Volt’s top-down Europeanisation in the EU’s multilevel party field: a viable alternative model for transnational political representation?

Abstract

Volt Europa emerged in 2017 as a transnational political party with aspirations to become the first established EU political party. Volt emerged as not just a federation of national parties as the existing EU political groups, but a full-fledged integrated party. In doing so, Volt challenged the preexisting national representative logic of European politics. In spite of the national electoral rules and logic of representation, Volt navigated the EU’s multilevel party field as an attempt to redefine its very logic. Against the traditional national-to-EU Europeanisation of parties, Volt Europe first elected an MEP in the 2019 EU elections, and went on to elect national representatives in the Netherlands and Bulgaria, and increased its representation in the European Parliament to 5 MEPs in 2024. In this article, we ask: How does Volt Europa redefine the existing models of political representation in the EU’s multilevel party field? We explore Volt’s trajectory, focusing on its ideology, discourse and internal organisation through extensive document analysis and semi-structured interviews. We argue that, while Volt is an important case study of innovative political practices at the supranational level, it is unlikely to meaningfully reshape the dynamics of the field. Its top-down Europeanisation model has been a relative success, but it is unlikely Volt will become a meaningful alternative model for parties in the EU.