European Parliament political groups and European political parties : development and relationship between two faces of the EU political system

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to present the evolution and strengthening of the European Parliament Political Groups and European Political Parties from a comparative perspective. The specific focus is on the relation between the two faces of the EU political system. Despite the number of studies on the organizational aspects of the European Parliament Political Groups (EPPGs) and the European Political Parties (EuPPs), the literature is still scarce for what concerns the relationship between the two organizations. This chapter gives empirical evidence to the oft-repeated (yet seldom demonstrated) predominance of the groups in respect to their corresponding European parties. In fact, this is true from a material point view (the groups are stronger in terms of staff and financial resources) and from the point of view of their capacity of limit the institutionalization of new competitors (new groups or new parties), that would participate the distribution of public resources that are assigned to these actors. Our analysis confirms that the European Parliament Political Groups are, from all the considered standpoints, stronger than the corresponding European Political Parties. This indeed still represents a shortcoming that limits the emergence of a proper party system at the European level and weakens the European democracy.