Talk:European political party

Review of the article

The article was seriously out of date, with the description of the framework of European parties starting with "as of 2008" and relying on Regulation 2004/2003, which was replaced a long time ago with Regulation 1141/2014 (itself amended several times). Likewise, financial data dated back to 2012. As a result of this, several statements had become incorrect. I also extended the history section (pre-1990 and post-2014) and cleaned up the sections on European parties past and present, since they were at top of the article and also at the bottom. The article now features consecutive sections on current European parties, former European parties, and other entities; all these sections are placed at the end, after the history section and the description of the framework on European parties.

This leaves me with two questions:

1. The "External Links" section includes the following paper "The European Parliament and Supranational Party System Cambridge University Press 2002". Unless I am mistaken, this paper is not cited in the article and is over twenty years old. I therefore doubt its relevance. When I cleaned up that section (because most links were broken), I left it in place, but would recommend either removing it or replacing it with a more recent paper on the topic. I am actually not sure what the policy is about adding publications in the "external links" section, I thought it was mainly for other websites, but I defer to the community.
2. The "Controversy" section seems biased and underdeveloped. This is now just a twenty-year old case of some parties not being happy about the structure of European public funding, and nothing happened. Would it make sense to rename this "Criticism" and to extend this to other criticisms of European parties and of their funding? I recently submitted a draft article dedicated to the funding of European parties, and that article contains a more detailed section on criticism, so this could actually be removed altogether.

Julius Schwarz (talk) 15:46, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

In the absence of opposition over the past two months, and given the fact that, as indicated, the mentioned paper is way out of date (2022, before the 2004 regulation was in effect, which itself was replaced in 2014 and subsequently amended), I am proceeding with its removal. Feel free to re-instate it and discuss if you feel this is not warranted. I could try and find a more recent paper on the topic, but, since the paper is not even cited in the article, it does not even feel like we need a specific paper to support the article.

Likewise, I am proceeding with the proposed removal of the "controversy" section, which is one-sided and under-developed. At any rate, it focuses not on European parties but on their funding (for which a dedicated page is being reviewed, and that page contains a well-developed "criticism" section). A new section on criticism of European parties themselves can always be added here. As before, feel free to re-instate the removed section and discuss if you feel this change is not warranted. Julius Schwarz (talk) 08:11, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Default Sorting of Current Europarties

I'm curious to find out what the community thinks about a default sorting of the "Current Europarties" section by political position. Would a left-to-right or right-to-left sorting provide a better view of the spectrum of parties? Selecting the up/down arrows next to Commission, Parliament and Council would still allow to sort by the current default view Majority.

In my view it makes sense to keep the current order of most to least elected representatives. Helper201 (talk) 13:59, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Origin of Formation for World Political Parties

Who proposed the formation of World political parties? Please quote your sources- Electionworld 20:26, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Example parties in section entitled "The parties"

I have tidied this up, and removed an erroneous statement of the British Conservatives party affiliation, but I'm not sure exactly how it should be decided which parties to use as examples here. Should there be one or two from each, and on what crieria would they be selected? Obviously parties like the CDU, UMP and Labour are large parties providing heads of government and perhaps merit inclusion for the EPP and PES, but there are also heads of government from the ELDR and the AEN. The decision would also be difficult for those without heads of govermnent or smaller representation. Here two examples are given for Euronat, in which one (the FN) have considerably greater representation than the other (BNP). Perhaps no national members of the Europe-wide parties should be mentioned here, only their platforms? Tozznok 21:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Controversy section moved

I moved the controversy section towards the bottom of the article, the standard encyclopedia format is to put criticism and controversy sections after the purely descriptive sections. You cannot introduce a debate on a subject before the reader knows what the subject is, so this should not be placed as the first section. Blankfrackis 20:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Rename

The title is very misleading: Europe does not mean the European Union. For the sake of clarity in a NPOV encyclopedia, this article should be renamed. There is no argument about usage of proper nouns here.--jrleighton 15:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

There's no need to include the word 'Union' when it's already given by the context. Same with the European Parliament or the Anthem of Europe. --78.69.33.206 (talk) 01:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Legal status of such organizations

Maybe the readership could be made aware that, despite such organizations are labelled "parties", they consist only of meetings of delegates of national parties, are not allowed by the Commission itself to participate in any electoral campaign (including at the European level), and that people who join as individuals are only able to consult documents or attend meetings, but not to take part in decisions or elect their representatives.

I also agree the title should be renamed, because for instance a Swiss or Norwegian political party is also, geographically speaking, a European political party, the two countries not being inside the Union and concerned by this label. I am conscious that it looks awkward, but I suggest "European Commission funded European Political Parties", because it is the gist of their existence (a status adaptation from the former federations, mostly for financial reasons), and it will also help reject in another article those organizations who claim to be "European" but are not qualified as such by the Commission.

It will also help understand that their status is particular. For instance they should not be concerned by the Wikipedia elections box, since they don't participate in elections. --Arnaudherve 13:18, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Observer and associate members

What exactly is meant by observer and associate member? What's the difference between the two? --GSchjetne (talk) 01:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

The terms are not rigidly defined, and depend on the internal organization of the europarty concerned. Generally, an observer/associate/affiliate goes something like this:

• The party is a member of the europarty but is not in a EU member state, so cannot stand in Euroelections, and/or:
• The party is not a member of the europarty but stands on the same electoral list as a party that is a member, and/or
• The party wants to be a member but is unsure, so has adopted a kind of half-in half-out status

Hope that helps. Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 22:05, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Update European political party

If anyone feels up to it, the table at European_political_party#The_Europarties needs some cleaning up since these have changed since the 2009 Europarl elections. e.g. there is no mention of the European Conservatives and Reformists, and the Alliance of Independent Democrats in Europe no longer exists. I might not be the best person to do this, as I'm not entirely sure if there's a difference between the pan-European political parties and the party groupings that sit in the European Parliament... --Alexd (talk) 12:59, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Europarties in European Council and EU Council

Take a look and maybe help:

Member State	Dominant Europarty	Additional Europarties
Austria	EPP	EGP
Belgium	ALDE	PES	EGP	EPP
Bulgaria	NI	PES
Croatia	EPP	NI
Cyprus	EPP
Czechia	ALDE	PES
Denmark	PES
Estonia	ALDE
Finland	PES	ALDE	EGP	EL
France	NI	EDP	ALDE
Germany	EPP	PES
Greece	EPP
Hungary	NI	EPP
Ireland	ALDE	EPP	EGP
Italy	NI	PES	ID	EPP
Latvia	EPP	NI	ECR
Lithuania	NI	EPP	ALDE
Luxembourg	ALDE	PES	EGP
Malta	PES
Netherlands	ALDE	EPP	ECPM
Poland	ECR	NI
Portugal	PES
Romania	EPP	PES
Slovakia	NI	ID	ECR
Slovenia	EPP	ALDE	EDP
Spain	PES	NI	EL
Sweden	PES
ALDE Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party ECPM European Christian Political Movement ECR European Conservatives and Reformists Party EDP European Democratic Party EGP European Green Party EL Party of the European Left EPP European People's Party ID Identity and Democracy Party NI Non-Attached PES Party of European Socialists

The dominant Europarty is the one holding the member state’s seat in the European Council.

Additional Europarties are the ones which also sit in (some configurations of) the Council of the European Union. – Kaihsu (talk) 19:00, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

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Political positions

Consider the European Left Party a far left group or the European Green Party a Left wing group and then consider the European People´s Party a centre-right one and ALDE a centre one is politically motivated. Almost all member parties in ALDE are centre-right, sometimes even more in the right than the EPP national counterpart. In the same way, consider the EPP just centre-right is not correct, there ir a more centre-right wing and a more right-wing one inside the party. EPP leaders of Slovenia, Bavaria, Hungary, Spain, France or Austria nowdays are clearly not centre-right.

Let´s be objective about this and don´t try to manipulate. Consider liberalism centre tries to demonize ideologies and parties coming from socialism. A true centrist party would be the one compromising socialism and liberalism, a liberal socialism as would say Norberto Bobbio. The PES and the EPP were centre- right and centre-left in the past because of social-democracy and christian-democracy builduing european welfare state system. since times have changed, new parties have arise, as well as new sociologial times, this has changed a bit, but the idea is the same. Classical liberalism or even neoliberalism is not the centre, because it is not a compromise of liberal socialism, it is a centre-right option that understands freedom only on its negative-freedom approach. In the same way, the more conservative, nationalistic, right-wing posittions of many EPP members cannot be avoided. --213.254.88.156 (talk) 11:20, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

EPP: Centre-right to right-wing https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-csu-returns-to-far-right-political-battleground/a-42031195 https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/888111/Angela-Merkel-Horst-Seehofer-Markus-Soeder-CDU-CSU-power-struggle-coalition-right-wing https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/victor-orban-hungary-migrant-refugees-george-soros-ngo-far-right-a8297441.html https://www.firstpost.com/world/italy-elections-2018-silvio-berlusconis-right-wing-coalition-set-to-win-most-seats-but-hung-parliament-looms-large-say-exit-polls-4376159.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/21/europe/spain-casado/index.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42310937 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/slovenia-election-results-latest-populist-far-right-janez-jansa-democratic-party-a8382641.html https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/austria-immigration-sebastian-kurz/542964/ ALDE: Centre-right https://www.dw.com/en/dutch-prime-minister-mark-rutte-says-more-eu-is-not-the-answer/a-44212571 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/13/ciudadanos-podemos-of-right-political-force-spain-albert-rivera https://books.google.es/books?id=jUiOAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA18&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/danish-election-centre-right-venstre-opposition-leader-lars-lokke-rasmussen-celebrates-victory-10330755.html https://www.expatica.com/nl/about/Political-parties-in-the-Netherlands_108098.html https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/2047-8852.12171 PES: Centre-left PEL: Left-wing

These sources refer to parties within the groups, not the political positions of the groups themselves. Please read WP:SYNTHESIS. Helper201 (talk) 04:43, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

First of all, this is not about parliamentary groups, but about parties. Parties at the EU level are formed by national parties, so its tendence depends on the tendence of the national forming parties. The european parties doesn´t have militants by themselves, but national member parties. So to know the political tendency of them you need to check the one of its members. Thinking for example than most member parties of EPP are right-wing and the EPP itself is not, makes no sense.

where in this RfC can I find a brief and neutral statement, and/or the article text to be addressed? Edaham (talk) 07:02, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Update

The article needs to be updated with the changes after the European elections and the government changes in e.g. Greece. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C6:370F:3823:B49D:54CE:81A:EAC8 (talk) 22:17, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 12 June 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 21:13, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

---

European political party → Political party at European level – More precise; uses the official term; avoids erroneous implied scope of all of Europe's political parties at every geographic level. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 08:00, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

As for the article on the funding of European political parties, I also strongly oppose this proposal.

While "political party at European level" was indeed used in the Treaty on European Union back in 2009, the EU has consistently used the term "European political party" for over ten years now, including in the Regulation on these parties (Regulation 1141/2014 on the statute and funding of European political parties and European political foundations) as well as in the name of its monitoring body (the Authority for European political parties and European political foundations (APPF)).

Indeed "political party at European level" should redirect to "European political parties", but the page is clear from the beginning as to what these parties are. Other denominations for all of Europe's political parties exist and are already in use, including "Pan-European political parties" and "Political parties in Europe" (which mirrors other similar uses, such as "political parties in Germany", "political parties in Italy", etc.). These terms should be used for political parties in Europe, while "European political party" should be used for its specific category of parties. Julius Schwarz (talk) 08:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. We should not default to legalese and Treaty language when there exists a commonly used term. —Legoless (talk) 12:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

PS: I also note that the articles of all ten European political parties refer to them as "European political party", adding to the argument that this really is the common name of these parties. Julius Schwarz (talk) 17:23, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

What happens after the seven-day period has elapsed? Julius Schwarz (talk) 08:36, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Use of term "Europarty"

This is in relation to @Tomatoswoop's undoing of the edit which placed the term "europarty" as a note. Instead of going into an edit war, I would rather discuss this here. Full disclosure: I had made the initial change without realising that I was not logged in.

@Tomatoswoop has a point when he says that I don't like the term. That's actually true, but it's not the reason for the edit and there is no attempt to "excise" it. While the term does indeed show up in articles and literature, I see a clear trend of that term being used less and less. It was far more prevalent in the 1990s and 2000s (along with a number of terms starting with "Euro-", like "Eurocrats", etc.) and it did provide a useful shortcut when the official terminology was the long-form "political party at European level".

Since the 2010s, "European political party" or "European party" have become much more common (the first one being used both in the Regulation on European parties and in the name of the monitoring body) and "Europarty" seems to have lost steam both in newspaper articles and in the scientific literature. For what it's worth, Google Trends also shows a growing disconnect between the two.[1] To me, this is part of the same trend that saw this article go from "political party at European level" to "European political party", which was a positive development.

Based on the above, and the fact that we already had potentially three different names -- the regular "European political party", the official/formal "political party at European level", and the short "European party" (which I also think is useful to make that this terms does not refer to "a political party in Europe") -- it felt like a fourth name in the lead section was overkill. Of course, since the name continues to pop up here and there, it remains somewhat relevant, and I thought a note was the appropriate format for this; this way it does remain visible but more in line with its use.

Then again I'm not a profi when it comes to Wikipedia conventions so I am happy to discuss pros and cons! Thanks Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:43, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I would caution against using google trends, google has fudged its search related metrics for a long time (and is very opaque with them in any case). A particularly egregious example is that the "found n results" label is usually off by factors of thousands lol). And, especially now that google search pays very little attention to verbatim wording, instead interpreting search terms as you gesturing at what it thinks you probably mean, I wouldn't want to assume that that doesn't go on with the "trends" interface also. (In this case, I would imagine that in recent years, anything that looks like it's referring to political parties in europe, would count as a hit for the term European Political Party, rather than literal searches for those words in that order). Perhaps that's not the case with google trends specifically, I'm not sure, and it's not like google divulges its internal workings on this stuff. That's how it seems to behave at least somewhat though anyway (so a google trend for "dog" will include "dogs", "doggo", "canine" etc. because of the way their machine learning NLP stuff works)

Similarly, the Europe-wide institutions, and the EU in particular, are practically famous for both their unwieldy terminology/nomenclatures, & their verbosity (I used to work in a field where I had to read a lot of EU regulations and official documents, so I can attest to both personally lol), so the fact that a common name isn't found much used in either the official regulations, or the official literature of the EU institutions, doesn't really mean anything; you wouldn't expect it to be, they pretty much always stick to their official (and often unwieldy) terminology. What the external literature (and the press) uses doesn't necessarily line up with the commission's/EU agencies' output though!

Looking at ngrams (which are an actual verbatim search of a corpus), they seem relatively equally common. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Europarty%2CEuropean+political+party&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true And if you drilled into the examples, I imagine that at least some of the instances of the term "European political party" would be referring to European political parties in another sense also, inflating the numbers somewhat (as can be seen from the prevalence in decades past).

And, perusing the literature on the topic over the last day or so, night, I found that the term came up again and again. Often articles and books seem to use both terms. "Europarty" is both more concise and less ambiguous, so I can see why has a certain stickiness; "European Political Party" has the disadvantage of being, at least literally, applicable to any type of political party institution in Europe (whether Europewide or national). So rassemblement national is a European political party, just not a European Political Party. Or take Diem25 for instance, a literal EU-wide political party that is not a "europarty". (Albeit not a particularly electorally successful one, but you take the example I hope).

I guess the other route would have been to use the acronym EPP to refer to the specific EU institution as opposed to just the concept of a European Party, but that's already taken by the EPP eu bloc! Oh sorry, not the the bloc, the bloc is the European People's Party group, which is a parliamentary group of the European Parliament, which is different from the party per se, even though they all usually (but not always!) have the same name. Gosh, it's all so intuitive isn't it! 😁

Anyway, I digress lol, the point is that regardless of how we each might feel about the elegance of the euro- portmanteausblend words, it is still in wide use; ngrams show that, as does a cursory look at the academic literature published in the last couple of years, it's full of the term europarty still. And, fair enough, there is obvious utility there. There are many ways a party (or political party) can be European, so it's not a great term for a very specific legal creation (whereas the counterpart, eurofoundation, which you I think rightly deleted, doesn't have much of a "raison d'etre", there's nothing to disambiguate really, "political foundation" is not really something that even exists in anglophone vernacular at all, so it's unsurprising its distinguishing coinage has seen little usage) --Tomatoswoop (talk) 05:50, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, the Google Trends example was just a last-minute, finger-in-the-wind observation. I still really feel like there is a trend there and that the term is on its way out, but -- fair is fair -- if it's only a downward trend and the term remains used at moment, then it can of course be retained. If asked, I would also still recommend to leave it in a note, instead of in the main lead, but I see the arguments and the choice is not just up to me.

As for other terms, "EPP" is indeed already taken by the European People Party's, while the political group goes by "EPP Group" (and sometimes, though rarely, EPPG). Sometimes I see "EUPP" used for "European political party", but not that often.

Of course, as you say, "European political party" is sometimes used to refer erroneously to "political parties in Europe", but not that often, I find. There was a recent study that actually used that term in the title whilst referring to national political parties in the EU, but I read the author actually saying, in retrospect, that that was not the right term but it was just too late to change the title of the publication. Since "European political party" is now used extensively, including as the official terminology, I think it's best to keep it as that. As for the case of the Rassemblement National, I am sure they would reply that they do not want to be called a European political party, but very much a NATIONAL political party in all caps :)

And for DiEM25 or Volt, it is indeed ironic that those parties that are so integrated at the European level cannot qualify for the status of "European political party". That's true and that's a shame. But there are other terms that are used in the article, such as "European political organisation" or "European political alliance".

Anyway, the initial discussion was on "Europarty", so I guess we keep that for now and I hope this can be revisited and finally changed down the line when uses change. Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:14, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

PS: more important, as noted in the section above, is to keep "European political party" as the title of the article and not revert back to "political party at European level", which is more descriptive but really not used anywhere as these parties' name (whether by the EU, themselves, or anyone really). Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:15, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz

>Of course, as you say, "European political party" is sometimes used to refer erroneously to "political parties in Europe",

I find that somewhat presumptuous to be honest. If the EU decides that the official designation of one of its structures is "ham sandwich", that doesn't make any and all other instances of the term "ham sandwich" prima facie incorrect. Obviously that's a silly example, but you take the point in general I hope (and what's the harm in a little silliness in the service of abstraction 🙃). The EU is 1 political institution, one which covers a lot of Europe (and obviously an important one!); it may, of course, choose to call its institutions and structures what it likes, but that doesn't give it the power to redefine the use of the English language! A book/article/paper about European political parties being about, for example, the political culture of political parties in Europe, then referring to those parties as "European political parties" makes perfect sense, notwithstanding the EU's use of the phrase as a term of art (not referring to any particular work here, but making the general point). It would be different if the term chosen by the EU was "European Union Political Party" or some other such designation which is more distinct, but the chosen term was "European political party", it can't really claim exclusivity of that term, any more than the EU can claim (or, at least, claim unilaterally) the mantle of "Europe" as a geographical/political/social entity (although, of course, that is the EU's ultimate aspiration, and one that it has at least partially achieved, and so has tendency to name its institutions as such, in part as a way of staking that claim to be the legitimate representative of a completed European integration project -- which is, in part, of the reasons why there is often so much confusion about European institutions and their nomenclature, which Europe-wide institutions are which, which are and aren't part of the EU specifically, etc., because they tend to all have these such "European" "of Europe" etc. names). I don't begrudge either the EU this goal, or its way of naming things, but wikipedia is not a .europa.eu domain, and so doesn't have any obligation to follow its style guide or share the long-term goals of its institutions 😉

By the way, all this may come across as me writing from a so-called "Eurosceptic" position; this is not so, but the point of wikipedia is that we must separate our own political tendencies and/or feelings from our contributions to the encyclopedia. That is to say, even if you believe firmly in the "European Project" as it's often called, and the EU's institutions as manifestations of that project, and see it as either desirable, or even inevitable, that the European Union institutions will continue more an more to de facto represent Europe as a whole, and uncontroversially so, in the present day wikipedia should always be written to reflect, as impartially and objectively as possible, things as they are, not things as they should be, could be, (or even inexorably will be, or are almost). In fact, there's a wikipedia policy on exactly this, commonly referred to as WP:CRYSTAL. This means that, where the EU designates or claims something, the best option 9/10 times is to simply report that neutrally and explicitly, in the third person (e.g. "The EU designates a European Political Party as...", or, "under the European Union institutional framework, a European Political Party constitutes" etc., when referring to whether a particular organisation does or does not meet such a designation). So, for example saying "Diem25 is not a European Political Party" would be incorrect, but accurately reporting its status within the European institutional framework (i.e., whether it actually is a Europarty per se, in addition to being a Pan-European Political Party), where relevant, would not be. (The same ambiguity does not exist with the term Europarty, which apart from brevity and catchiness, is probably one of the reasons it has persisted so long. But that does make it a necessity of course, just sometimes a convenience)

And, on that note, be wary of WP:CRYSTAL tendencies here also:

>if it's only a downward trend and the term remains used at moment, then it can of course be retained

The fact is that the term is still in common usage (in the most recent ngrams usage which goes to 2019, show roughly equal usage, unclear which is more common when accounting for other usages of european political party/ies, but they're in the same ballpark). It is not wikipedia's job to predict whether something will or won't continue (and, and I hope you won't take this too pointedly, but even less so to let our personal feelings about whether something should or should not continue influence our contributions, even if inadvertently).

Looking at google scholar for instance: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2020&q=%22european+political+parties%22 (filtered for results from 2020s), the first page of publications has 2 categories: 1) articles/books which use the term "European Political Parties" to refer to the EU sense of the term, (but which the first few I read all also used the term "europarties" in the article/text body, which may not be representative I suppose but is at least common) and 2) articles/books which use the term more broadly (and perfectly cromulently I must say, sorry!) to refer to political parties in Europe (for example, the first and third result of the search, here and here).

And, finally, on the subject of Volt and Diem25, an interesting article here https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Towards_the_formation_of_genuine_European_parties_Examining_and_comparing_the_cases_of_DiEM25_and_Volt_Europa/21909720/1 that I came across when poking around. I've only had the chance to skim so far, but I thought I'd share here while I'm replying to your comment, in case it's of use/interest to you also

When I have some time, I'll try to leave some helpful comments on the European Foundations talk page (and I'll tag you of course). At the moment wikipedia isn't too helpful on any of these topics, I came here hoping to be able to skim and get a better understanding of what the European Parties, and Groups, are, how and why they are separate, what function that separation serves (or what led to it), and what each of them do as entities, and perhaps a very basic overview of what the scholarly commentary says about them as institutions and how they function etc.. Perhaps there should be a single article that covers these entities (the parties, the foundations, the groups, possibly other relevant entities) as a broad overview of party politics at a European level, and how it works, while allowing for separate (and more technical) articles that cover the individual types of entities (with all assorted minutiae. That or simply collapse all 3 into 1 (probably not as desirable, but also a possibility).

As for the article title, I am slightly wary of the ambiguity of the current title, but "Political Party at a European Level" does seem more deprecated in the more recent literature, so that is probably not the best answer either. Perhaps something in brackets after the name, i.e. European Political Party (the EU thingamabob) (but a sensible version of that, of course). Alternatively, keep this article as "European Political Party", but have it cover the things that fall under this term in the broader sense -- that is to say, include Volt & Diem, & the "europarties" proper and that institutional framework, how these things all interact etc., with appropriate section divisions for each category, and have the history section be a broader history of trans-national and pan-european political party organisation, including both Europarties proper, the formation of the groups, and other attempts at pan-European political organisation (which is the approach many of the papers I've found seem to take, including one slighly odd one here under the rubric of "euro-parties" used as an umbrella for the whole mess, somewhat confusingly. Or in what reads to me at least like a better paper, here, they highlight the following quote: "Europarties and EP political groups are officially independent of each other, but it is nonetheless more realistic to view them as part of the same Europarty organisation").

Perhaps I have caused more problems that have alleviated with this comment, but in any case, I hope at least some of it is at least somewhat helpful

Peace, --Tomatoswoop (talk) 01:16, 19 June 2024 (UTC) Tomatoswoop (talk) 01:16, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I see your points about the naming, but I don't think the issue is about the EU taking over the power to name things, it's just that this is what these parties are called -- in EU law, in academic literature (along with synonyms to avoid repetitions, of course) -- and what they call themselves. The long-form name is not really used by anyone anymore, except as a paraphrase/description, while the informal name (regardless of our personal opinion or views of its trajectory) is simply not these parties' proper name. This being said, I agree that the EU cannot single-handedly decide vocabulary, but this is what disambiguation pages are for. If we had a page on "political parties in Europe/EU" and decided to call it "European political parties" (which I believe would be wrong, as other similar pages are almost always "political parties in XXX"), then we could just have a disambiguation page to separate the two.

As for your proposal about a more general page encompassing all entities, that's a good idea. It could something on the political system of the EU and, indeed, reference European parties, European foundations, political groups of the EP and any other relevant entity, with links to individual pages. Note that the page on European political parties actually does reference entities that were considered European political parties before registration was mandatory, but also other non-registered political alliances. So while the focus of the page is just European political parties, the page does strive to show the difference with other party entities.

I for one have still been too busy to get to the page about foundations, but it's still definitely on the agenda, just a bit postponed. The APPF will be next. Julius Schwarz (talk) 05:28, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Consistency across pages

Hey, following the centre/centre-right back-and-forth regarding ALDE, I am wondering what the best way is ensure consistency between the pages of the individual European political parties and the information present on this page. I already created templates for figures (number of MEPs, Commissioners, etc.), as those figures are found here, on the pages of the individual parties, and sometimes on the pages of the institutions themselves. Would it make sense to do the same for the rest of party data? This way, changing the template would change both the individual pages and this very page. However, I do not want to multiply the number of templates either. The idea is really just to simplify and improve consistency. Would one or more templates be good here? Any other suggestions? Julius Schwarz (talk) 06:51, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Move of "Other political entities" section

Hi all,

When I redrafted the article, I decided to leave the "Other political entities" section, which was not too long and helped contrast "official" European political parties with "quasi"-European parties, like the European Pirate Party or Volt (entities that are really close to European parties, but do not meet registration criteria).

However, recently, this section has grown, especially the part on political alliances, including with a new table dedicated to "Party Groups in the Benelux Parliament" created yesterday.

I believe that this is straying too far from the content of the article, and that it is now detrimental to keep in the article such a large section on entities that are specifically not European parties and that do not even seek to register as such.

I am therefore proposing the creation of a dedicated page (alongside "European political party" and "European political foundation") called "European political organisation", where all these entities (what we refer to as "organisations" and "alliances", both active and defunct) would be located.

Any thoughts? Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:42, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Tagging past contributors @ElTres @Braganza @Allan_Nonymous @Helper201 Julius Schwarz (talk) 14:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

where exactly would you draw the line, like Coalition for Life and Family & Libertas where it says they "qualified" but did not receive funds Braganza (talk) 14:49, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

That's a good question. I would include that one because it qualified as a European party and featured in official documents (like the funding decision).

Basically I would either move the entire "other political entities" section, or move all of it *except* for the first table (Currently active organisations) because these are entities that are very close, that, in many case, aspire to become European political parties, and often describe themselves as such (which means, incidentally, that many people might be tempted to add them if they did not appear on the page somehow. Julius Schwarz (talk) 15:48, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: talking about it should be mentioned why they didn't recieve funds Braganza (talk) 19:59, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

i don't mind your proposal tbh maybe expand it with things like: Forum of Socialists of the CIS Countries or PACE groups Braganza (talk) 20:01, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

That's doable. Julius Schwarz (talk) 20:53, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

@Braganza @Allan Nonymous @ElTres How about this for a first draft? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Julius_Schwarz/sandbox/europeanpoliticalorganisations

The idea is to go the other way around: instead of including more and more non-European parties in the article on European parties, we include European parties and others in a more general article on European political organisations.

This is surely not exhaustive so feel free to add sections.

You will note that many tables are recycled, which helps provide a detailed overview without having to change content. In that sense, I would encourage @Braganza (I think it was you who added these sections; apologies if I am mistaken) to move the tables regarding groups in the Nordic Council and the Benelux Parliament to the main articles on these bodies, and then, in this article, to replace the tables with a link -- as done for European parties, foundations, etc.

Let me know what you think! Julius Schwarz (talk) 11:42, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

i only added Benelux, Nordic Council was there

also if we split, this article should mention why there are cases which apparently did not receive money Braganza (talk) 14:03, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Once again, that's doable. But that wasn't really the point here, that was just to present a draft of the new page. I'll track down the reason, include it in the old page and it appear in the new one automatically. Julius Schwarz (talk) 14:45, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Reasons for absence of funding added. Julius Schwarz (talk) 18:05, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Before you start drafting a new article, you should check for what the terms „European political organisations“ and „European political alliance“ are actually used. You have introduced these terms here – and in wikidata – out of thin air and without sourcing, that these are used for the parties/movements in question in scientific literature or in the press. Which they are not. ElTres (talk) 21:23, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

That feels a bit accusatory. To be clear, I have not started the use of the term alliance, neither here nor on wikidata. As for "European political organisations", yes I have introduced it because the old article referred to "European parties not recognised by the EU", which is clearly not a thing.

Whether we call them "European political organisations" or "political organisations at European level", I am not sure that an academic source is needed: these are entities that are *organised*, that operate in *political* affairs, and that are active at the *European level*.

You yourself pointed out that "organisations like PPEU or Volt are really close to European political parties" -- and they are indeed different in nature of a simple alliance of national entities that lacks a proper administration at the EU level.

But, please, what is your suggestion, then? Julius Schwarz (talk) 04:51, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't have the intention to accuse you. My wording was a little bit condensed, as I didn't have much time last week.

For me, "European political organisation" is not a good term for the entities we are talking about here. The Council of Europe is also a European political organisation.[2] The European Union itself is a European political organisation. A lot of different entities fall under this generic term, not only groups, parties, and party-like organisations. I don't think the article you drafted contains what a reader would expect. This is just my opinion, but prove me wrong.

In general, I don't see the need for two separate articles for registered and "non-registered Europarties". I think it makes sense to list organisations which are similar to registered European political parties here. Volt, DieM25, PPEU are often discussed in context of European political parties. Like registered European political parties, these organisations/alliances want to take part in European parliaments and want to influence European politics.

BTW, I am not sure about your strict distinction between "organisations" and "alliances". Surely, Volt as transnational party has a good central organisation. But Free Palestine Party? Animal Politics EU? Are they more or less organised than European Communist Action? I don't know, who is to decide? I would suggest to describe transnational parties and alliances in the European parliament and shortly list other small entities – and there are more of those; additionally some historic alliances are missing. ElTres (talk) 11:43, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

No worries, it happens. And you make a good point about the European Union and Council of Europe.

Maybe my intention with this separate article was not clear but, for the record, I do not recommend to move Volt, DiEM25 or the PPEU out of the current European political party article. Of course, these are not European parties, but I do see value in listing them nonethless.

My beef is mostly with the tables on party groups in the Nordic Council or the Benelux Parliament and, to a more moderate degree, with loose alliances of national entities.

So my proposal is to have a more generic page that lists everything (as the current article on European parties does), but also political groups and political foundations, and to remove from the European political party page the ones that do not belong (once again, I would keep Volt, DiEM25 and the PPEU). Maybe the deciding criteria could be "willingness to register as a European political party"; those who see themselves as European parties and actively want to but don't meet the criteria can stay, while those who do not at all aim at registering are out. Does this work?

As for the new article, it mostly does away with the labels and the same distinction between wannabe European parties and other "alliances" can apply.

However, this leaves one main question: what do we call the article? "European political organisation" may not be ideal, but then what is better suited? Julius Schwarz (talk) 11:55, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

OK. Maybe I did not understand what you wanted to do.

I still think we just should remove the nordic and benelux groups tables. They are duplicated in the respective articles, where they belong.

Not sure if an article mixing european parties and groups in several organisations is really helpful. ElTres (talk) 14:22, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

So, just to recap, your proposed solution is: removing nordic country and benelux (I moved them to their respective articles), and then putting together what is currently "organisations" and "alliances", right?

I personally would be quite happy to see the current "alliances" moved out of the European party article because they are really not parties and do not mean to be.

It feels weird to just drop them, though. Julius Schwarz (talk) 14:25, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

It's definitely weird to drop them. And where exactly to you draw the line? What about the parties which existed before 2004, i.e. before EP funding? ElTres (talk) 10:01, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the two categories of party groups. Now that this is done, I would still propose to remove what is currently listed as "alliances", as these are not European parties, were never European parties, and don't seem to want to become European parties.

As for what is currently listed in "organisations", I would remove "Free Palestine Alliance", "Europe–Democracy–Esperanto" and "Newropeans". I am more ambivalent about the "European Federalist Party" and "Animal politics EU", but would probably favour removing them as well.

I agree there must be a criteria that we agree on and stick to for inclusion on this page. My proposal would be "is/has been a European party or shows genuine interest/actions to become a European party".

Finally, when I say (above) that certain entities should be removed, I mean from this page -- they can still be included in the proposed draft page, for instance (whatever its title ends up being). Julius Schwarz (talk) 11:32, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your edits, @[[User:ElTres|ElTres].

Back to a more general question now: is it really justified to keep in this article about European parties entities that were never, are not, and do not seek to be European parties? Julius Schwarz (talk) 12:01, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

How do you know these alliances do not seek to be European Political Parties? ElTres (talk) 10:06, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

BTW, I would agree to replace the last table with a smaller list. Most of these organisations are relatively unimportant. Some may not be active anyway, like FPP and CEEGLA (last known activity before elections). ElTres (talk) 10:08, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I personally think that the tables are always clearer, even if they do give more importance than might be necessary. Lists on the other hand just give me an early 2000s vibe, before layout improved. Just my opinion.

As for how we know that the alliances seek to become European political parties, I guess we just find source where we can. Volt has clearly made that clear. I believe DiEM25 as well. But I would based that on sources. Julius Schwarz (talk) 11:41, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@ElTres: when we remvoe LIBSEEN & NGL, than we should remove CEEGLA too since they are just a regional alliance too Braganza (talk) 09:37, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

@Braganza What do you think of the new distinction "Organisations with Members in the European Parliament" versus "Other currently active transnational movements and alliances"?

I wonder whether this is the most appropriate, as there can be "transnational alliances" with MEPs and more European-party-like organisations (such as DiEM25) without MEPs. Julius Schwarz (talk) 10:22, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Then NGL had to return, so probably not the best definition Braganza (talk) 10:50, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree. What would you suggest? I had proposed something based on the organisation's stated goal of becoming a European party, since this is more in line with the article than having MEPs or not. Julius Schwarz (talk) 10:54, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

i found the original proposal the best Braganza (talk) 13:25, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

@Braganza the draft page I had proposed? If so, what about its title and composition? Julius Schwarz (talk) 15:04, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

yeah Braganza (talk) 15:43, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

PS: note that, in the draft article, alliances are only referred to as "political alliances", and that the "European political organisations" of the current article are "Other political entities" (since "European political organisations" is for the entire article). Julius Schwarz (talk) 05:46, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Get rid of the Benelux/Nordic sections, they're off topic. Allan Nonymous (talk) 14:57, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Does that mean you would want to keep "current active alliances"? I would recommend to move them. Julius Schwarz (talk) 15:48, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Get rid of Nordic/Benelux and keep the current active alliances. Organisations like PPEU or Volt are really close to European political parties.—ElTres (talk) 15:54, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Note that these entities are recorded as "Currently active organisations" and not "Currently active alliances". The difference is the degree of centralisation. Julius Schwarz (talk) 16:21, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I am replying down here because it's getting unmanageable in the reply-after-reply above.

@ElTres kindly removed the party groups and cleaned up the "other political entities" section. Meanwhile @Braganza supports moving all/most of the other entities to a separate page.

I personally remain a bit unconvinced by the current MEP-based distinction in the "other political entities" section. And people are already re-adding entities (see defunct section). I think we could benefit from clear-cut criteria for inclusion on this page. I would propose either:

• we retain entities that were not/are not european parties on the criteria that they have clearly stated their intention/taken action to become a European party; or
• we do not retain any entity that isn't or has never been a European party.

Either way, we could have a page called, for instance, "european political alliances" ("political alliance" is the term used by Reg. 1141/2014) with the entities removed from this page.

Opinions? @Helper201 Julius Schwarz (talk) 19:28, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Ping @ElTres -- since you led the current version, do you want to chime in? Julius Schwarz (talk) 10:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the need to make one article on political alliances and one article on formal European Political Parties. The first European political parties were founded in the 1970s (with predecessors even before that), long before the term European Political Parties was formalised. Parties are organised differently all over the world. Some are centralised, some are federal alliances, some call themselves movements. To focus this article on formally registered European political parties would be wrong, from my point of view. There is also no clear distinction between organisations which want to become formal European political parties and those who don't (I mean, who wouldn't want financing, even the far-right eurosceptics happily accept that). All of the organisations listed in "other political entities" are

• "structured cooperation between political parties and/or citizens", and
• "it or its members (...) have participated in elections to the European Parliament, or have expressed publicly the intention to participate in the next elections to the European Parliament",

and they fulfil all other criteria for European political parties, except parliamentary representation in a quarter of the member states. Hence, these "unregistered" European political parties should be part of this article: They are political parties, and they are organised on European level. ElTres (talk) 07:35, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to reply. However, I must disagree with you: the article does not really "focus on formally registered European political parties", it focuses on European political parties. Pre-APPF, this first meant anyone who described themselves as such (because the concept was not formalised), and later anyone who met the criteria of the Regulation. Since the creation of the APPF, this does mean entities that meet the criteria *and* register. But the article itself mentions all European political parties, including former ones.

Conversely, I do not think the article should cover any political alliance that operates at the European level -- specifically because the article is about European political parties, and it's not sufficient to be a transnational political alliance to be a European party. I think opening the door to political alliances is what led to the plethora of entity that we were trying to remove (and did remove for some of them).

My proposal to use "willingness to become a European party" is simply a attempt to place a clear bar for who should and should not be included. It might not be perfect, but I would contend that it makes sense. We instead decide to be strict and not include any entity that is not a European party, but that does remove Volt and DiEM25. I feel this would be detrimental to the article, but at least it would be logical.

But when you say "who wouldn't want..", well many of the named political alliances do not explicitly indicate that they want to become European parties. It's not whether they would like it, it's whether they say it and/or take steps for it.

The final option of including any and all transnational political alliances (after 1/set a criteria, or 2/being strict) would, in my view, be detrimental. This would lead to re-adding entities that have nothing to do with European parties and extend the scope of the article way beyond what it is. The article is about European parties, not about all political alliances. In this sense, having a separate page is not inconsistent. Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:54, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

If I follow your argument, you cannot remove DieM25, because it was founded pre-APPF. But you need to remove Volt, which was founded in 2017. That would be logical. But not what any reader would expect. ElTres (talk) 08:37, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point, but I would disagree -- the criteria is not whether the entity was created before or after the APPF was set up, but whether an entity was ever recognised as a European party. DiEM25 was created shortly before the APPF was set up but was never recognised as a European party. Julius Schwarz (talk) 08:46, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Any idea on how to take this forward? As I just realised,the European Federalist Party is just a national party and therefore should not even be on this page. Maybe a separate page just for European political alliances (but not including parliamentary groups or party groups in other transnational parliaments) could be a solution. This way we retain a useful list of these entities, but we make a neat distinction between European political parties (past and present) and the rest. We make a clear link to that page and call it a day. Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:06, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

It seems like this discussion has run its course without achieving consensus, either on a way forward, nor on the current state of this page. I therefore announce that I plan on moving forward with the following changes:

• Removing from this page the tables that contain entities that are not and were never European political parties. Information on them is surely worthwhile, but does not belong to a page focusing on European parties.
• Keeping the section called "Other political entities" (or something similar) to notify readers that there are indeed more entities than the current or former European parties. That section will retain the current paragraph and include a link to another page.
• Creating a page dedicated to European political alliances, that will contain all the entities removed from this page (including the ones already taken out).

The reasoning for these changes is 1/ that the entities still listed here are beyond the scope of this article, 2/ that we did not agree on a criteria to retain this or that entity, and 3/ that we should probably not take it upon ourselves to decide which non-European party should remain on the page dedicated to European parties, as this would most likely be subjective and therefore constantly challenge (and it probably the reason we have not agreed to something already). Of course, I note that my own proposal to only retain entities that have clearly expressed their intention to become European parties was also not successful.

At any rate, I am announcing this here to give another chance to this discussion, in case anyone wants to add something new. Short of that, I propose enacting these changes tomorrow or on Monday. Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:41, 17 October 2024 (UTC)