ABSTRACT
A Europarty can be defined as an institutionalized form of party organization at the EU level that has seen a partial transfer of sovereignty from national member parties (see Johansson and Zervalis, 2002). Europarties are made up of national parties from a particular famille spirituelle and can be said to have reached the co-operation stage of Niedermayer's model in which transnational interaction takes place permanently and is embedded in a permanent transnational organization (in Dietz, 2000). There are five main Europarties that operate at the EU level, made up of national parties from a particular famille spirituelle. The three most influential are the PES, the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR) and the European People's Party (EPP), with the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP) and Democratic Party of the Peoples of Europe-European Free Alliance (DPPE-EFA) playing a lesser role. 1 Niedermayer offers a model against which the organizational development of these Europarties can be examined. This model differentiates between three stages of transnational interaction: the contact stage, the cooperation stage and the integration stage. It appears that all five Europarties have moved beyond the contact stage and to differing degrees reached the co-operation stage, at which transnational co-operation is permanent and is accompanied by a permanent organization (in Dietz, 2000: 202).
