Transnational Party Co-Operation and European Integration: The Process Towards Direct Elections by Geoffrey Pridham

Author:Geoffrey Pridham [Pridham, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: European, Political Science, World, General
ISBN: 9780043290323
Google: hjR-CwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 972407
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Australia
Published: 1981-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

(d) Other Forms of Transnational Co-operation and the Future of the Party Federations

This analysis of transnational party organisation in the European Community has been limited to a discussion of the three party federations – the European People’s Party, the Socialist Confederation and the European Liberal and Democratic Federation – because these are qualitatively different both from their predecessor associations and also from other new contemporaneous party co-operative bodies, both in their institutional interlinkage in the EC and in their internal integrative purpose. Other forms of party co-operation of a multilateral or bilateral kind, which have developed in the same period from the mid-1970s, do not essentially fit this category. These other forms of co-operation in question were the conservative European Democratic Union (EDU), closer links between Communist parties in the EC and the appearance of a primitive form of links among fringe political forces like the extreme right and the new ecologists.

Yet, there are valid reasons for some consideration of them in this context of the party organisational dimension, although where relevant they will again be examined in the discussion of bilateral and multilateral links in Chapter 4 on the national party frameworks. Primarily, the development of other forms of co-operation was stimulated by the same source as the three party federations – the general politicisation in the EC, and especially the prospect of direct elections. Party co-operation in this context became a regular habit, spreading outside the federations to encompass other political forces, which for reasons of national political history were not geographically widespread or enjoyed a strong presence throughout the Community states, and therefore not in a viable position to form a federation. But they were also inspired by a sense of party-political competition at the European level, and did not wish to be excluded from the growth of party co-operation. While not integrative and only minimally institutionalised as party organisations, they did in varying degrees contain some transnational features and in the major cases related to Euro-parliamentary groups. Nevertheless, they were unlikely for the aforesaid reasons to develop in the same way as the federations in the future. As these other forms posed very divergent examples of European co-operation with different prospects as European party formations, they will be discussed in turn.

The EDU, established formally at Salzburg in April 1978, is more analogous structurally to the traditional Internationals than the new federations, although it has a comparable EC orientation and motivation within the framework of a broader European membership.* While it drew on a tradition of multilateral co-operation between Conservative and some Christian Democratic parties (notably, the CDU/CSU), it originated in the mid-1970s from alarm at the rise of ‘Eurocommunism’ and, more specifically, from the conception of an alliance of the centre-right. The latter motive, while applicable generally, referred in particular to the balance of forces in the EP, present and future, where the acquisition of majority status by the Socialist group in the summer of 1975 assumed a symbolic importance. The EDU was officially designated by

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