Institutionalisation of European political parties. Niedermayer’s model revisited

Abstract

According to Niedermayer’s concept of Europarties’ development (1983), these organisations have to go through three phases (contact, cooperation, integration) to be fully institutionalised. The aim of this article is to analyse relationships between Europarties and their member parties on the basis of statutes of the former in order to answer the question of where individual Europarties should currently be placed in the Niedermayer’s model. The subjects of the analysis are all entities existing in the 9th European Parliament term of office (2019–2024): EPP, PES, ALDE, EGP, ECR, ID, PEL, EFA, EDP, ECPM. The analysis demonstrates that some Europarties tend to create supranational structure (e.g. EPP), others settle for transnational cooperation (e.g. PES). Therefore, we can ask whether completing the integration phase is the only way to institutionalise the Europarty.