THE TRANSFORMING STRUCTURE OF THE EU AND ESTONIAN POLITICS: SOME ASPECTS OF THE FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION AT EUROPEAN LEVEL

Abstract

1. Introduction Demonstrating the importance of parties operating at European level mainly through their functions of shaping the landscape of Europe by organizing elections and reflecting the landscape of pluralist Europe, the article opens scientific and normative concepts of political and political party operating at European distinguishing Europarties from foundation at European level. The author in parallel explains political-historical background of Europe and Estonia, views parties operating at European level comparatively to parties of a EU member state, Estonia, and representation in the European Parliament, gives an overview of Estonia's representation in Europarties, and tries to connect the analysis with attempts to coordinate European politics. The importance of the research underlying this article lies in contextualising the relevant normative developments with explanations of the nature of politics and representation in Europe on historical background, of transformation of Estonian politics on the European landscape from communist one-party system toward plurality, and of the inner trend toward greater cooperation in the framework of discursive plurality or even features of duopolism in competition that may sometimes refer to opposition as known from the Cold War era that may very generally be understood as the East-West opposition. (1) Political competition and opposition are different phenomena--while one can see continuity in party competition, one may see discontinuity in opposition. Continuity and discontinuity here could be understood similarly to their meanings in the history of human rights, where continuity marks the more permanent values, while discontinuity marks politicization of human rights. Being a lawyer with human rights research background, I could also explain as follows: discontinuity refers to the nature of human rights--the existence of mechanisms is required for their validation and implementation, politicians have used and use human rights for achieving aims, while continuity refers to emanation of human rights from something more continuous than pure processes, being connected with human nature and inner moral rules of societal-political co-existing. Concerning the research methods, I have tried to apply scientific and normative concepts and understandings of party toward parties at European level, in order to understand how the features that are characteristic to parties show with the parties at European level. This article aims at offering a structural analysis of transformation of parties in Europe rather than at content analysis of ideologies. The author has used several internet sources because not all of the manifestos and other documents of all the Europarties have been published on paper. The use of internet sources seems also justified in the rapidly developing information society, where it is difficult for traditional publications to adequately reflect all of the most recent developments. The article focuses on the registered parties at European level, whereas one should also be aware of the existence of other movements and groups as a source of direct legitimacy, the latter do not constitute an object of this research. The analysis of manifestos and other documents at European level allowed the following contextualizing findings: the European People's Party (EPP) determines itself as representing centre-right and the idea of federal Europe; the Party of European Socialists (PES) determines itself as a left-wing party, bringing together in the EU the socialist, social-democrat and labour parties; the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE) supports liberal democrat values; the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) determines itself as a conservative, non-federalist entity; the Party of the European Left (EL) claims to represent non-socialist left-wing; the European Democratic Party (EDP) determines itself as a transnational movement combining federalist and social aspiration; the European Alliance for Freedom (EAF) does not define itself on the left-right scale, allowing members with wide spectrum, but at the same time looking at the content of its activities, it opposes centralized, supranational control; the Alliance of European National Movements (AEMN) determines itself as a Christian confederalist party; the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM) determines itself as a Christian-democratic party, representing Christian socialists, embracing European Christian-democratic and Christian-social parties, NGOs and think tanks; the EU Democrats (EUD) does not take a position on left-right policy issues, although it considers itself a pan-European EU-critical alliance; etc. …