Are the Europarties Real Political Parties? National Parties’ Involvement in Multi-level Structures of European Political Parties

Abstract

Europarties are regarded as multi-level organizations, like parties operating in federal or devolved states. Examined is whether they can even be treated as political parties sensu stricto and whether the concepts used to test the relations between the national and regional party structures (vertical integration, influence) could be used to study relationships between the national and European structures. It was indicated that Europarties can be considered both as the additional arenas of national parties’ activity and independent political actors consisted of national parties (multi-level parties). The second perspective was used to research 13 existing Europarties. In result, the similarities between the PES and PEL, but differences between the EPP and PES in term of vertical integration and influence were shown. Hence, in the article was proven that there is no one model of relations between the national and European party structures and the parties differ from each other as far as their internal structures are concerned.