ABSTRACT
Institutionalized co-operation between around fifty representatives of Catholic parties from eleven European countries1 began at the end of 1925, and took place largely at eight congresses between 1925 and 1932. These were held in 1925 in Paris, 1926 in Brussels, 1927 in Cologne, 1928 in s’Hertogenbosch, 1929 in Paris, 1930 in Antwerp, 1931 in Luxemburg and 1932 in Cologne. One can see even in the choice of location just where the emphasis lay geographically, and also the strongly Western European orientation of co-operation between the Catholic parties. The preparation and work involved in the congresses was undertaken by an executive committee2 that was active until 1939, and by an office in Paris. Collaboration followed in a very loose and increasingly non-committal form. This was even more the case from the late 1920s on, when the Vatican gave up on political Catholicism by first withdrawing its support for the Italian Partito Popolare. With the end of the German Centre Party in 1933 the European work largely broke down. The problem of discontinued co-operation was not solely a result of structural and political conditions in international relations in the inter-war period. What was decisive was, above all, the fact that Christian democratic ideas within the Catholic parties in the inter-war period were of very little importance. Such ideas were not representative of the confessional parties after the First World War. The attempts at transnational collaboration between individual Christian democratic politicians had therefore no direct effect on European politics.
