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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Construire l'Europe des partis

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During the 2014 European elections, the general public probably discovered the existence of little-known organisations: "political parties at European level". Although this is their legal name, they are more commonly referred to as "Europarties". Indeed, on the occasion of the May 2014 elections, a kind of new motivation for voting - in an attempt to bring down an abstention rate that rose dangerously in those elections - was put forward. It was explained that, from now on, it was all the more important to participate in the designation of the members of the European Parliament as it would have a decisive influence on the choice of the future President of the European Commission. This is a consequence of the Lisbon Treaty (2007). This new procedure for appointing the President of the Commission - a priori based on popular suffrage - has thus been the subject of much media attention, underlining the political weight of the European Parliament, and of its electors, within the European Union.Although the debate on the democratic legitimacy of the European Parliament seems far from settled, it is indeed these new methods of appointing the President of the Commission - which tend to make the elections to the European Parliament more presidential - that have made public opinion aware of the existence of Europarties. For, strengthened by what would be a reinforced political competence of the European Parliament, the Europarties will therefore seek to personalise their respective electoral campaigns and, through this personalisation, to transnationalise or Europeanise the electoral campaign in a very deliberate manner. This context is reminiscent of the way politics is conducted and power is distributed in various European parliamentary democracies, such as the United Kingdom and Italy in particular, where the party that comes out on top in the elections sees its leader become the head of the executive.More specifically, five Europarties focused on their candidates for the European Commission presidency and thus sought to give a more European partisan colouring to a campaign that is usually tightly embedded in national partisan contexts:- the right-wing, centre-right EPP (European People's Party), which had a relative majority in the outgoing parliament;- the PES (Party of European Socialists);- the liberals (and centrists) of the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe);- the ELP (European Left Party), which includes the French Left Front and the German party Die Linke (The Left);- Finally, the EGP (European Green Party), which has even organised an online primary, open to all "green sympathisers" in Europe, to designate its candidate.After having analysed how the Europarties put themselves on stage in the context of the 2014 European elections, this chapter seeks to identify and define more precisely what the Europarties are, evokes their relationship to the notion of democracy, deciphers what vector they would be of it in Europe but also how they organise themselves.