Analysing 2019 Euroelection Manifestos in Southern Europe: Paving the Way for Consolidating Creditor / Debtor Cleavages in the EU?

Through the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the 2019 European elections manifestos of the Portuguese, Spanish, Greek and Italian parties, and by comparison with previous studies, this paper intends to assess if there’s a programmatic convergence between left and right-wing governing parties about EU economic and welfare issues. The conclusions allow for a rethinking of the persistence of left/right dimension on EU material issues and open prospects for transnational European cleavages and a changing future of the EU party system. We take as background the conceptual framework of Europeanization of political parties (Ladrech, 2009) and the existing programmatic change as an EU influence in the national parties. Considering previous studies that EU limits the range of policy instruments available at the national level and therefore tightens the room of manoeuvre for party competition, mainly in parties which have a chance to reach office, and considering also that this possibility is the stronger the more national interests are at stake (Mair: 2007, Dorussen and Nanou: 2006), we can raise the hypothesis that the 2008 financial crisis exacerbated this kind of influence on Southern European governing parties. The usual supranational financial pressures resulting from the Stability and Growth Pact reached a peak with the verge of bankruptcy and subsequent bailout processes in some of those countries. Even those which were not under troika memorandums governance faced serious demands in national public budgets and banking systems. This kind of problems led to the narrowing of the range of macroeconomic and social policies to be taken at the national level. For the sake of domestic interest, the countries maintenance in the EMU and the lack of alternative, it’s hypothesized these parties, either left or right-wing, call for redistributive measures in Eurozone. If this happens, it may be hypothesized that the historical and structural economic divergences in EU (higher income/more developed/surplus economies versus lower income/less developed/deficit economies), that turned into serious debtors/creditors cleavage during the bailouts intergovernmental bargaining following the financial crisis, are consolidating into national governing party convergence in Southern Europe. This may not only influence the national party systems but also boost the development of transnational party cleavages in EU, opposing the northern to the southern political parties, which may lead to the emergence of European geographical cleavages and diluting the classical left-right dimension of competition in EU material issues (Hooghe, Marks and Wilson, 2002; Hix and Lord, 2007). This research design in the Southern Europe may also be transposable to northern European parties, representative of the creditor countries.