitzenkandidaten mechanism as an important step towards a more European election campaign, but of course, much depends on the willingness of the national parties and their candidates to advertise their lead candidates. As a result, any European level minor reform of the process does not really change the status quo without the contribution of national politicians. Yet, the uncertainty over the future of the mechanism undermines its legitimacy. There should therefore be a binding inter-institutional agreement on the Spitzenkandidaten process, with the European Council, the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament committed to the jointly decided rules (Kotanidis, 2023). This way both the Europarties and their national member parties would know the situation and could take this into account when planning their campaigns. It is also important that Europarties across the spectrum, the Eurosceptics included, field their own candidates.

The Spitzenkandidaten mechanism is directly connected to the reform of the electoral system through the introduction of transnational lists. The EP has for a long time campaigned in favour of EU-wide transnational lists headed by the lead candidates, whereby a certain share of MEPs would be elected from such EU-wide lists. There is a variety of alternatives how to exactly design the system, but in one scenario voters would have two votes: one for their local or national representatives, and one for the transnational Europarty lists. Whatever the exact solution, the hope is that once the Europarties and their EP political groups appear on the ballot paper, voters would pay more attention to them and what they stand for. Besides, this would give the voters the opportunity to vote for proper EU-level candidates coming from another member state (Bol et al., 2016; Bright et al., 2016; Van Hecke et al., 2018: 50–56).Footnote 5 However, national parties have tended to resist transnational lists as they would impact candidate selection processes through the addition of the EU-wide lists. Candidate selection is a key mechanism for rewarding or punishing MEPs (e.g., Hix, 2002), and thereby the candidates elected from the EU-wide constituency would not be directly accountable to the national parties.

We realize that our recommendations are not exactly breaking any new ground, but it is perfectly understandable that the Europarties and their MEPs have advocated these ideas. Both would bring a significant European element to the campaigns and probably would at least partially alleviate the problem of decoupling between national and European politics—a problem we see as arguably getting even more serious. Despite the fact that European elections have been held since 1979 every five years, the Europarties and their election manifestos remain very much in the margins of the campaigns, with national parties and individual candidates, in line with the ‘second-order’ logic of the EP elections, often highlighting country-specific themes and with a notable discrepancy between the manifestos of national parties and their respective Europarties (Hackemann, 2023). As mentioned above, the Europarties are clearly struggling to maintain internal cohesion. Of the three Europarties analysed here, this applies especially to EPP and ALDE, but also the social democratic political family has its challenges. Pressure from right-wing populists is also affecting the positions and cohesion of the Europarties.Footnote 6 Cox and McCubbins (1993) argued that members of Congress have an incentive to be loyal to their parties because the reputation of the parties is important in terms of re-election. Applying this logic to European elections, individual candidates or national parties might therefore be incentivized to distance themselves from the Europarty in situations where the position of the national party differs from that of the Europarty. For example, a national party might be less ‘federalist’ than the Europarty. Nonetheless, through the Spitzenkandidaten mechanism and particularly the transnational lists the Europarties, and in general, ‘European’ issues, would presumably become more visible throughout the EU, especially as their national member parties would have a stronger incentive to use Europarty material and the lead candidates in their campaigns.Footnote 7

But Europarties could also implement internal organizational reforms that would bring them closer to the citizens. Such reforms would not require any inter-institutional agreements or changes to legislation or the Treaties. The Europarties and even MEPs are easily perceived as being part of the ‘Brussels bubble’ that should do more to reach out to civil society and citizens (e.g., Norman & Wolfs, 2022; Van Hecke et al., 2018). Europarties have introduced membership for individuals, but in her pioneering study Hertner (2019) showed that Europarties had only very small numbers of individual members, with national member parties often against giving individual members stronger participation rights in terms of leadership selection or policy formulation. Hertner thus argued that Europarties should empower their grassroots activists by granting them real participatory opportunities. Analysing the impact of EU on three social democratic parties in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Hertner (2018) further found that European policy was very much the domain of party elites, but she also reported that the grassroots members were interested in EU matters. Clearly, the Europarties could do so much more in terms of connecting with grassroots supporters. This would add an important dimension to the already existing European or transnational civil society, where in particular a variety of sectoral interest groups and issue-based civic associations coordinate their activities and unite individuals from across the EU.

There is thus room for improvement in engaging ordinary party activists and members in European questions. Interestingly, Hertner (2019) showed how the PES had before the 2009 EP elections launched an open consultation process that enabled the activists and other stakeholders to send in their written contributions. The activists clearly appreciated the consultation process as did many MEPs and national member parties, and it resulted in a comprehensive election manifesto. After the 2009 elections PES adopted the ‘the PES activists initiative’, whereby an initiative was tabled at the PES presidency if backed by 2.5% of activists from at least 15 member parties or affiliated organizations—and the activists were also successful in using the initiative. PES activists can participate informally in PES policy discussions through various online platforms and have a special ‘PES Activists Forum’. At the same time PES had not granted activists any real decision-making rights or representation in PES congress or other bodies. Hertner (2019: 497) thus concluded that ‘the PES has the highest number of activists and a lively community spreading across Europe, but the PES activists’ scheme is only a type of “light membership”, as the formal powers of the activists remain very weak’. More worryingly, she also reported that the momentum had been lost as the activists were frustrated with the strong opposition from national member parties that were not willing to give the activists a bigger role inside the Europarty.

That example indicates that grassroots members are willing to participate if only given meaningful opportunities.Footnote 8 We acknowledge that reaching out to the grassroots level is of course no easy task for Europarties in an era when even national parties are suffering from diminishing memberships and vanishing local branches. But here we must remember that digital means of communication, social media, and various online discussion boards included, have become increasingly important, particularly among younger age groups. Political parties have likewise invested in their online presence and in utilizing digital tools in intra-party communication and decision-making. As the digital platforms of CoFE (Chapter 5) showed, technically it is therefore easy to bring people together from different corners of the EU. Hence, the question is whether Europarties consider it worth the effort.

The biggest question mark concerns the mobilization of activists. The best way to achieve participation is through ensuring that the views of the activists are taken seriously by the Europarties. Indeed, in the context of local or national politics a major challenge for democratic innovations has been their low impact: politicians have often praised citizens’ input without taking on board their recommendations. In addition, the activists should be given representation in Europarty organs, with financial rewards offered for those individual members organizing the online discussions. Engaging with the grassroots members has at least three main benefits. First, it is an investment in the future, as younger age cohorts appreciate and utilize online participation mechanisms and a bottom-up approach would make the Europarties and their national member parties more appealing to younger voters. Second, active consultation of grassroots members would bring about more informed or ‘Europeanized’ policymaking. Currently, the Europarties mainly aggregate the positions of their national member parties, whereas, through a participatory mechanism bringing together activists from across the EU, the Europarties would receive views and arguments not tied to the positions of the national parties. Third, engaging with the grassroots activists would make the Europarties—as well as their national member parties—organizationally more vibrant and dynamic and increase their presence in the member states. Such a participatory approach could be organized in a variety of (complementary) ways, from more permanent platforms to consultations and decision-making more geared towards EP election campaigns or Europarty congresses, and it is paramount that the participatory mechanism is designed for and run by the activists (see Raunio, 2022).Footnote 9 But whichever organizational approach is adopted, it is essential that the outcomes of the deliberations are not ignored by the Europarties. The most transparent way of achieving this would be that the positions of the activists are debated and voted upon in Europarty organs where the activists would also be represented.

Bringing our book to a close, we hope to have convinced the readers about the importance of party politics in EU policymaking. The Europarties remain first and foremost transnational actors that are simultaneously present at both intergovernmental (IGCs, European Council) and supranational (EU legislation) levels of governance. The Europarties are constrained by their national member parties, yet they have influenced both every round of Treaty reform as well as day-to-day legislative processes. But even more significant is their constant agenda-setting and advocacy in support of the EU and the further development of European integration. Here the Europarties can draw on their extensive networks and often the Europarties also join forces behind a common cause. They are not just ‘parties’; they symbolize commitment to the idea of ever-closer union as well as the common identity of belonging to the EU. Too often this transnational partisan dimension is overlooked by the media and even by scholars. We hope this will change.