Europarties in the neighbourhood: how transnational party politics bind Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans to the EU
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Europarties in the neighbourhood: how transnational party politics bind Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans to the EU Angelos Chryssogelos1 Accepted: 12 October 2020 © Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract Transnational European party federations—‘Europarties’—are an overlooked actor of EU external relations despite their strong footprint outside the EU. This article discusses the activities of Europarties as networks of EU external relations closely aligned with the interests and values of EU foreign policy but conditioned by their character as transnational partisan actors with distinct ideological affinity and political commitments to partner parties in the European neighbourhood. Empirically, the article investigates the activities of the centre-right European People’s Party in Georgia and North Macedonia, demonstrating how Europarties can act as amplifiers of EU influence in Eastern Europe and Western Balkans, but also how their partisan interests often come into tension with EU priorities. The findings carry implications for the theory and practice of EU relations with its neighbourhood at a time when prospects for further enlargement appear significantly weakened. Keywords Europarties · EU foreign policy · European People’s Party (EPP) · Georgia · North Macedonia · European Neighbourhood Policy
Introduction The external relations of the EU are today a dense and multi-layered field where a growing variety of EU actors engages a rising number of stakeholders in neighbouring countries. Even actors associated mostly with the EU’s internal governance like the European Parliament have attracted attention for their role in EU foreign and neighbourhood policy (Nitoiu and Sus 2017; Rosen and Rauben 2018). Yet an increasingly assertive actor both in the EU’s internal governance and its external relations has
* Angelos Chryssogelos [email protected] 1
School of Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, 166‑220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB, UK Vol.:(0123456789)
A. Chryssogelos
received scant attention: the transnational political party federations more commonly known as ‘Europarties’. This omission is understandable to the extent that transnational party politics have received little research interest (see indicatively Bardi and Calossi 2009; Bressanelli 2014; Hix and Lord 1997; Van Hecke 2010). But it is still a significant gap since transnational party politics has always formed an important aspect of relations between the EU and neighbouring states. European party federations have historically maintained contacts with parties outside of the EU. And with the EU’s enlargement appetite seemingly exhausted, Europarties’ ability to engage political actors in post-Soviet and Balkan states must be seen in a new light as the EU tries to maintain influence there. The question then is twofold: What is the role of Europarties as actors of EU external relations today? And how do their activities relate to the objectives of EU foreign, and particularly enlargement and neighbourhood, policy? This
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