Towards a European politics

Although it is widely recognized that competition among political parties in free and fair elections is not by itself sufficient to assure a democratic government, it is also widely accepted that such competition is a necessary component of democracy. As the competences of the European Union (EU) have expanded, and corresponding concern with the democratic deficit has grown, attention to the two elements of this condition has also increased. In many quarters, the expectation was that direct election of the EP would lead inexorably to the creation of a European political space in which the practices of democratic party government as found in the member states would be reproduced at the European level. This clearly has not happened. The other side of the “democratic deficit coin” is the absence of real European parties, and of a single European party system. We do not see the existence of fully developed party organizations, and even less do we see the current system of European party federations that are only partially connected to party groups in the EP, to be synonymous with the existence of a single European party system. Against the background of that observation, in this paper we ask whether it is realistic – and indeed whether it would even be desirable – to speak of the emergence of a supranational European party system.