One of the most interesting discussions in recent EU debates has been the question in which way the crisis has changed the relationship between and across EU institutions and Member States. Most political and academic attention has been put on the way in which (key) Member States dominated the discussion. Our goal in this paper is to examine how Europarties have responded to the challenges posed by the Euro Crisis and whether or not they have benefited from it through strenghtening their position in EU democracy.
On the one hand, we will focus on programmatic changes and innovation. In the autumn of 2009, for instance, the EPP, the PES and the ELDR organised extraordinary party congresses devoted to the financial crisis. Our aim is to analyse and compare these documents and all the statements about the financial and economic crisis that have been made since then.
On the other hand, we will examine the way(s) in which Europarties have changed organisationally, in other words, how they have adapted their party organisation given the demand for national and European policy coordination in the area of financial and economic governance. The EPP, for instance, has established so-called Ministerial Meetings through which it tries to reach agreement on common positions among Finance Ministers from EPP member parties and to influence ECOFIN’s agenda and decisionmaking.
This paper will investigate the Europarties’ responses empirically and comparatively, based on the study of primary resources and a number of semi-structured interviews. We will also rely on existing research on Euromanifestos and organisational party change and adaption literature.
