ABSTRACT
There are four party federations in the European Union: the Party of European Socialists (PES) (see Table 18.1), which until November 1992 was the Confederation of Socialist Parties of the European Community (CSP); the European People’s Party: Federation of Christian Democratic Parties of the European Community (EPP) (see Table 18.2); the Federation of European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Parties (ELDR) (see Table 18.3); and the European Federation of Green Parties (EFG) (see Table 18.4). There are also a number of other transnational party groupings: the European Democratic Union (EDU) (see Table 18.2), a broad rightwing group of conservative, Christian democrat and right-liberal parties; the European Free Alliance (EFA) (see Table 18.5), a group of regionalist and nationalist parties; and various transnational links between nationalist and neofascist parties, and communist and former communist parties. However, only the CSP, the EPP, the ELDR and the EFG possess all the elements of a transnational party federation: a statute, a common programme, a secretariat, an executive body, a party assembly, a hierarchical leadership structure, the ability to make decisions binding on the member parties, and the aspiration to become a fully fledged European political party.1
