The European Left Party 9781526144485

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The European Left Party

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The European Left Party

Richard Dunphy and Luke March

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Richard Dunphy and Luke March 2020 The right of Richard Dunphy and Luke March to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN  978 0 7190 8107 1  hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

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Contents

List of figures

page vi

List of tables vii Acknowledgements viii List of abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1 EU party politics and the role of the transnational parties

17

2 Radical left parties and European integration: the legacy of history

39

3 The origins and emergence of the European Left Party

64

4 The organisation, structure and political presence of the European Left Party

94

5 Programmatic and policy coherence and development

126

6 The EL as the ‘nexus of networks’? Developing relations with the movements and broader European radical left

155

7 The EL in comparative context: organisational and programmatic developments among left-of-centre TNPs

193

Conclusion 233 Postscript 250 Bibliography 254 Index 278

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Figures

1.1 Organigram of a TNP in the EU party system page 27 3.1 The European Left Party in the web of European radical left networks, 2012 90 7.1 Policy position of the EP groups on seven-point policy scale 212

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Tables 1.1 European transnational party federations and their main characteristics page 22–23 2.1 Periodisation of parties’ positions towards European integration during the lifetime of the Communists and Allies group in the European Parliament, 1973–89 53 3.1 The NELF: participants at 34th Meeting, Rome 2008 70 3.2 The development of the GUE/NGL: national components 73 3.3 Participants in the EACL (London Conference, 12 June 2011) 76 3.4 European Participants in the IMCWP (17th Meeting, Istanbul 2015) 78–79 3.5 Participants in the INITIATIVE of Communist and Workers’ Parties 82 3.6 EL members and observers, 2004–18 85–86 4.1 Composition of the Council of Chairpersons of the EL, 2018 103 4.2 Composition of the Executive Board of the EL, 2018 105–106 6.1 Electoral performance: EL members, observers and non-members compared 165–166 6.2 New adherents to the EL after the Founding Congress 167 6.3 Voting cohesion of European parliamentary groups 184 6.4 Ideological cohesion of GUE/NGL group, 2014–19 Parliament 185 6.5 Loyalty of member parties to the GUE/NGL group, 2009–12 187 6.6 The TNP affiliation of the European parliamentary groups 189 7.1 The degree of TNP interaction: the PES, Greens and EL compared 207 7.2 Policy priorities of the left-of-centre TNPs, 2009–14 EP elections 216–220 7.3 Changing views of neoliberalism from TNP manifestos 222–224 7.4 Matching positions between left-of-centre EP groups on key issues 225–226

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to a number of EL and GUE/NGL officials who kindly gave us much of their time during preparation of this manuscript, not least Giorgos Karatsioubanis and Martin Herberg, then at the EL office, Brussels. David Lundy and Carmen Hilario of the GUE/NGL, and Anna Striethorst, then of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Brussels Office, were among several who were extremely helpful. Many other interviewees are directly mentioned in the text. The views expressed here are, of course, the authors’ own. We also wish to thank our friends and families, as well as Manchester University Press for support and patience during the completion of the project. The Carnegie Trust of the Universities of Scotland provided some support for fieldwork for this project, as did the University of Edinburgh Strategic Research Support Fund.

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Abbreviations

This list contains those abbreviations most commonly appearing in the text or tables. All other uncommon abbreviations are always accompanied by the full title when they first appear. ADDE AE AECR AKEL ALDE ANEL APO BE CDU CETA COM CPSU CSPEC Déi Lénk Die Linke DiEM-25 DIKKI DKP DKP DSP

Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe Another Europe with Tsipras Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists Anorthotikó Kómma Ergazómenou Laoú (Progressive Party of Working People, Cyprus) Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Anexartitoi Ellines (Independent Greeks) Antikapitalistikó Politikí Omáda (Anticapitalist Political Group, Greece) Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc, Portugal) Coligação Democrática Unitária (United Democratic Coalition, Portugal) Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Communists and Allies group Communist Party of the Soviet Union Confederation of Socialist Parties of the European Community The Left, Luxemburg The Left Party, Germany Democracy in Europe 2025 movement Dimokratiko Koinoniko Kinima (Democratic Social Movement, Greece) Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (Communist Party of Denmark) Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (German Communist Party) Democratic Socialist Party (Australia)

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x EACL EC ECB ECI ECPM ECR ED EDD EDP EEC EFA EFD EFGP EGP EL ELDR EN ENF EP EPP ER ESF ETUC EUD EÜVP FG FI G/EFA GJM GL GRAEL GUE/NGL IA ICV ID I-EN IMCWP

list of abbreviations European Anti-Capitalist Left European Commission European Central Bank European Citizens’ Initiative European Christian Political Movement European Conservatives and Reformists European Democrats Europe of Democracies and Diversities European Democratic Party European Economic Community European Free Alliance Europe of Freedom and Democracy / Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy European Federation of Green Parties European Green Party European Left Party European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party Europe of the Nations Europe of Nations and Freedom European Parliament European People’s Party European Right European Social Forum European Trade Union Confederation Europeans United for Democracy Eestimaa Ühendatud Vasakpartei (Estonian United Left Party) Front de Gauche (Left Front, France) La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) Greens/European Free Alliance global justice movement Groenlinks (GreenLeft, Netherlands) Green Radical and European Link Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left Izquierda Anticapitalista (Anticapitalist Left, Spain) Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (Initiative for Catalonia Greens, Spain) Identity and Democracy group Group of Independents for a Europe of Nations International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties

IMF ITS IU KKE KPB

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KPiD KPÖ KPRF KPSS KPU KSČM KSS LCR LCR/SAP LO–LCR LSP MELD MENF MKMP MMP NELF NGLA NGO NPA ÖDP

list of abbreviations

xi

International Monetary Fund Identity, Traditions and Sovereignty group Izquierda Unida (United Left, Spain) Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas (Communist Party of Greece) Komunisticheska Partija na Balgarija (Communist Party of Bulgaria) Kommunistisk Parti i Danmark (Communist Party in Denmark) Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (Communist Party of Austria) Kommunisticheskaya partiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Komunistychna Partiya Ukrayiny (Communist Party of Ukraine) Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy (Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, Czech Republic) Komunistická strana Slovenska (Communist Party of Slovakia) Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist League, France) Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire/Socialistische Arbeiderspartij (Revolutionary Communist League, Belgium) Lutte Ouvrière–Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (Workers’ Struggle–Revolutionary Communist League, France) Latvijas Sociālistiskā partija (Socialist Party of Latvia) Movement for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom Magyar Kommunista Munkáspárt (Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party) Magyar Munkáspárt (Hungarian Workers’ Party) New European Left Forum Nordic Green Left Alliance non-governmental organisation Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anti-Capitalist Party, France) Özgürlük ve Dayanışma Partisi (Freedom and Solidarity Party, Turkey)

xii

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PAS

list of abbreviations

Partidul Alianţa Socialistă (Socialist Alliance Party, Romania) PASOK Panellínio Sotsialistikó Kínima (Panhellenic Socialist Movement, Greece) PCE Partido Comunista de España (Communist Party of Spain) PCF Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party) PCI Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party) PCP Partido Comunista Português (Portuguese Communist Party) PCPE Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España (Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain) PCRM Partidul Comuniştilor din Republica Moldova (Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova) PD Progressive Democrats PdCI Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (Party of Italian Communists) PDS Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Democratic Party of the Left, Italy) PDS Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Party of Democratic Socialism, Germany) PES Party of European Socialists PG Parti de Gauche (France) Podemos ‘We Can’ (Spain) POR Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Revolutionary Workers’ Party, Spain) PRC Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (Party of Communist Refoundation, Italy) PS Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party, France) PSR Partidul Socialist Român (Romanian Socialist Party) PST Parti Suisse du Travail (Swiss Labour Party) PTB Parti du Travail de Belgique (Labour Party of Belgium) PVDA Partij van de Arbeid van België (Workers’ Party of Belgium) QMV qualified majority voting RB(84) Rainbow Group (84) RB(89) Rainbow Group (89) RGA Enhedslisten – De Rød–Grønne (Red–Green Alliance, Denmark) RKRP–KPSS Rossiiskaya kommunisticheskaya rabochaya partiya v sostave Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo soyuza

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list of abbreviations

xiii

(Russian Communist Workers’ Party– Communist Party of the Soviet Union) RLP radical left party S&D Group of the Progressive Alliance of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament SC–LSP Saskaņas Centrs–Latvijas Sociālistiskā partija (Harmony Centre–Socialist Party of Latvia) SDS Strana demokratického socialismu (Party of Democratic Socialism, Czech Republic) SEK Sosialistikó Ergatikó Kómma (Socialist Workers’ Party, Greece) SEL Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà (Left Ecology Freedom, Italy) SF Socialistisk Folkeparti (Socialist People’s Party, Denmark) SF-Irl Sinn Féin (‘We Ourselves’, Ireland) SKP Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue (Communist Party of Finland) SKP–KPSS Soyuz kommunisticheskykh partii–Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza (Union of Communist Parties–Communist Party of the Soviet Union) SP Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party, Netherlands) SP-Irl Socialist Party Ireland SP-USA Socialist Party USA SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) SRP Socijalistička radnička partija Hrvatske (Socialist Labour Party of Croatia) SV Sosialistisk Venstreparti (Socialist Left Party, Norway) Synaspismós Synaspismós tīs Aristerás tōn Kinīmátōn kai tīs Oikologías (Coalition of the Left of Movements and Ecology, Greece; until 2003 called Synaspismós tīs Aristerás kai tīs Proódou, Coalition of the Left and Progress) Syriza Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás (Coalition of the Radical Left, Greece) TISA Trade in Services Agreement TNP transnational party federation Troika, the Committee led by the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that organised loans to the governments of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

xiv

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TU TUSC UEN UFE UL V VAS VG WSF WTO

list of abbreviations trade union Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Union for Europe of the Nations Union for Europe Group for a European United Left Vänsterpartiet (Left Party, Sweden) Vasemmistoliitto (Left Alliance, Finland) Vinstrihreyfingin–grænt framboð (Left–Green Movement, Iceland) World Social Forum World Trade Organization

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Introduction

The balance between the national and transnational has been a core dynamic in the emergence and development of the EU, ever since its origins in the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. To what degree can or should the EU transcend its nation-state components, and develop genuinely transnational structures and endeavours such as a common currency and common foreign policy/military presence? Many analysts (if not some political forces) accept that today’s EU is ‘less than a state but far more than a traditional international organization’ (Wallace, Pollock and Young, 2015: 4). The aftermath of the Great Recession and in particular the strains of the ensuing financial and migration crises, have reinforced the relevance of the national–supranational tension. For instance, the policies of the European Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF)) towards Greece after 2010 were, according to the Troika’s defenders, merely the systematic implementation of beneficial ‘reforms’ originating in common Euro-area rules and European values. Such reforms rightly took little regard of national proclivities (the former German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble even claimed that national elections ‘change nothing’ in terms of Greek financial responsibilities).1 A more popular (and populist view) sees the Greek ‘reforms’ as the evisceration of national autonomy by an inflexible and unaccountable supranational club (‘fiscal waterboarding’, in the often-quoted words of the former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis).2 Brexit (the departure of the UK from the European Union (EU)) has also been notoriously intertwined and even fuelled by debates about the appropriate role for national divergence (‘sovereignty’) versus allegiance to the EU’s common transnational rules (in particular the indivisibility of the ‘four freedoms’ of the EU’s single market – freedom of goods, capital, services and labour). Since the 1970s, a critical prism through which debates over intergovernmentalism versus transnationalism have been seen is the EU party system. From the outset, the EU institutions (above all the European Parliament (EP))

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2 introduction contained the nucleus of a nascent party system. EU federalists (above all the Christian Democrats) saw party groups in the EP as the germ of genuine transnationalism: organisations that could run candidates and election campaigns across borders, foster a genuine European consciousness and even aggregate disparate national electoral preferences into a pan-European citizenry. Such federalists envisioned a Europe des partis (Europe of parties) in opposition to General de Gaulle’s intergovernmentalist vision of Europe des patries (Europe of nation-states) (Marquand, 1978). Such hopes were boosted by such developments as direct elections to the EP (1979) and new EU legislation since the Maastricht Treaty (1992), which recognises parties at the European level as a ‘factor for integration’ and since 2003 has included an increasing element of financing from the EU general budget (Hix and Lord, 1997; Hanley, 2008). There thus arose a voluminous literature on the transnational party federations (TNPs), sometimes called ‘Europarties’, and their potential as genuine transnational actors (e.g. Johansson and Zervakis, 2002; Lightfoot, 2005; Ladrech, 2006; van Hecke, 2010). At the same time, a number of authors remained deeply sceptical of such possibilities, continuing to regard the ‘Europarties’ as scarcely deserving the name, at best ‘timidly rising actors’ (Bardi, 2004: 20; see also Bartolini, 2005; Seiler, 2011). The Great Recession itself has strengthened such critiques: if European integration itself was under mortal threat, then whither parties at the European level? European integration in general and the role of transnational parties in particular have been areas of central contention and concern for the European left, and above all the European radical left (those parties defining themselves as to the left of and not merely on the left of social democracy and the Green party family). The radical left has been among the most avowedly internationalist of all party families, yet paradoxically has been among the most reluctant to organise internationally in the European arena. Yet this paradox has been seldom studied. With the exception of the major communist parties and some country and regional case studies, European radical left parties (RLPs) received little academic attention in the decade or so after the USSR’s demise. There has been a new swathe of works in recent years (e.g. March and Mudde, 2005; Olsen, Koß and Hough, 2010; Bale and Dunphy, 2011; March, 2011; Hudson, 2012; Amini, 2016; Chiocchetti, 2016; March and Keith, 2016). However, RLPs’ European activity is not a central focus of these newer sources and has had comparatively little coverage relative to subjects such as electoral and governmental performance. The most recent studies focus on RLPs’ relationship with (particularly anti-austerity) social movements (della Porta et al., 2017; Wennerhag, Fröhlich and Piotrowski, 2018), or on the nature of the new left-wing populism (e.g. Katsambekis and Kioupkiolis, 2019).

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introduction 3 Indeed, many academic sources regard the radical left as largely a ‘Eurosceptic’ and populist force, with thereby a large amount of contiguity with the radical right (e.g. Hooghe, Marks and Wilson, 2002; Rooduijn and Akkerman, 2015; Hobolt and de Vries,,2016). This point of view reached its apogee in the influential article by Halikiopoulou, Nanou and Vasilopoulou (2012), which argues that the point of contact between left and right Euroscepticism is an alleged nationalist core. Conversely, more nuanced sources unpack the nature of radical left ‘Euroscepticism’. Dunphy (2004: 3–6) was one of the first to analyse radical left views of European integration in detail, finding a multiplicity of views between ‘reformism’ (critical or less critical pro-integration sentiment, which is clearly a form of left Europeanism and can in no substantive way be regarded as ‘Euroscepticism’), anti-integrationism (Euro-rejectionism) and selective engagement. Almeida (2012: 67) concurs that the radical left ‘is one of the most divided party families in terms of attitudes towards the EU’ and finds itself ‘[b]etween reluctant Europeanism and hard Euroscepticism’. Furthermore, Charalambous (2013) shows how European integration directly affects the ‘communist dilemma’ (the strategic choice between moderation and radicalism) and therefore causes major tactical and programmatic differentiation between RLPs at national level. Within this discussion of radical left ‘Euroscepticism’, the radical left’s specific activity at European level has received only sporadic attention (e.g. Hix and Lord, 1997; Hanley, 2008; Holmes and Lightfoot, 2016). In part this was because for a long time there was little to analyse. Only in May 2004, significantly later than the major European party families, did the radical left create a TNP – the European Left Party (EL). After a slow start, the EL did appear to gain pace, uniting a core of relevant European parties, like the German Die Linke, Italian Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) and Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza). In 2009, the EL fought the EP elections on the basis of a common manifesto. Although its election performance ultimately proved below par, it had by now emerged as an apparently stable actor at EU level. Moreover, with the emergent Great Recession as an arguably propitious backdrop for the radical left (which was eventually borne out by the successes of parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain), there was arguably scope for the EL to emerge as a more serious actor still. Yet it still has not received any sustained academic study, with the exception of Hudson (2012) and Calossi (2011; 2016), studies which are much more descriptive than analytical. It was this context, then, that was the starting point for our study. We had four broad sets of questions in mind to guide our analysis. The first two related more broadly to the development of transnational parties. First, under what conditions might a TNP be ‘successful’? We wanted to

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4 introduction address whether TNPs could indeed become ‘factors of integration’ as EU legislation and their defenders proclaimed, or whether their promise was ephemeral and likely to be evanescent given the apparent stalling of European integration after the Great Recession. Secondly, we aimed to focus on the role of the EL as a TNP. What kinds of challenge would the EL have to overcome in order for it to become a significant force for the creation of a genuine, democratic European polity? We aimed to compare these challenges with those confronting other TNPs to analyse the degree to which the EL was genuinely distinct. Our other two sets of questions related more directly to the role of the EL in furthering the politics of the left. First, with an eye to the absence of previous detailed studies of the EL, we wanted to know how, and to what extent, had the EL fostered a consensus over positions towards the EU that had previously been conspicuously lacking among the radical left? We wanted to trace and examine the evolution of radical left positions within and towards the EL and to examine the degree to which these might mark a qualitative change. Secondly, to what degree had the EL enabled an increase in the electoral or policy influence of the radical left in Europe? We noted above that the EL was itself an increasingly consolidated and stable actor, and that certain radical left parties had made breakthroughs after the Great Recession. To what degree were these processes in any way inter-related? The time of writing (2019) was a very appropriate time to review the development of the EL nearly fifteen years after its founding in May 2004. As the first preparations for the 2019 European Parliament elections got underway, it was beginning to look as if the wide variety of radical left responses to European integration might produce a number of rival EP electoral lists. Parties such as the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Dutch Socialist Party (SP), which remain significant electoral forces in their countries, have long been trenchant opponents of further European integration, and indeed of EU membership, and were certain to field their own lists of candidates (albeit, in the Portuguese case, in alliance with the Portuguese Greens and under the banner of the United Democratic Coalition). In France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, former leader of the Parti de Gauche (PG) which he cofounded, and presidential candidate in 2017 for La France Insoumise (‘France Unbowed’ (FI)) (into which he subsumed the PG), was touring European countries seeking allies to run as part of a common electoral list provisionally known on the radical left as ‘Plan B’. The name refers to Mélenchon’s plan to quit the Eurozone, and possibly the EU itself, if radical reform of the EU structures and treaties proves impossible to achieve. As Mélenchon polled nearly 20 per cent of the votes in the French presidential

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introduction 5 elections in 2017, and his supporters polled more than 11 per cent in the subsequent general elections, he clearly had become a political force to be reckoned with, at least in France. At the other extreme (in terms of attitudes towards European integration), the former Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, was seeking allies to run under the banner of his Democracy in Europe 2025 movement (DiEM-25), which seeks a radical democratisation and reform of the EU from within. He received pledges of support from radical left-wingers in a number of countries, including the recently formed Razem (‘Together’) party in Poland. Attempting to straddle these divisions, and to present an electoral list that included most of the radical left’s shades of opinion on European integration, was the European Left Party – the radical left’s first attempt at a pan-European political party. Despite the aforementioned relative lack of coverage, there is no doubt that the radical left remains an important electoral force in many (but certainly not all) European countries, and that it has secured significant advances in recent years. For example, Walter Baier, analysing the position of the radical left in 2017 in just five European countries – Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, France and the Netherlands – found that they polled 9,126,000 votes, an increase of almost 20 per cent from the 7,515,000 votes these same parties in these five countries had polled at the previous elections. But, as Baier points out, though a ‘sizeable electoral factor’ they were ‘far from creating a political alternative’ for three reasons: because the social democrats refused cooperation; because the decline in social democratic votes made any mathematical ‘left’ majorities highly problematic, if not impossible; and (not least) because the growth in the radical left was far out-weighed by a more spectacular growth in the radical and populist right forces. These radical right parties, in the same countries and during the same time period, saw their electorate leap from 5,446,000 votes to 12,094,000 (Baier, 2018b: 157–8). This underlines two stark and unavoidable truths that RLPs must confront. First, that they are struggling to offer a convincing alternative European vision, or an alternative to the crisis of European and global capitalism, to the racist, populist and nationalist policies offered by the radical right. And secondly, that divisions among and within the RLPs – both strategic divisions and divisions into rival electoral lists – always risk vitiating their energy and their credibility. It is this background that reinforces the need for an in-depth study of the European Left Party, its evolution, achievements, failings and challenges; a study, moreover, that will involve a critical discussion of RLPs in general, as well as a comparative discussion of the EL and other TNPs, in particular those of the broad centre-left, the Party of European Socialists (PES) and the European Green Party (EGP).

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6 introduction When the EL was founded in 2004, it was a period when (as Gregor Gysi, EL President since 2016, puts it) ‘we lived in much quieter times … [and] there was hardly any premonition of the severity of the crises we are now facing’ (Gysi, 2018: 20). Fifteen years after its foundation, the first attempt to give the European radical left a transnational, pan-European party remains a significant achievement, as we hope to show in the study that follows. But it is also one that has not yet realised its full potential, remains hesitant and confused in some respects and, as we shall argue, has fallen short of the aspirations of some of its more federalist-inclined founders (such as the Italian Fausto Bertinotti and the German Lothar Bisky – both former EL presidents). Part of the reason for the moderate nature of EL’s achievement lies in organisational choices that it has made. These include its choice of nearinvisibility as an independent actor inside the European Parliament (for fear of splitting the broader Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) to which its MEPs belong) and its adoption of the principle of consensus in internal decision-making (as opposed to, for example, qualified majority voting (QMV)) which has tended to slow down policy evolution and prevent the EL from becoming much more than the sum total of its constituent parts. As we shall argue, organisational decisions are intensely political; and the model of decisionmaking that the EL adopted at the outset, though problematic, was perhaps the inevitable reaction to the burden of history that some of its main components carry – an understandable reaction against the legacy of external interference and attempts at centralised control (from Moscow) that many communist parties experienced and which the least Stalinist among them are determined never to suffer again. For many radical left parties, freedom from external manipulation was a precondition of participation in the European Left Party. Another part of the explanation for the EL’s somewhat limited impact to date has to be the continuing existence of sometimes profound diverse programmatic orientations among its component parts – above all, over the key strategic issue of whether it is possible to reform and relaunch the European Union from within and, if so, how. As Gysi puts it, ‘it is above all … the differing programmatic orientations … that does not make it easy to move the EL forward’ (Gysi, 2018: 21). Pleading with his colleagues to initiate the sorts of discussion and exchange between member parties and organisations that would allow the EL’s component parts to learn better from one another and help to clarify the key divergences, he continues: ‘we cannot operate simultaneously with two political slogans: “fight corporate power!” and “back to the nation-state!”. We have to choose one of them and give up the other … [the] left can exert influence, at least if it

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introduction 7 wants to … but this can only succeed if it throws all national narrowmindedness overboard and really starts to exert influence in the EU. To do this it has to acquire coherence’ (Gysi, 2018: 22). But this takes us precisely to the crux of the dilemma that the EL faces. It lacks such coherence. Its achievements have too often involved concentration on those ‘basic common denominator’ factors that all of its components share – a rejection of racism, militarism, gender inequality, social inequality and economic precarity (of, in a word, neoliberalism) while fudging the key strategic and even tactical issues of how to tackle the reality of the EU and its institutions. This has nothing to do with the common accusation of ‘Euroscepticism’ that is often aimed at radical left parties and which, in our study, we reject as both inadequate and misleading and as obscuring more than it clarifies (see below). To be sure, there are RLPs that still believe in ‘national roads to socialism’ and that even fetishise the nation-state as an agent of resistance to neoliberal globalisation and of social transformation. But there are also many strands of the European radical left that reject nationalism and believe passionately in the necessity of agreed, democratic, pan-European solutions to issues such as the fight against racism and the rights of migrants and refugees; the struggle against environmental degradation; the struggle for social and economic equality; and the battle for gender and sexual equality in the face of sexism and homophobia. Yet, this radical left is all too often divided internally also – between those who have despaired of being able to transform the actually existing European Union into the sort of open, democratic and federal Europe that would provide left and progressive forces with a new site of struggle; and those (such as the Syriza government in Greece since 2015, perhaps) who fail to see any possible future outside the Eurozone, or indeed the EU itself, however severe its faults and failings. It is this lack of strategic clarity that arguably stymies the EL, and it has grown to be a more urgent problem. Since 2008, the Great Recession has demanded a heavy price of many European countries and has resulted in major set-backs for workers’ rights across the continent. The growth of the populist, racist and authoritarian right, the often harsh treatment of refugees and immigrants, and the humiliation of the Greek government from the summer of 2015 onwards by the Troika have all added to a growing feeling on the radical left that the EU is increasingly detached from both the interests of working people and the basic principles and standards of representative democracy. To such ‘radical leftists’, this EU is not even remotely connected any longer to the egalitarian social, democratic and federalist ideas that inspired the best of the Europeanist tradition – such as the Manifesto of Ventotene, produced by Altiero Spinelli and other Italian anti-fascist prisoners while in internal exile in Mussolini’s Italy in June 1941. This document (which

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8 introduction we discuss in chapter 2) inspired the post-war European Federalist Movement and was instrumental in the old Italian Communist Party’s (PCI’s) conversion to the cause of a federal Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. It should be noted that the document preceded the European Economic Community (EEC)/EU and that its ideals cannot be conflated with that institution. Indeed, some radical leftists dispute whether the EEC/EU ever came remotely close to embodying such lofty ideals. They see it as always having ‘sold short’ the peoples of Europe. For example, two prominent leaders of the Portuguese Left Bloc (BE), Marisa Matias (a former VicePresident of the EL) and José Gusmão, have recently written explicitly on this point. (Their intervention is especially significant because the BE, an alliance of Eurocommunists, Trotskyists, New Leftists and others is a profoundly internationalist party – and not one ever steeped in the Stalinist tradition of ‘socialism in one country’.) They write: Can we realistically hope for a Union in which left-wing policies can be implemented? Is there room for full democracy and citizen’s choice in the European Union, or are we simply trying to make the best of an ultimately unsalvageable project? The answer to these questions of course constitutes the main strategic issue for the European left … Facing this issue is an unavoidable responsibility.

And they continue: The main European delusion is the idea that the European Union’s sorry state is due to the subversion of the generous and solidary intentions of its founding fathers. If we discard the propaganda about the European Social Model, which was never actually converted into real European law or policies, it becomes clear that the EU was never intended as a Union based on economic and social solidarity. In fact, it was never intended to be a Union in any way, shape or form. Since the very beginning, the European Union was all about free trade.

Having discussed the profound lack of democracy within EU institutions, they argue that the lesson of the Greek experience is that ‘a government of a peripheral country that is unwilling to contemplate and prepare for a break with the Eurozone is basically condemning itself to obey whatever orders it is given by the European institutions’. Their conclusion is that these institutions are by now unreformable and that ‘what we see is what we are going to keep getting … if we stick to generic rhetoric about how the united left is going to change the European Union, we will fool no-one but ourselves’ (Matias and Gusmão, 2018: 94–8). This may seem like a pessimistic view of the EU, but it scarcely justifies the charge of ‘Euroscepticism’. It is a rejection of the EU, as it has evolved to date – not of the ideals of a democratic and federal Europe. It might

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introduction 9 better be described as ‘EU-scepticism’, or even better still ‘actually existing EU-scepticism’ (admittedly, a bit of a mouthful). It is certainly mistaken, in our view, to subscribe to the aforementioned view of Halikiopoulou, Nanou and Vasilopoulou (2012) that such views result from an alleged ‘nationalist’ core to left-wing ideology. Moreover, as Cas Mudde (2012) argues, the concept of ‘Euroscepticism’ is proving increasingly problematic in general, given both the poor performance of the actually existing EU after the crisis, and the increasing diversity and multiplicity of EU-critical sentiment. It used to be possible to delineate ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Euroscepticism (i.e. principled versus qualified objection to the EU, in the terms popularised by Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2002). However, the practical application of such theoretical concepts was always more problematic. Moreover, when even ‘the traditional backbones of the European project, the Christian democratic and social democratic parties, are no longer immune to “qualified opposition” (or at least specific criticism)’ and European public opinion is increasingly ‘soft Eurosceptic’, the concept of Euroscepticism risks becoming too generic and catch-all (Mudde, 2012: 201). Mudde calls for finer conceptual frameworks, ‘which distinguish … between different types of opposition (and support) of the European project, but also between ideological and policy positions’. This is a helpful starting point, although our criticism of the term ‘Euroscepticism’ goes further. For instance, in a recent study Dan Keith (2017) provides a comprehensive survey of previous attempts to conceptualise radical left parties’ attitude and orientations towards European integration and membership of the EU. While his intelligent and lively study highlights many of the problems inherent in the literature, he still retains a framework that categorises RLPs according to alleged forms of Euroscepticism – rejectionist, compromising, conditional and expansionist/integrationist. The latter refers to RLPs that reject the current configuration of the EU because it does not go far enough in the direction of a social and federal Union. It seems to us (and as we shall exemplify throughout this study) that the application of the label ‘Eurosceptic’ in any form to parties that argue that the EU does not go far enough in the direction of full European integration is highly problematic. It obscures more than it enlightens. Moreover, Euroscepticism is often a loaded term, not least in its press usage, whereby it is conflated with populism and politicians such as Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras are dubbed among the ‘Most dangerous politicians’ in Europe (der Spiegel, 2012). Behind it lurks the normative assumption that neoliberalism, or at the very least free market capitalism, is somehow the ‘natural form’ that European integration must take; and that to contest or reject this model in the name of an alternative model of European integration – even one

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10 introduction that promises more European integration in at least some key policy fields and stronger European democracy – is to fall outside the ranks of the ‘true believers’. The logic of this approach is to lump together both Nigel Farage and Altiero Spinelli. It is not a helpful way of approaching the undoubtedly wide variety of programmatic orientations that exist within the EL, and the key strategic debates that the EL must have if it is ever to achieve greater coherence and influence. The present study is, therefore, sceptical of Euroscepticism. To return to the question of the internal diversity of the EL, which has had such an impact on its ability to exert its influence on the European stage; as part of a useful summary of the main European RLPs on the eve of the 2014 European Parliament elections, Thilo Janssen (2014) outlines the attitudes towards the EU of the principal actors within the EL. The relevance of his summary has, if anything, increased since then as the impact of what might reasonably be called the Greek Tragedy has both sharpened the radical left’s critique of the actually existing EU and had a polarising effect within the EL. First, there are those parties that, notwithstanding the presence in almost all of them of internal oppositional minorities that advocate more sovereigntist, revolutionary or euro-rejectionist positions, are dominated by party majorities that are pro-Europeanist or even federalist in their outlook and converge more closely with the main European policy that the EL has developed since 2004. These include Syriza, the German Left Party (Die Linke), the PRC, the Spanish United Left (IU) and, at least until recent tactical and strategic differences exacerbated by the Greek experience, the Portuguese BE. However, such parties always face a painful choice between what one of the present authors has described elsewhere as ‘hard reformism’ and ‘soft reformism’ (Dunphy, 2004). By ‘hard reformism’, in this context, we mean a whole-hearted rejection of any notion of ‘socialism in one country’ or ‘national roads to social democracy’ and an embrace of the principle of European integration, wedded to a determination to change the nature and direction of the current European Union, root and branch, away from neoliberalism and market subservience and into a genuinely democratic and effective European polity. By ‘soft reformism’ we mean a dedication to the actually existing European Union such that defence of membership of the European Union and the Eurozone can become a political end-goal in itself, even if the consequence is that unwillingness to break with the EU leads to a progressive loss of radicalism and an uncritical surrender to the logic of EU integration. Second are those EL member parties that are relative latecomers to the European question and have only recently realised or recognised the salience of the issue of European integration to left strategy and policy. In this

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introduction 11 category, Janssen’s analysis suggests we should place the Finnish Left Alliance (VAS), which has long been divided over Europe while partially sidelining the issue. It is only since the election of a new, younger and pro-European leadership in 2009 that the EU issue has acquired greater importance within VAS (which also joined EL as a full member in that year). Janssen’s analysis suggests that it has since converged with EL policy in large measure. Third, are those EL parties such as the French Communist Party (PCF) and the former member PG, which come from a more sovereigntist and nationalist tradition. These parties had been grouped together in the Left Front (FG), but by the 2017 French presidential elections this body had been largely subsumed by PG leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, into his new FI coalition. During the 2017 French parliamentary elections, this coalition and the PCF even fielded rival lists, with FI now advocating a strategy of withdrawal from the Eurozone and preparations for a full-scale confrontation with the EU elites, including, if necessary, a referendum on France’s membership of the EU itself. Even if the PCF no longer advocates withdrawal from the EU, or opposition to European integration as a default position, it remains much less enthusiastic about the development of common European policy and more inclined to defend the autonomy of national parties than the first group of EL members mentioned above. As Janssen put it, ‘especially in terms of social adjustment and economic regulation, the FG favours a pan-European policy. However, in addition to generally federalist demands, sovereigntist positions are also clearly articulated in the FG, so that no clear line is always recognizable. A return to the sovereign nation-state is a consideration for parts of the FG, at least as a strategic intermediate step, on the way to finally implementing a communal EU social and taxation policy’ (Janssen, 2014: 27). This is precisely the position that was predominant in Mélenchon’s political discourse by 2017. Janssen also notes that two PCF MEPs, Patrick Le Hyarik and Jacky Henin, during the lifetime of the 2004–9 European Parliament, spoke out in favour of national sovereigntist positions, arguing that competences should be transferred back from supranational institutions to the national level and that ‘agreements and treaties regarding EU membership’ should be ‘abolished’. It remains to be seen whether the decision by the PG to leave the EL in July 2018, and the demise of the FG due to worsening relations between the PCF and the PG/FI, leads the PCF to accentuate its difference from Mélenchon, drawing closer to the other founder members of the EL, or to compete for votes with Mélenchon by adopting a more national sovereigntist position. Finally, there are EL members, most clearly represented by the Danish Red–Green Alliance (RGA), who are completely EU-rejectionist and

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12 introduction national sovereigntist, and who advocate withdrawal from the EU, dismantling of the EU architecture and new forms of co-operation in Europe. Yet, even the RGA would reject the charge of ‘nationalism’. It would see itself as defending Nordic welfare norms and egalitarian social ideals against a neoliberal onslaught led by the EU. And, in some fields, such as environmental protection, it is open to increased European co-operation. It concluded that membership of EL could extend its co-operation with other radical left parties in Europe without in any way compromising its own position. It was willing to work to bring together ‘left parties which are working for alternatives to the EU with others who believe in reforming the EU as a path to develop progressive alternatives – in other words, bringing together “different roads towards a different Europe” ’ (Johansen, 2013: 48, 50–1). This seems to represent a vision of EL as a somewhat glorified forum for the exchange of views and experiences between left parties of wildly different strategic and policy visions. The problem with such a wide diversity of programmatic orientations is that it is a long way removed from the early dreams that some had of building a European party, united in policy, vision and resolve, and capable of organising and fighting at the pan-European level. The price for the EL of admission to full membership of parties such as the RGA, and the persistence of such a wide variety of views elsewhere (including vibrant minorities in some EL parties that support the RGA’s political positions), can be that policy development and impact loses momentum or falls short of what the more pro-federalist forces on the radical left think is required. As Thilo Janssen argues, ‘the accession of the Danish [RGA] to the EL in 2010 means that an electorally significant full member has been accepted that rejects the generally federalist positions of other EL parties, and which sees the EL itself as a project with the aid of which powers currently granted to the EU should be brought back to the national level … the EL may be forced to compromise on even weaker statements with regard to the level of the common implementation of left parties than it already did in the European Platform for the 2009 European elections’ (Janssen, 2014: 43). Such considerations are central to the present study of the EL. Fifteen years after its creation is a good time to produce a critical study of the attempt to give the radical left a TNP. In what follows, we seek to trace its evolution in organisational and policy terms; to discuss its achievements and limitations in terms of policy convergence, shared political experiences and campaigning, political influence and impact; to discuss the challenges it faces as it confronts what is arguably the deepest economic, political and cultural crisis Europe has faced since the end of the second world war, and as it realises that it cannot confront this crisis without open and wide-ranging debate of the tactical and strategic questions that it has

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introduction 13 until now tended to fudge in the interests of political unity. We seek moreover to present our study of the EL in a firmly comparative framework, drawing in particular upon the experiences of the other ‘left-ofcentre’ TNPs – social democrats and Greens. In chapter 1, we trace the institutional and legal context in which TNPs first emerged and developed. We show that TNP development expanded after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty but remained rudimentary until the 2000s. We aim to explain why the EL, founded in 2004, was a relative latecomer to the field of TNPs and we consider debates between sceptics, idealists and realists as to the potential of TNPs to develop into fully fledged pan-European political parties. We examine the different functions of TNPs – co-ordination and information exchange, socialisation, legitimacy, policy-making – and discuss where we think the EL has developed to date and where it has stalled. We conclude with some remarks concerning the future of TNPs. In chapter 2, we trace the history of RLPs’ policies and orientation towards European integration, taking further issue with the usefulness of the concept of ‘Euroscepticism’ as a way of encapsulating the rich variety of views and strategies that emerge from our survey. We consider how a wide range of factors – international and national context, the impact of domestic party systems and electoral system, party-system factors and, above all, the different attitudes towards nationalism bequeathed by history – has influenced RLPs’ attitudes towards European integration. We aim to show how parties that saw the nation-state as an embodiment of revolutionary and socially egalitarian values (as in the French Jacobin tradition) are likely to differ markedly from parties whose experience of nationalism is bitter and whose historical patrimony makes any recourse to ‘defence of the nation-state’ problematic at best – such as the German, Italian and Spanish parties. We analyse the legacy of RLP co-operation inside the European Parliament from their first appearance there in the 1960s until the post-1989 break-up of the PCI, the launch of the GUE/ NGL group in the European Parliament in 1994 and, eventually, the birth of the EL in 2004. It is precisely these latter developments that we trace, discuss and analyse in detail in chapter 3. We discuss how the emergence of the EL was hampered by deep divisions between what we call ‘sovereigntists’ (who looked to the nation-state as a defence of the welfare state and of redistributive social justice) and ‘Left Europeanists’ (who believed that capitalist globalisation required the radical left to provide a pan-European and ultimately global strategic response and that ‘national roads to socialism’ were no longer viable). From the ashes of ‘traditional’ communist forms of multi-party ‘co-operation’ – the various Internationals and attempts at

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14 introduction Moscow- or Beijing-dominated meetings of communist parties – a kaleidoscope of differing initiatives eventually emerged. We discuss some of the most important, for example the New European Left Forum (NELF), the GUE/NGL group, the European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL) and the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (IMCWP). We show how dissatisfaction with the relevance or efficacy of these initiatives lay behind the determination of some of the most significant European RLPs to take the initiative that resulted in the creation of the EL in 2004. We discuss the differing motivations of some of the parties that joined the EL at the outset and the initial steps that the EL took to launch itself. In chapter 4, we discuss the range of factors procedural, institutional and what might be called path-dependent (i.e. historically developed and conditioned) divergences in European orientation – which weigh heavily upon, and arguably slow down, policy-making efficacy within the EL. This discussion takes place against the background of a critical interrogation of the development of the organisation and structures of the EL. We discuss the distinctions between full and observer members of the EL and EL partners. We consider what might on the surface appear to be one of the EL’s most exciting and innovative features – the admission of individual members who can join the EL directly, without belonging to a national political party. This might seem to mark a turning-point in the evolution of ‘Europeanisation’, suggesting, as it does, the emergence of a category of ‘European political activist’ whose loyalty is to the pan-European left (and, by extension, the pan-European political space), unmediated by national politics. However, the category of individual membership has, until now, been largely stymied, with individual members neither very numerous nor with any capacity to influence policy or exercise any clearly defined role. We discuss why this has been the case. We examine issues of leadership, hierarchy and policy-making within the EL, the role of the various party bodies and the question of internal party democracy. We reflect critically upon the self-effacing stand of the EL within the European Parliament. Finally, we consider the EL’s nature as a networking organisation and reflect upon its campaigns, its development of working groups – some of which, such as the trade unionists’ working group, reach out to non-EL unions and parties – and the role of its think-tank, Transform! Europe, and of its summer universities. Chapter 5 is concerned with programmatic and policy development within the EL. We examine the elaboration of policy at the various conferences and congresses the EL has held since 2004 as well as in the common manifestos for the EP elections of 2004, 2009 and 2014. We discuss the impact of the Tsipras candidacy for the post of President of the European Commission in 2014. Both this, and the subsequent election of a Syriza-led

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introduction 15 government in Greece, were landmark events for the EL. The defeat of that government’s initial programmatic pledges and its retreat in the face of pressure and blackmail by the Troika were experienced by the EL as a bitter shared defeat. The experience of Syriza (and the previous disappointments associated with the government participation of a full EL member party in Italy and an observer party in Cyprus) suggest distinct limits to the ability of the EL to exert decisive policy influence upon its components – or to help them ‘govern’ in any more radical a fashion than the muchreviled social democratic rivals of the radical left. Nevertheless the EL has achieved a considerable degree of policy coherence and has sharpened its critique of the EU since 2015. This ‘rebalancing’ of the Left Europeanist/ sovereigntist axis within the EL may help it stave off defections or dissent arising from disillusionment with the events in Greece. Chapter 6 discusses the EL’s developing relations with both the social movements against austerity and the broader European left. The first part of this discussion focuses upon the ways in which the EL – which, from its creation, has declared itself to be a networking party – has sought to build links, partly through its working groups, with trade unionists, environmentalists, feminists and other sections of the ‘movement left’, as well as participating in the World and European Social Forums (WSF, ESF) and organising gatherings of broad left activists in Marseille (2017) and Bilbao (2018). The second part of the chapter examines some of the reasons why the EL has failed to date to attract a number of significant RLPs – for example, the SP, the Swedish Left Party (V), the Norwegian Socialist Left (SV), the Icelandic Left Green Movement (VG), Spain’s Podemos (‘We Can’) and Poland’s Razem (‘Together’) party, a new left formation, launched in 2015. We also consider the objections raised to the EL by more hard-line and traditionalist communist or Trotskyist parties. Finally, we conclude chapter 6 with a detailed discussion of the role of the GUE/NGL confederal group in the EP and EL’s relations with that group. Chapter 7 develops our discussion of the EL by locating the discussion of its evolution and efficacy as a TNP in a comparative context. We compare and contrast the EL with the two other TNPs of what might be called the broad left-of-centre – the PES and the EGP. The EL shared with the social democratic parties in the early stages of their attempts to launch a TNP a diverse and divided set of attitudes and orientations towards European integration, and a reluctance on the part of several important member parties to move beyond a very limited dilution of the autonomy of national parties. And it shared with the Greens (or some of them) the status of a radical ‘outsider’. Yet, the social democrats have far surpassed the EL in terms of influence (for the obvious reason that many more of their number have attained government office), even if the PES still has its limits as a

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16 introduction TNP. The Greens, on the other hand, have perhaps advanced most down the road of ‘Europeanisation’ and the EGP now punches well above its weight – while the EL continues to punch below its weight. We argue that this is, in part, due to the fact that the EGP has adapted its structures most. For example, the Greens, in common with some other TNPs, have adopted a form of QMV, albeit one that reflects weighting according to party size and electoral support. The EL, by contrast, sticks consciously to the model of consensual decision-making, seeking unanimity where possible even if this means slowing down policy-making, watering down policies to reflect a lowest common dominator, or allowing tiny and electorally insignificant parties to exercise a veto over progress. In the second part of the chapter we compare and contrast the policies towards the European crisis of the three main left-of-centre TNPs. We argue that, on paper at least, the social democrats have moved leftwards since 2014 and that there now seems to be quite a lot of overlap and convergence between the three. However, the PES and the EGP attach different meanings to policies of ‘fighting austerity’ and ‘contesting neoliberalism’ from those favoured by the EL. The EL remains alone in seeking to truly transcend capitalism rather than merely manage it. Even with respect to pacifism and anti-militarism, where a convergence with the Greens might be considered most likely, the EL alone demands withdrawal from NATO and dissolution of all military blocs, even if constituent parts such as Syriza are far from consistent in following this through when in government. The EL’s radicalism – its insistence on its nature as a transformative party (in the sense of standing for a transformation and transcendence of capitalism) – marks it out as a singular case. Finally, in the Conclusion, we reflect on the role of TNPs during and after the impact of the Great Recession. The broader context helps us understand the challenges and pit-falls facing the EL. We reflect upon these and analyse the achievements of the EL to date. Utilising Niedermayer’s model (first discussed in detail in chapter 1), we summarise the EL’s achievements in respect of socialisation, legitimacy, policy-making and effecting Europeanisation. We comment on diversity and competition on the radical left in the run-up to the 2019 European Parliament elections. We finish by teasing out the implications of our study in terms of future research. Notes 1 www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30629269, accessed 30 July 2019. 2 www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/books/review/yanis-varoufakis-adults-in-theroom.html, accessed 30 July 2019.

1

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EU party politics and the role of the transnational parties

Introduction When the EL was formed in May 2004, it was a (very) belated entrant into the world of European TNPs. The largest and best-known TNPs (the European People’s Party (EPP), PES and European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR)) originally formed in the mid-1970s. Even the Greens, a relatively ‘new’ party family that also in 2004 founded their TNP, the European Green Party, have a tradition of formalised transnational co-operation descending from the Coordination of European Green and Radical Parties (founded 1979). The EL clearly cannot be viewed in complete isolation from these preexisting competitors. Indeed, analysing them helps both to illustrate the competitive environment the EL confronts and to highlight what is general and specific in the way the EL conducts itself. Accordingly, this chapter examines the emergence of the principal TNPs and focuses on the debates over their form and function. For some analysts, TNPs (often called ‘Europarties’) are proto-parties, which have been gradually increasing in visibility and effect, and even potentially represent key elements of a nascent ‘EU party system’. For others, TNPs have been a consistent disappointment; they are not parties in any true sense and have shown few developmental prospects. Our own view (in common with an increasing number of scholars) is that contemporary TNPs lie in between these two extremes; they are clearly something less than full Europarties but far more than simply loose networks of partisans. TNPs perform important, slowly growing and institutionalising functions in EU party politics as consolidating party-networks that aim to co-ordinate EU-level party activity in areas national parties cannot. However, their functions remain heavily circumscribed: even the longest-lasting and biggest TNPs like the EPP and PES are still relatively marginal actors at EU level, suggesting that even if the EL develops rapidly it will soon confront strong limits to its manoeuvrability. Our survey of

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the european left party

the development of TNPs will show that there is little imminent prospect of any ‘great leap forward’ in EU-level transnational party activity, and the likelihood is a continued incremental and haphazard consolidation of party-networks. Nevertheless, TNPs retain a latent potential to develop into more genuine transnational parties.

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Institutional and legal context The emergence of TNPs is intimately bound to the processes of European integration, and in particular the gradual emergence of the European Parliament as one of the key EU policy-making actors. Although the TNPs had obvious origins in the EP groups that had existed since the 1950s, previously the EP had not been directly elected and so the immediate stimulus for TNP development was the prospect of the first direct elections to the EP in 1979 (van Hecke, 2006). Previously the EP had been composed of delegates from national parliaments. This was the time when the first TNPs (EPP, PES, ELDR) emerged as networks for manifesto and policy co-ordination, based around Christian Democratic, Socialist and Liberal parliamentary groups that had first emerged in 1953. However, the radical left was hardly able to follow suit at this time. Of the six founder members of the EEC until 1973, only France and Italy, with their large communist parties, offered any realistic possibility of a radical left presence in the European Parliament. However, the non-communist majority in the Italian parliament prevented the PCI from nominating any MEPs until 1969, while the PCF excluded itself until 1973. Thus the Communists and Allies group, launched in 1973, was a late starter (Dunphy, 2004: 53–4). The EP is ‘unique among supranational assemblies because it organises itself around ideological [party-based], rather than national cleavages’ (Hines, 2003: 312). It became so for a mixture of ideological and practical incentives, similar to those that continue to incentivise the formation of TNPs. First, supranational party-building has been consistently driven by the normative views of federalists, aiming to transform the Europe des patries into a Europe des partis (Marquand, 1978). For the federalists, it was considered somehow ‘un-European’ to have a legislature structured on national lines (van Oudenhove, 1965). The most federalist European party family has traditionally been the Christian Democrats: they believed that a common European civilisation reinforced by cross-national ideological affinity could heal the divisions caused by inter-war nationalism (Hix and Lord, 1997: 11). Other party families, especially the Conservatives and Socialists, have been far more divided between federalists and intergovernmentalists. It is indicative that

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eu party politics and transnational parties

19

until the early 1990s the EPP (founded 1976) was the only TNP to use the name ‘party’; this reflected the ideological proclivities of the post-war Christian Democrats, who saw transnational parties as ‘carriers of European integration’, and the EPP in particular as an embryonic European party (Haas, 1958; Lindberg and Scheingold, 1971; Johansson and Zervakis, 2002: 14). In contrast, the theoretically more ideologically internationalist Socialists transformed the Confederation of Socialist Parties of the European Community (CSPEC) into the Party of European Socialists only in 1992. Secondly, TNP development has been incentivised by what Bartolini calls ‘top-down institutionalization’ (Bartolini, 2005: 336); it is intimately intertwined with European integration in that it has consistently been driven top-down by EU-level institutional and legal changes. Accordingly, although it is a commonplace of political science that political institutions and electoral systems shape but do not determine electoral outcomes, TNP development often quite openly reflects deliberate constitutional engineering for the purposes of improving both the functioning and legitimacy of the EU. Direct elections to the EP in 1979 were intended to foster a pan-European consciousness and TNPs were envisaged as integral parts of this. Several analysts have noted the ‘political spill-over’ from EU integration to TNP development – ‘each step in the strengthening of the EU institutions eventually results in a strengthening of the transnational parties’ (Andeweg, 1995: 67; see also Attina, 1998; Lindberg, 1963). As such, TNPs are what Duverger described as ‘internally created’ parties developing from within existing political institutions, rather than ‘externally created’ parties whose roots lie outside political institutions and in broader societal cleavages (Duverger, 1963; see also van Hecke, 2010). Consequently, TNPs have not emerged as a bottom-up response to any visible social/electoral demand for them. As Bardi notes, a basic weakness of TNPs has been the ‘lack of “demand for Europe” from the base’ (Bardi, 2004: 20). This has led critics of TNPs, such as Stefano Bartolini, to regard them as an essentially cosmetic and inauthentic attempt to boost the EU’s legitimacy via addressing the perceived ‘democratic deficit’ (Bartolini, 2005: 336). This, however, is overstated, ignoring that historically many parties (such as the UK Conservatives and Liberals, US Democrats and Republicans) were also originally ‘internally created’. Nevertheless, in TNPs’ case, the effect of internal creation is often very direct. For instance, changes to EU funding rules have increasingly ‘created a financial logic for co-operation between … parties that [has] fitted nicely with the political logic of seeking transnational links’ (Lynch, 1998: 191). Indeed, as we shall see later, one of the EL’s strongest left-wing critics – the KKE – has argued

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the european left party

precisely this point, perhaps unwittingly echoing Bartolini’s academic arguments as it brands the EL a puppet of the EU. Thirdly, TNPs would never have survived so long at all if they were just the pet projects of federalist enthusiasts. As we highlight further below, the ‘partification’ of the EU in general and TNPs in particular does have some useful functions even for the many sceptics who view the EU from intergovernmentalist rather than federalist viewpoints. For instance, in addition to ideological motivations, the emergence of party groups in the EP simply reflected pragmatism. Forming on an individual or national basis was seen as an inadequate method of organising a body that oversaw a supranational executive (Hines, 2003). Moreover, the EP groups originally reflected that EP members were party appointees who were accustomed to thinking in party terms. The emergence of a quasi-party system based around the EP similarly reflects national party elites’ inclinations to structure their activity in familiar ways (Hix, Kreppel and Noury, 2003). Nevertheless, TNPs signally failed to develop more than an ephemeral existence in the 1980s, confounding the hopes of many observers that a new era of EU party politics was about to develop. The chief TNPs moved towards European manifesto co-ordination (albeit to a lowest-commondenominator level and with a significant number of opt-outs), but were largely invisible outside the electoral cycle, little more than ‘clearinghouses’, providing information and ‘organising (poorly-attended) conferences’ (Hix and Lord, 1997: 169). Symptomatically, it was only further treaty changes that re-ignited TNP development. The Maastricht Treaty (1992) significantly augmented the powers of the EP – whereas previously it had been just an advisory body, it now had a legislative role, albeit one of ‘co-decision’ whereby its prerogatives were shared with the Commission and Council. More specifically, however, the so-called ‘Party Article’, Article 138a (later Art. 191) of the Treaty of European Union, gave the existence of the TNPs a constitutional basis, stating that ‘Political parties at European level are important as a factor of integration within the Union’.1 Characteristically, the Party Article was neither a reflection of existing reality nor a legal statute, but a normative ‘high-flown declaration’ reflecting federalist aspirations, and was only inserted into the Treaty at a late stage (Pedersen, 1996: 25). However, alongside the new vistas offered by EU enlargement, the early 1990s did engender a new stage in EU partification. The CSPEC and Federation of Liberal and Democrat Parties in Europe became de facto European parties (PES, ELDR), while even the Greens, whose movement origins made them suspicious of partification, became more cohesive, with the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP) emerging in 1993 (Johansson and Raunio, 2005). The 1990s saw TNPs developing a

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policy-making role in addition to the ‘network facilitators’ they had been in the 1980s (Ladrech, 2006). Party leaders’ meetings under the aegis of the TNP became far more frequent (Hix and Lord, 1997). The principal development was the emergence in the core TNPs of party leaders’ summits (combining national party presidents, government leaders, members of the European Commission and the leadership of the TNP and EP party group) that sought to define a common pan-European party position in advance of the twice-yearly meetings of the European Council, and increasingly the Council of the European Union (formerly the Council of Ministers), which together were the key agenda-setting arms of the EU (Corbett, Jacobs and Shackleton, 2011). Nevertheless, even at this stage, TNPs remained weak, poorly institutionalised extensions of the EP parliamentary groups, from which they were funded. TNPs had ‘embarrassingly few’ staff (Bardi, 1994: 362). There was, again, little evidence of a qualitative or quantitative leap in TNP activity. Not for nothing did one analyst regard them as ‘timidly rising actors’ (Bardi, 2004). However, the 2000s offered more possibilities for just such a leap. The new ‘party regulation’ (Regulation (EC) No. 2004/2003) allowed federalists to put TNPs on a firmer legal and financial footing to address the incompleteness of Article 191 (Johansson and Raunio, 2005). The party regulation stipulated that TNPs would henceforth be separate from the party groups, with their own staff and funding drawn from the EP’s general budget (Lightfoot, 2006).2 A 2007 revision (Regulation (EC) No. 1524/2007) for the first time allowed the funding of pan-European party foundations that could potentially act as the instigators for pan-European consciousness (Johansson, 2009).3 Whereas previously (reflecting the concerns of intergovernmentalists) TNPs had been expressly forbidden from developing their electoral role beyond manifesto co-ordination, the 2007 amendment to the regulation now allowed TNPs for the first time to campaign directly in EP elections (Johansson, 2009). This right was first used in the 2009 EP election campaign. The stimulus these regulatory changes directly provided was evident with the swift emergence of a number of new TNPs after 2004. By 2016 there were fifteen, although some lost registration in 2017 (see Table 1.1). In addition to the emergence of the EL, the EFGP and the regionalists became genuine TNPs (the EGP and European Free Alliance (EFA)). Currently, the only party family not to have a consolidated TNP at the European level is the radical right. By its very nationalist nature the radical right has had existential and practical difficulties in accepting a transnational agenda. Consequently, radical right parties are split between several relatively small TNPs, and it is common for both the radical right’s parliamentary groups

TNP, abbreviation and original date of creation

Affiliated European Parliament group name

European People’s Party (EPP) (1976)

Group of the European People’s Party (EPP)

Christian Democrat/ Conservative

211/269

Centre for European Studies

9 653 986

Party of European Socialists (PES) (1974)

Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D)

Social Democrat

182/166

Foundation for European Progressive Studies

6 888 502

Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE) (1976) European Democratic Party (EDP) (2004)

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)

Liberal/Centrist

49/74

European Liberal Forum

2 958 493

Centrist

8/10

Institute of European Democrats

625 560

Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) (2009) European Christian Political Movement (ECPM) (2009)

European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR)

Conservative (Eurosceptic)

44/54

2 568 211

Christian Democrat

2/1

New Direction – Foundation for European Reform Sallux

Political family

Affiliated political foundation

Grant awarded to TNP (EUR) (2018)

703 529

the european left party

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Number of MEPs attached to TNP (2018 vs. 2009–14)*

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Table 1.1  European transnational party federations and their main characteristics

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Green

36/46

Regionalist

6/6

Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom (MENF) (2014)

Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF)

Radical right

European Left Party (EL) (2004)

Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL)

Radical left

Green European Foundation Coppieters Foundation

2 308 022

31/0

Foundation for a Europe of Nations and Freedom

1 874 375

29/23

Transform! Europe

1 700 000

963 717

Notes: The parties are displayed in descending order of EU grant size (those parties in the same EP group are displayed together). N.B. a number of radical right TNPs, including the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe and Europeans United for Democracy, did not register under new oversight rules in 2017. *Figure indicates number of MEPs attached to a political party at the EU level, rather than the total number of MEPs belonging to a given EP political group. Sources: Gagatek (2009); van Hecke (2010); www.europarl.europa.eu/pdf/grants/Funding_amounts_parties%2001-2018.pdf; www. parties-and-elections.eu, accessed 11 September 2018.

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The Greens/European Free Alliance (GREENS/EFA)



European Green Party (EGP) (2004) European Free Alliance (EFA) (1994)

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and European political parties to be overhauled and renamed after every election. In mid-2016, there were no fewer than five groups: the Mouvement pour une Europe des Nations et des Libertés (Europe of Nations and Freedom), led by the French National Front; the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe, led by the UK Independence Party; the European Alliance for Freedom, led by the Dutch Party of Freedom; the Alliance of European National Movements, led by the Hungarian Jobbik; and, finally, the Alliance for Peace and Freedom, led by the Greek Golden Dawn. Furthermore, EU-level federalists have continued to push for further TNP development. Most notably, Andrew Duff, former UK Liberal Democrat member of the EP’s Committee for Constitutional Affairs and selfdeclared ‘European Federalist’ authored the so-called ‘Duff Report’.4 This recommended, inter alia, the introduction of a pan-EU list, whereby an additional twenty-five MEPs would be elected by a single EU-wide constituency whose candidates would be nominated by TNPs (Duff, 2011). However, the Duff proposals indicate the significant limits to the federalist agenda. Smaller member states (which fear a dilution of influence) raised strong objections, while Eurosceptic MEPs (such as those from the UK Independence Party) saw the proposals as an example of the EU’s profligacy and irrelevance in a time of economic crisis. Although the EP Constitutional Affairs Committee approved revised proposals in January 2012, they failed to receive parliamentary approval the following month (Duff, 2012; European Parliamentary Research Service, 2014). It is difficult to see how such or similar proposals might overcome intergovernmentalist objections for the foreseeable future. Even if passed by the EP, they would then need Council approval. Moreover, there is an argument they might require a new Treaty, as they would involve either an increase in the number of MEPs overall or, if that is not to take place, a reduction in some countries’ existing allocation of MEPs in order to make way for any new pan-European list seats. Whether the UK’s imminent withdrawal from the EU, following the UK electorate’s vote in favour of withdrawal by referendum in June 2016, increases or decreases the federalist impetus and thereby the likelihood of any such new Treaty is as yet an unanswerable question. The question of how to allocate the departing UK’s seventy-three EP seats certainly re-ignited discussion over pan-European party lists; however, the idea remained controversial precisely because of its transfer of power from member states to TNPs (de la Baume, 2017). That said, the Lisbon Treaty does indicate the likelihood of further legislative spill-over effects that may continue to strengthen TNPs indirectly. One such direction is the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), which from April 2012 allowed one million citizens from at least one quarter of the EU member states to put proposals to the European Commission. Whereas

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the ECI is seen primarily as a way of strengthening grass-roots involvement in the EU, political parties could clearly play a role in mobilising awareness and collecting signatures, and TNPs might be among the bestplaced actors to do this on a pan-European scale. Unsurprisingly, as we shall see, the EL identified the ECI as one of the few positives of the Lisbon Treaty. In addition, under the Lisbon Treaty provisions (Article 9 D.7), the EP elects the President of the Commission on a proposal made by the European Council, taking into account the European Parliament elections and after having held the appropriate consultations. There was some debate over the nature of this change. On the one hand, it could be seen as simply formalising the previously existing informal convention whereby there was a single candidate for Commission President arising from discussion between the leading EP groups (Kurpas et al., 2007; van Hecke, 2010). For example, José Manuel Barroso’s re-election as Commission President in 2009 was undoubtedly helped by the EPP’s strong performance in the June 2009 EP elections, but the EP’s vote for him was essentially the ratification of a fait accompli (his candidature was agreed by the EPP, PES and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) groups and the PES did not seriously consider putting forward an alternative candidate). On the other hand, another reading (and the one which eventually proved viable) was that Lisbon permits TNPs to propose their candidates for EC President during the EP campaign, rather than afterwards as before. According to some, this could significantly increase TNPs’ direct ability to influence EU executive policy: if competing candidates were proposed by TNPs during the campaign this might both increase public engagement with the EP campaign and increase the visibility and role of the TNPs therein (Hix, 2008; Gagatek, 2009). As the 2014 EP elections were to show, much increased public engagement remained difficult to demonstrate. However, the TNPs did certainly use the Lisbon provisions to increase their own visibility, with the emergence of the Spitzenkandidaten (‘top candidates’) campaign: the major parties (including the EL in the person of Alexis Tsipras) each nominated their own candidate for Commission President. The eventual appointment of the EPP’s Spitzenkandidat JeanClaude Juncker as President of the European Commission, in defiance of the wishes of leading European centre-rightists (principally German Chancellor Angela Merkel) amounts to a gradual re-politicisation and ‘quiet transformation of European Union structures and policies’ in which the role of party nomination in the EU’s leading positions is only likely to increase (Janning, 2014). Time will tell, but in this way incremental and sometimes unplanned legal changes within the EU look ever more likely to increase the role of

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TNPs gradually, either consciously or through spill-over effects which are exploited by the TNPs themselves. Nevertheless, as the next section shows, TNPs still face formidable obstacles that will continue to prevent dramatic breakthroughs in their activity.

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TNPs: loose party-networks or emergent Europarties? Figure 1.1 is an organigram, which shows the ideal-typical position of TNPs in the matrix of EU institutions, although, as will be further illustrated, only the larger TNPs which regularly have members in the Council and Commission (EPP, PES, ALDE) fully approximate to this ideal-type. (The EL has had indirect representation via the participation of its observer member, the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) in Cypriot governments in the 2000s, principally in 2008–13 while AKEL representative Demetris Christofias was President of Cyprus, and direct representation via the participation of its full member Syriza in Greek governments since January 2015, when Alexis Tsipras became Greek Prime Minister.) The organigram notes two main arenas in the EU system: the national (domestic state institutions) and EU (principally the European Council, Commission, Council of European Union and European Parliament) level (Hix and Lord, 1997: 55–7). Party activity primarily occurs in the parliaments at national and EU level. These levels are linked by two main processes: party actors holding governmental office sit ex officio in the European Council and Council of the European Union, and national parties control selection processes for MEPs, directly connecting national and EU level. However, the TNPs also play an important linking role. Not only do they link national and EU levels but also – their unique contribution to the ‘EU party system’ – they are the only entities to (potentially) create links between politicians in the three main EU institutions (Parliament, Council and Commission) (van Hecke, 2010). Nevertheless, even for the core TNPs the reality is less organisationally elegant than Figure 1.1 implies. For a start, there are many divisions within TNPs themselves: at the very least, federalists would like to see TNPs develop into more cohesive transnational entities and intergovernmentalists would prefer TNPs to remain as loose co-ordinating networks. For instance, the ‘Eurosceptic’ sentiments of the UK Labour Party and Danish Social Democracy significantly restrained the development of the PES in the 1970s and early 1980s (Featherstone, 1988; Lightfoot, 2005). Moreover, both national parties (which retain direct control over candidate selection in EP elections and are directly or indirectly the recruiting ground for TNP personnel themselves) and the EP groups (who have relative autonomy in directing their legislative agenda and controlled TNP funding until



eu party politics and transnational parties

European Parliament European Council

Commission Council of EU

GROUP LEADER

GROUP GROUP MEMBERS SECRETARIAT

27

Committee of the Regions PARTY GROUP

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TRANSNATIONAL PARTY FEDERATION TNP LEADERS’ MEETING

TNP CONGRESS

TNP PRESIDENT

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

TNP SECRETARIAT

AFFILIATE ORGANISATIONS

National Parliaments Prime Ministers

Government ministers

PARTY LEADERS

PARLIAMENTARY NATIONAL PARTY BUREAUCRACIES FACTIONS

Regional Governments REGIONAL PARTY GROUPS

NATIONAL LEVEL Key: = unofficially represented in/informally connected to = officially represented in = makes policy recommendations to Bold

= Political offices at the European and national levels

CAPITALS

= Official party organs

Italics

= Party secretariats

Source: Hix and Lord (1997)

Figure 1.1  Organigram of a TNP in the EU party system

regulation 2004/2003) have long been leery of ceding control to TNPs for a variety of reasons: certainly, TNPs’ extra-parliamentary nature and panEuropean focus are discordant with the (national) electoral focus of the national party organisations and EP group. In turn, it is the lack of electoral function that TNPs possess that weakens them most. It is a well-worn cliché, but no less a true one, that EP elections are ‘second order’ elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980; Reif, 1985; Ferrara and

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Weishaupt, 2004; Hix and Marsh, 2007). Unlike most ‘first order’ national parliamentary elections, they do not determine (or even, until the Lisbon changes, majorly influence) the executive, and are seen as ‘second order’ in being less important to voters, media and political parties alike. Accordingly, political parties have tended to commit fewer resources, fewer highcalibre candidates and less attention to EU contests, which in general has weakened the ‘partyness’ of the EU. Indeed, in the absence of transnational party lists such as those proposed by the Duff Report and the panEuropean party competition that might be incentivised as a result, the EP elections are not pan-European contests at all but simultaneous national contests focused around national priorities whose candidates are selected by national parties. As Gagatek argues, they are ‘national elections with a European result’ (Gagatek, 2009: 360). Accordingly, although the transnational parties have increasingly co-ordinated manifestos in these contests, they have struggled to get national parties to pay much reference to them, still less to develop their own visibility either among national party memberships or with the electorate at large. Consequently, the role of TNPs within EU politics has proved highly controversial. There are three overall broad attitudes to TNPs within the academic literature, which have roughly analogous positions among EUlevel party activists (Day and Shaw, 2003: 164). These can be categorised simply as sceptics, idealists and realists. Sceptics hold essentially an intergovernmentalist viewpoint, seeing the EU as the product of national-level actors determined to defend national sovereignty. For them, TNPs are doomed to be weak and insignificant actors which at best are facilitating bodies for national leaders. Within political parties, Hanley dubs the sceptics ‘resisters’, who try to put a brake on TNP development in areas that they do not approve (Hanley 2008: 204). Although (as with other viewpoints) resisters are present in every TNP, the biggest resister parties have up to 2019 included the UK Labour Party and many Scandinavian parties. More opposed still to TNPs are avowedly EU-critical parties such as the UK Conservatives and the radical right. Many analysts also take sceptical views. Among the most contemptuous of TNPs’ role is Daniel-Louis Seiler, who regards it an error to consider them as parties in any sense at all, since they have no direct electoral function (or electorate), no grounding in social constituencies or cleavages, rarely have individual members or anything resembling mass membership and have no stable institutionalised structure independent of their national parties (Seiler, 2011; see also Pedersen, 1996). Although other sceptics are more positive, most agree that TNPs are often barely more than modern Internationals; that is, loose, weak networks that are subordinate to national-level interests and priorities at every turn (Bardi, 1994, 2004;

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Delwit, Külahci and van Walle, 2004; Nugent, 2006). Even if they do not regard making analogies between TNPs and genuine parties absurd, such analysts regard TNPs as at best a ‘partisan phenomenon’, merely networks of parties rather than institutionalised parties (Magnette, 2004: 80). They focus on the failed promise of TNPs: they have not become agents of integration, nor built up much presence among party elites or the electorate (Sandstrom, 2004). Many regard discussion of the EU party system as a fiction, given that parties do not directly compete for power on the EU level or gain election on the basis of EU-wide appeals. The second group are idealists. After thirty years of slow TNP development, hardly any analyst now fits into this position, or still agrees completely with Haas (1958) or Lindberg (1963) that TNPs can quickly become ‘carriers of European integration’. TNPs consistently disappointed the high expectations of scholars up to the early 1980s (e.g. Pridham and Pridham, 1981). Nevertheless, this position still exists among TNPs themselves, where a minority of activists are what Hanley calls ‘entrepreneurs’ (Hanley, 2008: 204). Entrepreneurs at the very least try to force the pace of TNP development. At the most they are ardent federalists who believe that ‘Europarties’ can become ‘representative vehicles for an emerging European demos built upon mass-type party qualities including individual party membership, localised branches … and internal democratic procedures’ (Day and Shaw, 2003: 164). Individuals (such as former European Commission President Romano Prodi) tend to be more entrepreneurial than whole parties, although in general the Francophone parties tend to be the most entrepreneurial and the UK and Scandinavian parties the least (Hanley, 2008). Often youth wings of parties (such as the PES and ALDE) tend to be more entrepreneurial than the ‘parent’ party. The entrepreneurial spirit is certainly behind the federalist impetus of the Duff Report. The heady days when an arch-federalist idealist such as Altiero Spinelli could exercise such a decisive influence upon the leadership of the old Italian Communist Party (see Dunphy 2004: 61–5) may well be over. But the widespread and inaccurate perception of the radical left as ‘eurosceptic’ should not blind us to the fact that, as we shall see, elements of the idealist, entrepreneurial approach continue to guide and motivate some of the member parties and leaders of the EL. The third view is the realists, who point to strengths and weaknesses in TNPs. They tend to view TNPs as ‘ “value added” meta networks’ which are beholden to national parties, but exist to reduce the transaction costs of operating within the EU and to carry out those functions that the national parties cannot (Day and Shaw, 2003: 164). Hanley calls party activists who hold such views ‘consolidators’, that is, they are content with TNPs’ current role and seek no big changes to the status quo (Hanley, 2008:

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204). Both the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Christian Democratic Union of Germany fit into this category. The contemporary consensus view among analysts is also that of the realists, agreeing that TNPs are somewhat less than European mass parties but somewhat more than Internationals. However, the consensus position is itself broad, encompassing a wide range of views, some closer to the idealistic or sceptical views. Most optimistic are scholars who regard it as thoroughly appropriate to analyse TNPs through the lens of comparative party politics and to regard them as ‘Europarties’, or at least proto-parties with a developing transnational effectiveness (e.g. Hix, 1993, 1995, 2002a; Hix and Lord, 1997; Ladrech, 1993, 2000; Lightfoot, 2005). Even some former sceptics now accept elements of this view (Bardi, 2005). Analysts point to the increasing powers of the EP and increasing partyness of the EU as evidence of a nascent EU-level party system, noting that party actors operate in the Commission, Council and Parliament, and that Europarties are gradually assuming a central role. Such approaches may note that Europarties fail to play many of the customary roles of parties at national level (especially vote- and office-seeking functions), but do argue that TNPs aspire to important policy-seeking roles (via such activities as manifesto formulation and the pre-Council leadership summits) (Lightfoot, 2005). They argue that this role can be increased by changing institutional incentives for party activity at EU level, and indeed that it should be increased in order to address the EU’s democratic deficit (Hix, 2008). Realists take strong exception to sceptics’ views that neither the EU nor TNPs have any features common to genuine parties and party systems. For instance, Hanley (2011) argues that Seiler’s insistence that TNPs are not true parties ignores that many contemporary national parties do not meet his criteria for partyness either, particularly in terms of having strong social roots based on cleavages. Furthermore, some analysts do make firmer analogies between national and EU-level parties using the Katz–Mair model of the three faces of party organisation (e.g. Bardi, 2005; Calossi, 2011). According to this model, national parties are the ‘party on the ground’, with strong roots in society; the EP party groups are the ‘party in public office’, analogous to national-level parliamentary caucuses with a legislative and public visibility role; and the TNPs are (potentially) ‘parties in central office’, analogous to national-level extra-parliamentary executives which play a largely co-ordinating role, organising conferences and overseeing manifesto development. Others note that TNPs recall an authentic model from classical party literature, that is, Duverger’s concept of the ‘indirect party’ – parties that have little or no direct membership and which are largely federations of affiliated organisations (Duverger, 1963; van Hecke, 2010; Hanley, 2011: 5). Such ‘indirect parties’ include the

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UK Labour Party in the early 1900s, when it was a federation of trade unions and societies without party members proper, or the main US political parties, which are federations of state-level organisations and which barely exist as organisational entities outside elections. However, like the sceptics’ disparagement of TNPs’ party-like features, insistence on parallels between TNPs and national parties can obscure as much as it reveals. For instance, analogies with the three faces of party organisation and indirect parties are potentially highly misleading. For one thing, they underplay the weak institutionalisation of TNPs: compared with national ‘parties in central offices’ they have fewer resources and prerogatives relative to the other party components and their role is far more contested. For instance, indicating the aforementioned ‘embarrassingly low’ TNP staffing levels, although the PES secretariat in Brussels more than doubled its staff from thirteen to thirty-one between 1994 and 2015, this remained barely 13 per cent of the ‘party in public office’ secretariat (the Group of the Progressive Alliance of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) secretariat numbered 245 people in January 2015). At national level, one would hardly expect a local ‘party on the ground’ to dwarf the ‘party in central office’, but that is not the case in the PES – all but the tiniest member parties have (far) larger organisations than the central office. For example, whereas the Party of the Socialists and Democrats of San Marino had a secretariat of seven in 2015, the UK Labour Party’s secretariat numbered approximately two hundred, over six times that of the PES secretariat. This disparity is just as marked with the EL, which had a full-time staff of just 3–5 in the 2010–15 period, compared with a staff of 32 for the radical left group in the European Parliament, the GUE/NGL. As we later show, the small size of the EL staff is a result both of a lack of resources and a lack of EL member parties’ willingness fully to devote resources to building the TNP. Moreover, as we shall explore in more depth, the relationship between the EL and GUE/NGL is loose at best. Secondly, although several TNPs have developed individual membership, these efforts remain rudimentary and mass individual membership does not exist. This (as the sceptics note) drastically weakens the identity, visibility and legitimacy of the TNPs as organisations. It is probable that many (most?) rank-and-file members of any given national party are unaware of the bulk of the activity of the TNP of which their party is an integral part. Even indirect parties such as the US parties have an identity and presence that supersedes the state-level components (and also have the possibility of direct individual membership). In sum, the partyness of the TNPs is far weaker than the national parties’ and compared with them they are far less integrated into coherent transnational organisations. If they resemble any national- level parties at all, it is the ‘cadre’ parties

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which dominated in the nineteenth century, the archetypes of the internally created parties that emerged from legislatures and which developed extra-parliamentary organisations and mass membership only belatedly and tenuously. Indeed, at EU level the only party bodies with a genuine claim to supranational status are the EP’s legislative groups. Although their members are chosen by national parties, and these on occasion influence their voting behaviour, they usually operate independently of national parties between elections (van Hecke, 2010). Overall, we regard our own position as a moderately sceptical realism (at least as regards our analysis of existing realities and short- to mediumterm prospects; and without prejudice, of course, to what our hopes and ambitions for the TNPs might be!) It makes most sense to view TNPs as being in a state of becoming (Day and Shaw, 2003: 162). Like the EU itself, which is a combination of intergovermentalism and supranationalism that is less than a superstate and more than an international organisation, the TNPs represent a fuzzy middle-way, something as yet less than full Europarties and unlikely to develop as such (for this reason, unlike the more optimistic scholars, we do not use this term and refer to TNPs as transnational party federations rather than simply transnational parties). Nevertheless, they still play important roles that go well beyond Internationals or loose networks. Indeed, several authors concentrate on TNPs’ role as integral parts of parties’ positioning in multi-level Europe – as such, they facilitate party functionality in unfamiliar environs. For example, Ladrech refers to the TNPs as party networks, which involve a limited delegation of authority from national to supranational level in order to function in the EU’s multilevel environment, while national political parties remain the central players whose aims the party network is designed to serve (Ladrech, 2000). Johansson focuses explicitly on the governance framework and highlights how TNPs are multi-level organisations which allow parties to network across several arenas of the EU ‘party system’ (Johansson, 2002b). As Hix and Lord argue (1997: 18–19), it is true to say both that the EU possesses a system of very weak party organisation and that EU decision-making is systematically affected by political parties. While each of the components (national parties, parliamentary parties and TNPs) is weak in its own way, they interact cumulatively and amount to a party system of sorts. Equally instructive, if more sceptical, is Hanley’s focus on TNPs through the prism of principal–agent theory (Hanley, 2008). This theory was adapted from literature analysing US government to illuminate how national-level actors (principals) delegate authority to other actors (agents) in areas beyond their compass. Delegation of authority to agents helps solve co-ordination and information problems. Nevertheless, it is not

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without problems as agents are actors with their own preferences that sometimes diverge from those of their principals (Strom, 2000). In Hanley’s view, TNPs are the weak agents of strong principals (the national parties, and to some extent the EP groups from which most were created) (see also Hix, 2002b). Principal–agent theory helps highlight how national parties and EP groups delegate certain functions (such as manifesto co-ordination) to TNPs but see them as having a subordinate role overall and seek to prevent them developing their own preferences and over-reaching their remit. It rightly focuses on how, despite some spheres of autonomy granted to the transnational actors, national parties remain the ultimate arbiters. They can withdraw from EP groups (as the UK Conservatives did from the EPP/Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats in 2009) or from the TNP altogether (as did the Hungarian Workers’ Party from the EL, also in 2009). Moreover, as van Hecke notes, the dependency of TNPs on national parties’ decisions means that they are ‘a posteriori party organisations’, reacting to developments late, or not at all (van Hecke, 2010: 401). A cardinal example is that although members of the Council and Commission have a party affiliation, neither institution is structured on a party basis and their members are selected nationally (the former from ex officio heads of government, the latter by national nomination) (Lindberg, Rasmussen and Warntjen, 2010). Since EP party groups are also elected on the basis of national priorities, this drastically weakens pan-European party co-ordination. TNPs may attempt to co-ordinate activity in these spheres after an EP election, but for the aforementioned reasons they have proved consistently unable to shape this activity strategically in advance. The main problem with Hanley’s approach is that its focus is too intergovernmentalist. Seeing the TNPs as bottom-up creations of national parties which can at any point withdraw their consent tends to underplay the elite-level incentives to pool sovereignty. This approach gives insufficient acknowledgement of the aforementioned ‘top-down institutionalisation’ and the constant top-down institutional and legal pressures to create TNPs that are to some degree independent of the efforts of individual national parties. Moreover, the absence of rank-and-file members and social links at European level arguably means that TNPs are much more elite-driven than national political parties: as van Hecke (2010: 398) notes, ‘[i]t is the leadership that runs the party, and there is little participation from partisans’. Potentially, this elite-driven nature means that EU party elites can gain much more autonomy from their national parties than a pure principal–agent approach would imply. In sum, TNPs cannot be seen as purely intergovernmentalist or supranationalist bodies and they face conflicting pressures. National parties initiate them and retain dominance;

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however, TNPs have developed a limited institutionalisation and autonomy from their national parties that could potentially develop in future. For this reason we prefer ‘party-networks’ to the term ‘party networks’, a slight nuance which reflects TNPs’ partial institutionalisation. One of the most influential ways of encapsulating the complexity of this partial institutionalisation has been Niedermayer’s model (Niedermayer, 1983), which identifies the key stages of integration of transnational parties. At the contact stage, parties simply meet and exchange information on an ad hoc basis – no permanent transnational organisation is needed or formed. At the co-operation stage, parties begin to organise multilateral structures and campaigns and form a permanent transnational organisation for this purpose. At this integration stage, parties form permanent transnational co-operations regulated by structures that pool sovereignty and restrict national party prerogatives. Only at this stage can they be regarded as sufficiently transnational and organisationally robust to justify being called genuine Europarties. There is general consensus that by the early 2000s at latest all the longstanding TNPs had reached the co-operation stage and begun to move towards integration in selected spheres (e.g. by replacing consensus voting with QMV and the beginnings of individual membership in some cases) (Dietz, 2000: 202; Lightfoot, 2005: 50). However, the degree to which consistent integration has begun to occur is still controversial (Johansson and Zervakis, 2002; Lightfoot, 2006). Whether the EL has similarly reached the co-operation stage, let alone surpassed it, is something to which we shall return. The functions of really-existing TNPs So far we have addressed the context and debates over TNPs’ overall role, function and the difficulties therein. However, what precise roles do they currently play such that political parties have continued to invest them with (however limited) meaning? Several key functions can be outlined: Co-ordination and information exchange At their most basic, and reflecting their essential ‘party-network’ role, TNPs have acted as a ‘co-ordinating nexus’ for parties in the European Union (Lightfoot, 2005: 47). They act as a meeting forum and information exchange for disparate national parties. They are in addition conduits for information between national parties and EU-level party elites, particularly if they aim to effect co-ordination between party actors in different EU institutions. Indeed, increasing EU integration has necessitated far



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greater interaction between like-minded groups in EU member states and has meant that a far greater emphasis on transnational activity is necessary for exerting any influence at EU level (Newman, 1996).

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Socialisation An important resultant role of TNPs has been as a ‘socialisation conduit’ for political parties (Lightfoot, 2005: 47). They help iron out disagreements, distil common understandings and form a common party culture which helps strengthen the party family at European level. A vital element of this is what Hanley (2008) calls their ‘decantation’ function (sorting out which parties belong). Each TNP has membership criteria that applicant parties need to adopt to ‘join the club’. This decantation function is important for new parties seeking to firm up their visibility and identity (particularly parties from new member states and above all parties from former communist countries which may be seeking greater visibility, reassurance and policy advice). A related function is ‘political engineering’ – the TNP can help provoke organisational and institutional changes in its member parties (Johansson, 2002a: 62). In particular, TNPs can help policy emulation and policy transfer as party elites learn from each other via co-operation in the EU setting (Johansson, 2002b). The ideological role of TNPs should not be underestimated either. As noted, it was the supranationalist, federalist ethos of the Christian Democrats in the 1970s that drove the EPP (Ladrech, 2006); it was the self-same federalism and Christian Democrat origins of the EPP that prevented the UK Conservatives considering full membership of the EPP, and resulted in them ultimately severing all links with the EPP parliamentary group in 2009. The more traditionalist social democratic emphases of the PES (including a manifesto commitment to a thirty-five-hour week) encouraged the UK Labour Party under Tony Blair to downplay its links with the PES (Lightfoot, 2005: 46). Legitimacy One key reason why national parties (re-)engage with TNPs is to compensate for domestic marginality or defeats. UK Labour (which had sought to withdraw from the EU altogether in the early 1980s) only began to engage more consistently with the CSPEC in the late 1980s in order to demonstrate it was coming ‘in from the cold’ as part of its movement towards the centre. Moreover, the crisis of social democracy in general has driven greater aspirations for mutual learning and convergence in the PES (Newman, 1996; Daniels, 1998). One major achievement of the TNPs that even sceptics concede is that membership therein is an important badge

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of legitimacy for post-communist Eastern European parties trying to show that they are part of the European mainstream. This has been particularly important for social democratic parties seeking to escape the shadow of state socialism, for whom membership of the PES and Socialist International has been an important part of both creating an image of modernity and moderation and of entrenching Western political party norms (e.g. Pridham, 2005; Johansson, 2008; Ladrech, 2010; Shagina, 2017). Policy-making The key policy-making arena for TNPs has always been the promulgation of European parliamentary manifestos. Yet this function has been limited in practice because of party opt-outs and TNPs’ failure to impact directly on the electoral process. Although a greater number of TNPs have secured increasingly detailed manifestos with far fewer opt-outs, the degree to which national parties actually implement them or even refer to them in EP campaigns is also very circumscribed. In effect, the relevance of the TNP manifestos is limited to providing guidelines for the EP parliamentary groups’ legislative agenda. However, because of the EP groups’ ambiguous and even occasionally conflictual relationship with the TNPs, even such a small role cannot be assured (Lightfoot, 2005: 49). TNPs seldom have any direct influence over such matters as choosing the head of the EP group or committee positions within the Parliament. We have noted how TNPs attempt to have a more direct role in EU executive policy by holding party summits on the eve of European Council sessions. Some analysts argue that these summits have (on occasion) directly affected the outcomes of Council meetings (e.g. Johansson, 2002b; Lightfoot, 2003). However, only the three largest TNPs (EPP, PES, ALDE) organise such summits regularly. Effecting Europeanisation This is not a separate category but a composite one; as a result of the aforementioned roles, one of the vital functions of TNPs is as ‘networks of Europeanisation’ which both facilitate the process of European integration and help national parties formulate their response to it. ‘Europeanisation’ is an often-contested term and therefore it is important to define it. Although the term has been used so vaguely that its utility is questionable, the most influential approach, and the one that we share, has seen it as indicating a ‘top-down’ process whereby domestic political actors or institutions have adapted to the pressures of European integration (e.g. Poguntke et al., 2007). Nevertheless, some definitions have identified the emergence of EU-level ‘structures of governance’ as a key aspect

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of Europeanisation (e.g. Risse, Green Cowles and Caporaso, 2001: 1). Similarly, focusing explicitly on political parties points to the development of ‘relations beyond the national party system’ as a key aspect of Europeanisation (Ladrech, 2002b: 399). Such latter definitions are potentially highly confusing because they conflate EU integration and Europeanisation: surely the development of policies at EU level is an integral part of European integration? If so, then such a definition means that the cause of Europeanisation (integration) is impossible to distinguish from its consequence (Bomberg, 2002). This definitional problem does reflect that, in practice, Europeanisation is a reflexive, dialectical process that is difficult to conceptualise in terms of dependent and independent variables (Featherstone and Kazamias, 2001): parties are shaped by European integration but also seek to shape it (Ladrech, 2000; Hanley, 2002; Bomberg and Carter, 2006). TNPs are clearly part of this dialectical process: they are part of European integration, because their emergence has been intimately bound up with legal changes at EU level and their role (however limited) as ‘carriers of integration’ implies that they can directly influence the integration process. At the same time, by simply including national parties more cohesively within the EU framework, TNPs increase the exposure of national parties to European integration. While (as noted) the ‘carriers of European integration’ role is observed mainly in the breach, TNPs do still attempt to promote and diffuse the idea (Johansson, 1998: 36). Similarly, in her analysis of European Green parties, Elizabeth Bomberg (2002) notes that Green transnational activity shaped the policies of national parties and increased Green Europeanisation by inducing policy convergence, professionalisation and the mellowing of ideology. This impact is indirect rather than direct, accentuating existing trends rather than creating them. Certainly, TNP activity cannot do this directly. For instance, even though the Party Regulation now allows modest TNP campaigning in EP elections, it expressly forbids TNPs using EU funding to finance national political parties, greatly circumscribing direct TNP involvement in domestic politics. Von dem Berge and Poguntke (2013) offer a neat way of resolving these definitional problems – they see TNPs’ role in enabling socialisation and feedback between national and European level as providing ‘opportunity structures’ for the Europeanisation of national parties. Similarly, Ladrech argues that party activities at the European level ‘comprise an indirect Europeanisation in which various actors are routinely exposed to and increasingly participate in transnational and supranational partisan forums for instrumental reasons … In the process, partisan activity at the European level … indirectly legitimates the EU as a practical political framework’ (Ladrech, 1999: 100). Thus TNPs have developed from network facilitators into ‘network enhancers’ (Ladrech, 2002a: 88). Accordingly we

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can define one of the main functions of TNPs as being ‘networks of Europeanisation’: via their co-ordination, socialisation, legitimacy and policymaking networks they expose national parties to European integrative processes, which thereby influence and can be influenced by them. Ultimately, the future emergence of integrated Europarties that institutionalise the involvement of national parties in EU-level affairs would indicate that European integration and Europeanisation had become fully symbiotic. Conclusion Transnational parties are dogs that have persistently failed to bark: they remain relatively weak and limited party-networks that aim to co-ordinate EU-level activity and show little immediate prospect of becoming genuine ‘Europarties’ that structure the European party system and EU politics more generally. Even the longest-lasting and biggest TNPs are still relatively marginal actors at EU level, let alone (as we shall see) the latedeveloping EL. Yet these transnational parties are far from irrelevant – they offer partisan linkages within and between key EU institutions and thus help (however indirectly) to influence EU policy-making. Moreover, although their development has consistently disappointed the most optimistic analysts, and is likely to continue to do so, the spill-over effect of EU integration, the aspirations of federalists and the self-preservation instincts of EU-level party actors will continue to provide incentives for the increased consolidation and institutionalisation of EU-level party activity. Therefore, although TNP development is most likely to remain haphazard, incremental and contradictory for at least the medium term, the development of more genuine Europarties, though remote, is not a far-fetched possibility. Notes 1 The full article can be seen at European Union (1997). 2 Fifteen per cent of available funding is distributed equally to eligible TNPs; 85 per cent is distributed to those TNPs with seats in the EP in proportion to their elected members. No more than 85 per cent (formerly 75 per cent) of a TNP’s budget can come from EP funding. 3 These regulations can be viewed at: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/ institutional_affairs/institutions_bodies_and_agencies/l33315_en.htm, accessed 15 January 2015. 4 ‘European Federalist’ is the first phrase on Andrew Duff ’s Twitter profile, https:// twitter.com/andrewduffeu, accessed 12 July 2019.

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Radical left parties and European integration: the legacy of history

Introduction As we argued in chapter 1, the widespread perception of RLPs as ‘eurosceptic’ masks the reality that they actually reflect a wide variety of positions, with elements of Europeanist idealism present in some parties and leadership elites. Moreover, ‘Euroscepticism’ is an ambiguous and highly normative term that can have the unfortunate tendency to lump together parties that reject the European integration project altogether in the name of nationalism; parties that are sceptical about the direction that European integration has taken since the Maastricht Treaty, fearing that it has been hijacked by neoliberalism, but which would like to build a different sort of European Union; and parties that feel the process has lost momentum and betrayed the original ideals of European federalism. In this chapter, we seek to do four main things. First, we seek to convey a sense of the debates and divisions over European integration that have marked the history of RLPs since at least the 1960s, above all between varieties of what might be called Left Europeanists and Left national sovereigntists. Secondly, we seek to illustrate some of the important factors, both internal and external to RLPs, that have helped shape the evolution of their European integration policies. In so doing, we both adopt and adapt the useful schema developed by Benedetto and Quaglia (2007). Thirdly, we seek to examine the experience and ultimate failure of attempts at RLP co-operation inside the EP prior to the launch of the GUE/ NGL confederal group in the early 1990s. We do so because an understanding of this legacy is essential to a fuller appreciation of the formidable obstacles and challenges that those parties and elites behind the EL project have faced. Ultimately, in this chapter, we want to explore how history has affected or constrained the contemporary radical left’s views towards Europe. The effects are ambiguous. Scholars have often drawn on the concept of path

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dependency to explain how a party’s past history can, up to a certain point, shape, drive and constrain its policy evolution (see, for example, Kay, 2005; Peters, Pierre and King, 2005). Thus, it might be argued that the Eurofederalist Manifesto of Ventotene, written by Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and other anti-fascist prisoners in a fascist penal colony in 1941, and which had such an important influence on Italian anti-fascist political and intellectual culture after 1945, had a constraining, even determining, influence on the PCI and broader Italian left on the question of Europe. Yet, we shall argue that, without underestimating the importance of such past trajectories, path dependency is too inchoate and determinist a concept to capture the importance of rupture and elite intervention in policy-making processes; or the fact that the legacy of the past can sometimes be so ambiguous, and its interpretation so contested, as to logically point in several competing directions at once. Thus while centrists may cite support for the European federalist tradition as justification for the abandonment of left radicalism and, indeed, any far-reaching critique of the EU project, we show how sections of the radical left might continue to cite the ideals of that same tradition in support of their contention that the Europe of Maastricht and Lisbon, of neoliberalism, lacks ambition, disconnects with the masses and must be firmly rejected in favour of a Left Europeanism. The diversity of RLP responses to European integration As we have seen, RLPs were clear laggards at EU level, forming a TNP long after most other major party families had done so in the early 1990s or even sooner. The failure to act in the 1990s in particular, which several in the EL now see as deeply damaging, has obvious roots in the aversion that many RLPs, including post-communist parties undergoing processes of rebirth or regeneration, felt in the immediate post-1989 era towards the idea of submitting to any new external restraints on their freedom of action (Chountis, 2010). This might be referred to as ‘Comintern-aversion’. But the radical left’s hesitant transnationalism has deeper origins in a longstanding dichotomy between (Western) Europe’s communist parties over the whole issue of the fundamental nature and potential of the European Union. The traditional Soviet view was of the EEC as a capitalist, anti-Soviet institution – a bulwark of US and West German imperialism – that had to be opposed outright. Influenced by such a legacy, several orthodox communist parties, such as the Portuguese (PCP), the Greek (KKE) and, indeed, the French (PCF) for many years took a ‘national sovereigntist’ position, vehemently hostile to EU membership and advocating their countries’ withdrawal from it and the pursuit instead of ‘national roads

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to socialism’. Such parties have tended to see the EU as unreformable; as an anti-democratic capitalist bloc, allied to US militarism and imperialism, intent upon subduing the weaker countries of Europe to German hegemony and drawing the countries of the developing world into relations of exploitation and permanent under-development. Of course, until the collapse of the USSR they also saw the EU as part of the Cold War game – bolstering the US in its struggle against the USSR and the ‘anti-imperialist’ camp. From such a perspective, talk of working to change the EU from within, transforming it in a progressive direction, is at best naïve and at worst an act of class betrayal. The more hard-line national sovereigntist RLPs, such as the KKE and PCP, even balked at the idea of working within the EU’s institutions – eventually taking their seats in the European Parliament being just about the only compromise that they have been willing to make in this respect. Of course, it would be wrong to characterise all parties that adhere to national sovereigntist positions as ‘orthodox communist’ or ‘pro-Soviet’. Some of the Nordic ‘new left’ parties that would come to play an important role within the European left in the 1990s and 2000s, such as the Swedish Left Party (V) and the Danish Socialist People’s Party (SF) and later the RGA, saw adherence to a national sovereigntist position as a way of avoiding EU-led neoliberal encroachment on the strong Nordic welfare state model. In contrast to this, from the late 1960s ‘Eurocommunist’ parties such as the PCI, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the Greek Communist Party-Interior (later reborn as Synaspismós, and later still in a much transmogrified form as Syriza) gradually came to hold a more ‘Left Europeanist’ position, seeing the EU as a project that could be reformed from within into a forum for democracy, social justice and progress, led by a left that acted together strategically instead of retreating behind national barriers (Dunphy, 2004). They would later be joined by the Danish SF, as that party shed its national sovereigntist positions, and by parties such as the German Die Linke and even a much-changed PCF. In part, the extent to which Left Europeanism gained salience was influenced by the extent of the desire of party elites to take their distance from an increasingly authoritarian and unattractive Soviet model of socialism. In even larger measure, perhaps, it was shaped by the experience of nationalism and the nation-state. (It is surely self-evident why an Italian left came to see a potential federalist United States of Europe as offering a new opportunity to complete an Italian Risorgimento that it believed had been betrayed by a weak, corrupt and almost ungovernable Italian nation-state. Or why, after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, the party that eventually became Die Linke should have little reason to place its faith in a national road to socialism associated with the unified German state.)

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The division between national sovereigntists and Left Europeanists remained so stark that it prevented the Communists and Allies group in the EP ever formulating a common EP election manifesto, and indeed this group split in 1989. It was replaced, briefly, by two groups – the mainly national sovereigntist Left Unity Group, and the strongly Left Europeanist Group for a Unitary European Left. Following the dissolution of the PCI in 1991 and its majority wing’s transformation into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and subsequent assimilation to social democracy and the Socialist group in the EP, the smaller Left Europeanist parties had little option but to re-establish working relations with the other RLPs. After the 1994 EP elections, the GUE/NGL was formed as a flag of convenience. Its awkward title reflected the unstable policy and strategic compromises upon which it was based. The Group still exists but has never attempted to formulate common policy positions or to impose anything remotely like group discipline. Divisions between national sovereigntists and Left Europeanists have been a constant feature of the Group throughout its history. Factors shaping RLP European policy In their study of the European integration stances of the French, Italian and Spanish communist parties, Benedetto and Quaglia (2007: 479) have argued convincingly that the enormous diversity of communist party responses to the challenges of European integration presents an empirical challenge to the notion of ideology as ‘the main independent variable of party positioning on European issues’. The same is true, of course, of RLPs in general. Building on previous work on the range of factors that determine party positions on European integration (e.g. Taggart, 1998; Marks and Wilson, 2000; Kopecky and Mudde, 2002; Marks, Wilson and Ray, 2002; Szczerbiak and Taggart, 2003; Batory and Sitter, 2004), Benedetto and Quaglia argue for a multi-level analytical framework that examines international factors, domestic factors and party-specific factors. In what follows, we seek to adapt and apply this schema to some of the main RLPs active in the period preceding the birth of the GUE/NGL in 1994 (Benedetto and Quaglia deal exclusively with the PCF, PCI and PCE). International factors During the first three decades after the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, international factors affecting RLP (and especially communist) attitudes towards European integration included the degrees of closeness to, and domination by, the USSR and how the RLPs saw the role of the EU (then the EEC) in a world dominated by the bi-polar struggle between the

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USSR and USA. Here, there are distinctions to be drawn between, for example, the Portuguese and Greek communist parties, PCP and KKE, which have to this day remained doggedly loyal to Soviet-style communism, on the one hand, and ‘Eurocommunist’ parties such as the Italian and Spanish parties (PCI and PCE) and the small Greek KKE-Interior (later reborn as Synaspismós), which had taken their distance from Moscow long before the events of 1989–91, on the other. (Incidentally, the proSoviet and Eurocommunist factions of the KKE were familiarly known as KKE-Interior (Eurocommunist) and KKE-Exterior (pro-Soviet) to reflect the fact that their respective leaderships had spent the years of the Greek dictatorship either operating underground inside Greece or living in exile in Moscow.) Especially after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Eurocommunist parties evolved a critique of Soviet power and of Soviet-style socialism that would lead inexorably, first to the Spanish party leader, Santiago Carrillo’s ‘excommunication’ by Moscow after the publication of his book, ‘Eurocommunismo’ y Estado (Eurocommunism and the State), in which he criticised Soviet ‘great power chauvinism’ (Carrillo, 1977), and then to the Italian party’s ‘break’ with Moscow after the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981 (known in Italian as lo strappo). In his condemnation of martial law, the PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer declared the progressive force unleashed by the Russian revolution of October 1917 to be exhausted, and argued that a socialist transformation of Western Europe – which he deemed both possible and essential – required ‘deep and meaningful reforms’ within the EU and leadership by a European left in which the communists were an integral part rather than a separate and homogeneous movement (Berlinguer, 1982: 27–8). These developments shaped a Eurocommunist embrace of Western-style democratic values and their aspirations for a genuinely multi-polar world in which the EEC might play a potentially progressive and, of course, independent (of the USA) role. The French PCF would veer backwards and forwards between these positions, its occasional commitments to Eurocommunism never as clear as those of its Italian and Spanish sister-parties. After its break with Mitterrand’s government in 1984, the PCF would re-assume a more pro-Soviet and anti-EEC rhetorical position, largely unmoved by Gorbachev’s reform programme. Not until the departure of Georges Marchais from the party leadership in 1994, by which time of course the USSR had ceased to exist, was it possible for the new leadership of Robert Hue to move towards a ‘soft’ Euroscepticism. By contrast, the Portuguese PCP could draw a strong distinction between Moscow’s (at least rhetorical) support for its attempted seizure of state power in April 1975 (on the first anniversary of the ‘revolution of

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carnations’), and the condemnation of its actions as opportunist, ‘putchist’ and undemocratic by the Eurocommunist Italian and Spanish parties (Macleod, 1983: 300; Almeida, 2012: 76). That is not to mention the strong support given to its socialist rivals by the north European social democratic parties, such as the German SPD. From this perspective, both the EEC, and even its left Europeanist ‘apologists’, were on the ‘counter-revolutionary’ side in the class struggle which the PCP saw as being played out in Europe. Whereas the Spanish communists would see EEC membership as a guarantor of democratic consolidation and a bulwark against any return to fascism, the Portuguese party saw it as sounding the death knell for the Portuguese revolution, which they conceived in classic Leninist terms. External relations with Moscow as a determining influence on Western European communist parties’ attitudes towards European integration had already been the subject of a study by Bell (1996). In addition, Guiat (2003) has argued that the differing degrees of closeness to Moscow of the Italian and French parties are related to differing cultures and styles of politics. In brief, the PCI, in Guiat’s view, paid far more attention to national and societal factors and was an authentic organic product of Italian life, while the PCF saw its role, in part, as educating the French proletariat about the achievements of the Soviet model. Relatedly, Benedetto and Quaglia (2007: 481) emphasise the need to recognise that international influences are ‘filtered through the lenses of domestic politics’ – in other words, the ways in which national political systems mould and influence the evolution of political parties. National contexts Among the national or domestic factors that shape parties’ attitudes towards European integration, Benedetto and Quaglia (2007) mention public attitudes towards the European Union, party-system factors (including the electoral system, the issue of ‘coalitionability’ and the behaviour of major potential allies or rivals), and historical legacies. As far as public opinion is concerned, evidence suggests that public support for EEC membership and the European integration project in general was extremely high in Italy from the mid-1960s until the end of the 1990s (Benedetto and Quaglia, 2007: 487–8). After the PCI had moved towards a pro-EEC stance, no significant party voiced opposition to, or even serious criticism of, the EU until the PRC and the Lega Nord, for very different reasons, broke the virtual taboo on criticising Brussels’s policy in the late 1990s. During the 1970s and 1980s, studies of Italian public opinion suggest that the PCI had little to gain, and potentially much to lose, by playing a eurosceptic card in order to distance itself from other parties.

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This was especially true given that the workings of Italy’s proportional electoral system, and the hegemonic position of the Christian Democratic party meant that the PCI’s only hope of breaking the latter’s monopoly on power and entering government lay in proving its acceptability as a coalition partner to the smaller parties such as the socialists (Italian Socialist Party), republicans (Italian Republican Party) and social democrats (Italian Social Democratic Party). Indeed, Berlinguer had concluded, after the coup in Chile had toppled President Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government and installed a military dictatorship, that only the broadest possible alliance, and not a simple mathematical majority, could ensure that a progressive government in Italy would not suffer a similar fate (Berlinguer, 1975: 609–39). This laid the basis for the PCI’s ‘historic compromise’ strategy during the 1970s, which essentially offered an olive branch to the ‘Catholic world’ and its party, the Christian Democrats. Later, a pan-European version of this strategy would see the PCI reach beyond the old confines of party families to seek a ‘pro-European’ historic compromise with social democrats (such as the German SPD), Christian Democrats and others (Napolitano, 1989). Thus public opinion and partysystem factors were additional dimensions pushing the PCI towards a pro-EEC stance. Much the same can be said of Spain, where public opinion was strongly supportive of EEC membership and Euroscepticism was confined to the electorally insignificant far right: ‘[i]n Spain, as in Italy, Europe was to remain identified with liberty, modernization and prosperity’ (Benedetto and Quaglia, 2007: 488). The PCE supported Spain’s membership of the EEC in 1986 and thereafter voted in favour of the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997. Its growing unease with the neoliberal direction of EU policy led it – and other parties that formed the European Left Party, such as the PRC – to oppose central aspects of the Maastricht settlement as well as the policies of deregulation and perceived assault on workers’ rights that have characterised EU policy since the early 2000s. But these criticisms have always been voiced in terms of a Left Europeanist position. This is in spite of the fact that the PCE (which, since the mid-1980s, has contested elections under the banner of the IU) has not faced the same pressures as the PCI. On the contrary, it has had no realistic opportunity of participating in government. The PCE/IU has been a small(ish) party whose presence in parliament has been much reduced by the workings of a disproportional Spanish electoral system. This system tends to reward parties that are even smaller than the PCE/IU but have a strong regional concentration, such as the Catalan nationalists, while punishing a party like the PCE/IU whose support is spread throughout the country. Party- and electoral-system factors have tended to mean that the PCE/IU’s support for a socialist

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(Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) government has either not been needed or taken for granted. Despite its tendency for existential reasons to emphasise its difference from the ‘corrupt’ and ‘neoliberal’ Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, this has not led the party to embrace Euroscepticism. By contrast, the PCF faced a public opinion that was less universally enthusiastic about European integration. Moreover, it did not alone express Eurosceptic views. Elements of Euroscepticism have always been found within both the Gaullist movement and the Socialist Party (PS) – as well as, of course, the radical right. Party-system factors, however, have undoubtedly been important in the case of the PCF. First, the French electoral system since 1958 has meant that in practice the PCF depends on a deal with the socialists and other left-of-centre parties in the second round of a two-stage electoral process (an attempt to ‘work’ the electoral system sometimes romanticised on the left as ‘republican discipline’). This need to coalesce is crucial to the chances of electing communist (and other left) candidates to the National Assembly in the second round of voting, as well as being part of a successful presidential majority in presidential elections. This explains the tendency of all parties of the left to downplay divisive policies (including potentially Europe) in the run-up to the second round of voting in particular. The PCF’s inclusion in coalition governments with the PS seems to have even greater power in explaining changes in EU policy. Included in the first government of the Mitterrand presidency (1981–84) as the logical consequence of its participation in republican discipline, the party withdrew in 1984 in furious opposition to Mitterrand’s abandonment of attempts to use the French state to implement radical redistributionist policies in favour of a ‘leap of faith’ in European integration and market economics, symbolised by the appointment of Mitterrand’s former Finance Minister Jacques Delors as President of the European Commission in January 1985 (see Callot, 1988; Bell and Criddle, 1994). Thereafter, the party remained in opposition to both the socialists and the EU until Georges Marchais’s retirement as General Secretary in 1994. Subsequent evolution of the PCF’s policy (under Robert Hue) towards ‘soft Euroscepticism’ was not unconnected to the party’s participation in a renewed coalition government with the socialists from 1997 to 2002. This government, led by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, signed the Amsterdam Treaty and prepared the way for France’s participation in the single currency. The PCF’s participation effectively discredited its previous policy declarations. Not surprisingly, the PCF, post-Jospin, ‘quietly dropped hard Euroscepticism from its discourse in favour of a left-wing critique of the EU as an entity that was insufficiently democratic and interested only in promoting free trade’ (Benedetto and Quaglia, 2007: 489). This stance has survived the return to opposition in 2002 and enabled the PCF to draw

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closer to the other, historically much more pro-European, left parties that launched the EL in 2004. By contrast, with very few exceptions, the PCP and KKE have shunned coalition-building and taken pride in their ideological purity and relative (or, at times, absolute) isolation within the party systems of Portugal and Greece. They have displayed a ‘marked reluctance to work with other parties in regional or local level politics’ and have ‘mostly rejected’ opportunities to participate in coalitions (Keith and Charalambous, 2016: 8). In the case of the KKE, a brief exception was the period 1989–91, when it joined with both its Eurocommunist rivals and the conservative New Democracy party to form a national unity government of Katharsis to ‘clean up’ the legacy of corruption allegedly left by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) after its decade in power; the KKE quickly returned to enhanced sectarian isolation after this experience. In the case of the PCP, decades of isolation were finally overcome in 2015 when the PCP and the BE (which is a member of the EL) agreed to support a minority socialist government. Although the implications of this momentous decision are as yet too early to analyse, Freire and Lisi (2016) argue that the BE played the pivotal role in pushing for governmental participation. The PCP remained critical of the socialists but it was its leeriness about losing influence to the BE that persuaded it to support the government. Traditionally though, both the PCP and KKE have pitched their electoral appeal to the most vulnerable sectors of Portuguese and Greek society – those most likely to be left behind and feeling threatened by European integration and globalisation. As a result of this, and their relative isolation, pressures for European policy change from both public opinion and the party system have been much reduced. A further factor which we touched upon earlier – what might be called the national historical legacy of different European states – explains why some RLPs are less enthusiastic than others about building a truly transnational party. The widespread discrediting of nationalism, national paths of political and economic development, and national sovereigntist traditions in countries such as post-fascist Italy, post-Francoist Spain and post-Nazi (and indeed post-reunification) Germany helps explain the attraction of Left Europeanism to RLPs in those countries. By contrast, many on the French left – socialist as well as communist – took pride in a Jacobin revolutionary tradition that placed great faith in the transformatory potential of the French republican state. The Nazi occupation of Greece followed by the defeat of the communists in the Greek civil war of the late 1940s left a legacy of great bitterness towards the British and US ‘imperialists’ and of distrust towards a ‘German-dominated’ EU. And, as we have already commented upon, the Portuguese revolution was seen by the PCP as having

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been undermined by Western European intervention. Interpretations of the past thus helped shape radically different assessments of the progressive potential of the nation-state and the desirability of a pan-European governmental structure. Indeed, according to Keith and Charalambous (2016: 5), both the Portuguese and Greek communist parties share the view that ‘the struggle to defend national sovereignty [is associated with] class struggle’ and that ‘the struggle of the proletariat at the national level’ is their primary concern and is an integral part of the struggle against imperialism. In this way, a civic nationalism might be said to motivate those RLPs that resist European integration: a civic nationalism that posits the struggle to defend national self-determination as part of the struggle against elite and great power (and, of course, monopoly capital) domination of the weak. This civic nationalism stands in stark contrast to the xenophobic nationalism of the Eurosceptic radical right (Halikiopoulou, Nanou and Vasilopoulou, 2012: 512). However, as we have noted, the core argument of Halikiopoulou et al. that Euroscepticism of both left and right is primarily about nationalism, is much over-stated with respect to the left. There was an economic side to the appeal of any form of nationalism, of course. Post-war Italy’s rulers followed an economic policy that emphasised an open economy, geared towards exports and fully integrated with Western European and American capital. By the 1960s, this policy was clearly reaping rich dividends in terms of the so-called Italian economic miracle, and enjoyed considerable popular support. This was the national historical legacy with which the PCI had to grapple: a policy of advocating withdrawal from the EEC made little economic sense, enjoyed little public support, and risked widespread economic chaos and destabilisation (as, it might be added, did withdrawal from NATO at the political and military levels). The post-war Federal Republic of Germany followed a similar open economy policy, with German industry geared for exports. A retreat into protectionism made no sense at all for a post-reunification German left. Nor would it have been a sensible strategy for the Spanish radical left. The opening up of the Spanish economy to foreign investment in the 1960s had paved the way for the transition from Francoism to liberal democracy; and the prospect of EEC membership in the 1980s carried with it the promise of new inward investment and economic prosperity. Thus PCE leader Santiago Carrillo advocated support for EEC membership as early as 1972, when the party was still operating underground; Benedetto and Quaglia (2007) can conclude that, in the case of the PCE, the party has never been Eurosceptic. By contrast, France entered the 1970s and 1980s with pretensions still to be a great world power, with an independent nuclear deterrent (De

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Gaulle had withdrawn the country from NATO’s integrated military command, for which he had earned Moscow’s tacit approval as a ‘progressive’ bourgeois politician). The country’s economy was much more protected than in the Italian case and French industry much less geared for exports. Not surprisingly, the PCF, and other French RLPs such as the PG which emerged in the 2000s, were more inclined than the Italians, Germans or Spanish to see in nation-statism and ‘national roads to socialism’ the best strategy for the left, and to advocate resistance to external (West German, US, EU) interference with the French economy. In both Portugal and Greece, the main RLPs throughout most of the period under examination concluded that their weak and under-developed economies would not be helped but undermined further by a Germandominated EU. The family farms and slightly antiquated industrial sectors from which these parties drew much of their support were, perhaps, most threatened by the process of European neoliberal rationalisation. Once again, their analyses of domestic economic realities tended to reinforce the RLPs’ divergent estimation of the potential of the nation-state. Finally, it is hardly surprising that Nordic RLPs might be less well disposed, on the whole, towards Left Europeanism. With the possible initial exception of Finland, all the Nordic countries would be among the richest in any expanded EU and therefore likely to contribute more than they gained. Moreover, they boasted the strongest and most well-developed welfare states, which were always in danger of being undermined by the neoliberalism enshrined in EU Treaties from Maastricht onwards. One early exception to the Nordic rule – a later exception, and for very similar reasons, would be provided by the VAS – was provided by the SF. That party opposed Denmark’s membership of the EEC in 1973, and voted against both the Draft Treaty on European Union and the Single European Act in the 1980s. But internal opposition to the party’s ‘hard opposition’ to the EEC emerged in the 1980s among a group of younger party leaders, including the party’s MEP, John Iversen, who was increasingly influenced by the Italian and Spanish Eurocommunists (Dunphy, 2004: 132–9). Christensen (1996) argues that the evolution of SF’s policy towards the EEC during the period under examination in this chapter falls into three phases. First, the period 1973–86 saw outright opposition to EEC membership give way to a pragmatic acceptance that the Danish people had voted in favour of EEC membership and in favour of ratifying the Single European Act – and younger party members began to argue for support for integration in areas which would strengthen the party’s objectives, such as the environment. Secondly, the party Congress in 1986 declared that EEC policy should not be a barrier to the party’s future participation in government, effectively sidelining the issue and permitting further pragmatic

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modification. Finally, from 1988 until the 1990s, Christensen sees an acceleration of a tendency towards pragmatic acceptance of EEC membership, while arguing for change to the EEC from within. The party, for example, resigned from the intransigent People’s Movement Against the EEC in 1991, preferring the June Movement which sought to oppose further integration without actually arguing for Denmark to leave the EEC.

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Party-specific factors For Benedetto and Quaglia, party-specific factors influencing the evolution of European policy include the issue of leadership within parties. Although all communist parties share a legacy of iron internal discipline, rooted in the Leninist concept of democratic centralism, which might be expected to increase the room that leadership elites have for policy change and tactical manoeuvre, the extent to which this is reflected in reality differs between parties and over time. The ability of party elites to direct their parties in a particular policy direction was probably greatest within the PCI, PCF and PCE during the 1960s and 1970s. However, the PCE was greatly weakened in the 1980s by a series of splits. The PCI effectively abandoned democratic centralism altogether towards the end of the 1980s and one of its communist successor-parties, the PRC, has been hampered in its efforts to articulate a coherent response to the European Union project by its complete failure to transcend factionalism and to integrate the various ideological components that comprise its activist base. By contrast, the continuing power of democratic centralism within the Cypriot communist party, AKEL, meant that the leadership of that party could utilise an internal poll of party members to sanction a major shift in party policy away from an anti- towards a more pro-European integration stance, confident that the great majority of party members would back the leadership thesis (Dunphy and Bale, 2007: 298). Other relevant party-specific factors include whether the party in question is a new or established party, a protest party or a mainstream party (including the issue of whether it is a party of actual or potential government – which, in the case of all the communist and left parties we are examining, might be reformulated as whether or not it is ‘coalitionable’). Whether the party is primarily policy-based, vote-seeking or driven by ideological considerations is also important. Benedetto and Quaglia (2007: 482) argue that Taggart’s (1998) thesis of Euroscepticism as a ‘touchstone of dissent’ – that ideological outliers are more prone to ‘use Euroscepticism to differentiate themselves from the pro-system centre parties … is more likely to apply to new movements such as the Greens or the populist right than to the Communists’. This claim may well be supported by evidence

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drawn from the trajectories of the three parties included in their study, as well as communist parties such as Cyprus’s AKEL and the great majority of post-communist and new left parties. Such parties have often couched their critique of the EU in terms of defending strong welfare states and public sector jobs against neoliberal attacks – traditional social democratic goals – rather than in terms of emphasising their ideological distinctiveness from all other parties. However, a different conclusion might well have been reached had their study included the PCP and KKE. Arguably, both the Portuguese and Greek communist parties have embraced their sense of being ‘ideological outliers’ with enthusiasm, seeing their parties as existing to defend the interests of those who have lost out most from the processes of modernisation and ‘rationalisation’ encouraged by the EU. What is more, while Spanish communists might see the EU as providing external support for democracy and acting as a bulwark against any return to authoritarianism, the PCP sees the EU as part of an international capitalist conspiracy to destroy the progressive gains of the Portuguese revolution of 1974–75 and thus as an enemy of what the PCP sees as democracy (Almeida, 2012: 76). Moreover, as the events of 2011–16 amply demonstrate, the KKE sees its role within Greek politics as being to organise, initiate and lead popular protests against what it regards as attempts by the EU and international capital to undermine Greek democracy, subvert Greek national sovereignty and establish total German hegemony over the Greek economy. We now move on to an examination of the experience of RLPs inside the European Parliament from their first appearance there in 1969 until the third direct elections of 1989, after which the Communists and Allies group in the EP came to an end. An attempt to understand why the experience of the Communists and Allies group ended in such failure is essential in setting the scene for the post-1989 reappraisal on the part of various left parties which, in turn, paved the way for the belated launch of the GUE/ NGL in 1994 and the EL in 2004. The Communists and Allies group in the European Parliament, 1969–89 It was not until March 1969 that the first communist and radical left MEPs took their seats in the European Parliament. At this time, of course, MEPs were indirectly elected – by national parliaments. Logic would seem to dictate that the two electoral ‘giants’ of the then Western European communist movement – the French and Italian parties – would have been well represented from the start. Yet, as briefly noted in the previous chapter,

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the PCF, consistent with its then policy of opposition to EEC membership, operated a boycott of the EP. And the PCI, despite its willingness, indeed eagerness, to take its seats, was the victim of ‘blacklisting’ by the Italian government majority in Rome which used its strength within the Italian parliament to prevent the selection of any PCI deputies as MEPs. When the Resistance hero Giorgio Amendola, a leading figure on the so-called right-wing (social democratic, or migliorista wing) of the PCI and a close personal friend of the arch-European federalist, Altiero Spinelli, led his team of seven communist MEPs and two independent radical left MEPs into the EP in March 1969, it was considered something of a tactical and strategic victory for the PCI – and a turning point in the evolution of the party’s European policy disposition (Dunphy, 2004: 53). They were joined by one independent French left-winger. However, EP rules required any recognised transnational group of MEPs to have at least fourteen members and so the radical left’s first ‘team of ten’ were classified as ‘non-aligned’. It was not until the PCF reversed its boycott and agreed to enter the EP in 1973 that the birth of a distinctive grouping was possible. The arrival of the PCF’s first four representatives permitted the creation of the Communists and Allies group in October 1973; the ‘Allies’ in the group’s title referred not only to the presence of left independents but also to the fact that the group was joined by an MEP from the non-communist Danish SF. This new initiative afforded the radical left greater visibility, secretarial and resource allocation, and, potentially, institutional clout. However, it also exposed deep and growing divergences between the PCI and PCF over European policy. As the group expanded in the years up to 1989, these divergences increased, if anything. Disagreement prevented the group from realising its full institutional potential and forced it to accept a lack of coherence and unity as a veritable modus operandi. The legacy of those years is important in explaining both the late arrival of the radical left as a transnational political actor, and the problems the EL still grapples with in overcoming policy divergence and reconciling different interpretations of Berlinguerian Left Europeanism. Table 2.1 sets out a periodisation of positions on European Union membership and disposition towards European integration more generally of those parties that belonged to the Communists and Allies group, from the moment of joining the group until the point of its demise at the third direct elections to the EP in 1989. Its purpose is to allow readers to see at a glance, not only the variety of broad orientations present within the group in this decade; but also the extent to which some parties changed policy and shifted their emphases over time while others remained fairly static. Almost from the very beginning, the Communists and Allies group was effectively paralysed by the inability of its component parts to agree on the

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Table 2.1  Periodisation of parties’ positions towards European integration during the lifetime of the Communists and Allies group in the European Parliament, 1973–89

PCI

PCF

KKE

1973–79 reorienting the EEC towards democratic objectives

1973–84 Euroscepticism underground but does not disappear

1979–89 PCI as pro-EEC – European federalism seen as progressive goal in its own right

1984–89 fully fledged opposition to European integration; ambiguities on issue of EEC membership

1981–89 fully fledged opposition to EEC membership and European integration

KKE-Interior (later Greek Left, later Synaspismós) 1981–86 support for EEC membership and support for reorienting the EEC towards democratic objectives 1986–89 growing enthusiasm for democratising the EEC from within and support for EEC as possible arbiter of Balkan security

Source: Modified from Benedetto and Quaglia (2007: 483).

PCE

PCP

SF

1986–88 support for EEC membership and for European federalism

1981–89 fully fledged opposition to EEC membership and European integration

1973–86 fully fledged opposition to EEC membership and European integration

1988–89 support for European federalism and increased willingness to criticise monetarism and lack of EEC democracy and advocacy of a strong social dimension

1986–89 tacit acceptance of EEC membership; shift in emphasis to fighting for reform of EEC from within; support for intergovernmentalism against federalism

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basics of European policy, the role of the European Parliament, or the role of political groupings within it. The group was never able to agree upon a common platform, let alone a joint manifesto for EP elections; not surprisingly, it proved wholly incapable of advancing the project of a radical left TNP. The French and Italian communist parties, Calossi (2011: 93–4) has argued: interpretarono la loro presenza all’interno del PE secondo due ottiche diverse: l’atteggiamento dei francesi era quello di bloccare ogni diminuzione della sovranità statale e di combattere contro ogni allargamento dei poteri della Commissione; al contrario il PCI usava il PE per creare nuovi contatti internazionali ed evitare l’isolamento politico. interpreted their presence in the EP according to two very different outlooks: the disposition of the French was to block every decrease in state sovereignty and to fight against every increase in the powers of the Commission; by contrast, the PCI used the EP to create new international contacts and to evade political isolation.

The period from 1973 onwards saw the growing influence of Altiero Spinelli, former Italian European Commissioner and leading theorist of European federalism, upon the European policy of the PCI. Spinelli would indeed accept election to the EP as an ‘independent left’ candidate on the PCI’s electoral lists from 1976. At a meeting of Western European communist parties that the PCI promoted in Brussels in January 1974, PCI General Secretary Enrico Berlinguer spelt out the priorities of the Italian communists inside the EP in the coming five years: a drive to give the EP constituent powers to draw up a new Treaty on European Union that would accelerate the process of European integration, paving the way towards a United States of Europe led by a European government; and a convergence at the European level between pro-federalist forces of the centre-left and centre-right, united behind this process (Dunphy, 2004). The PCI’s vision increasingly exhibited the imprint of the Ventotene Manifesto – an idealist European federalist document written by Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi in 1941 and named after the island on which they were imprisoned by the fascist regime. Couched in the language of the revolutionary (but non-communist) left, the Manifesto demanded a socialist Europe in which class relations were utterly transformed, capitalism was democratically transcended and subservience to either the USA or USSR overcome. It declared: La linea di divisione fra i partiti progressisti e partiti reazionari cade perciò ormai, non lungo la linea formale della maggiore o minore democrazia, del maggiore o minore socialismo da istituire, ma lungo la sostanziale nuovissima linea che separa coloro che concepiscono, come campo centrale della



rlps and european integration: the legacy of history 55

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lotta quello antico, cioè la conquista e le forme del potere politico nazionale … e quelli che vedranno come compito centrale la creazione di un solido stato internazionale, che indirizzeranno verso questo scopo le forze popolari e, anche conquistato il potere nazionale, lo adopereranno in primissima linea come strumento per realizzare l’unità internazionale. The dividing line between progressive and reactionary parties no longer follows the formal line of greater or lesser democracy, or of more or less socialism to be instituted; but along the substantial and very new line that separates those who conceive the central field of struggle as being still the old one, that is, the conquest of national political power … and those who see the creation of a solid international State as the main purpose; they will direct popular forces toward this goal, and, having won national power, will use it first and foremost as an instrument for achieving international unity. (Spinelli and Rossi, 1941)

Such a reformulation of socialist strategy effectively saw the struggle to create a strong United States of Europe, with a European government, as a sine qua non of the struggle to transcend the limitations of the nationstate and build a democratic socialist society across Europe as a whole. As interpreted by Left Europeanists (including Berlinguer), it might well be the inspiration for a genuinely transformatory, socialist strategy for the European left. But in the four decades after its signing, the Ventotene Manifesto would increasingly be shorn of its socialist, indeed revolutionary, tones and presented as the cornerstone of a (mainly liberal and centrist) European Federalist Movement, which was very influential in Italy in particular in the post-war period. In this formulation, as we shall see, the emphasis would be less on the need to build a strong European state in order to create a more just and fundamentally post-capitalist society; and more on the desirability of European integration in itself as the defining characteristic of a progressive politics. Ultimately, we would argue that the shift in emphasis from one to the other position is related to the aforementioned distinction between ‘strong reformism’ and ‘weak reformism’ at the EU level (Dunphy, 2004). But that is to jump ahead of ourselves somewhat. Such a repudiation of the nation-state was, of course, completely anathema to the PCF. In practice, meetings of the Communists and Allies group tended to be acrimonious affairs and the various components were in effect free to pursue their own policies. PCI numerical dominance – very clear in the 1984–89 Parliament when the PCI rose from twenty-four to twentyeight MEPs and the PCF fell back from nineteen to ten – often meant that pro-federalist statements were issued in the name of the group, only to be repudiated or modified by the PCF later. In particular, Spinelli’s public utterances in the name of the group were often vigorously contested by

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the PCF, and Spinelli himself stopped attending meetings of the group, spurning even social contact with the PCF (and later KKE and PCP) MEPs and preferring the separate meetings of the Italian caucus. With the expansion of the EEC in the 1980s, the Communists and Allies group naturally grew in size, with new MEPs from the orthodox KKE and PCP supporting the PCF while the Italian position was supported by the small KKE-Interior and the PCE. The Danish SF, which had campaigned against Denmark’s membership of the EEC in 1973, might be expected to be closer to the ‘nationalist’ line of the PCF but in fact as a staunchly ‘new left’, democratic and anti-Stalinist party was more attracted to the PCI; in any case, after 1986, as we have seen, the SF’s European policy began to modify substantially, moving away from a Eurosceptic position. No issue perhaps better demonstrates the irreconcilability of the two main positions that had emerged within the Communists and Allies group than the question of the institutional reform and relaunch of the EEC itself. The 1980s, inside the European Parliament at least, were dominated by this question. This was a time when Berlinguer, Amendola and other Italian communist MEPs joined Spinelli in the all-party pro-federalist Crocodile Club of MEPs. This group was an informal cross-party group co-founded in July 1980 by Spinelli to promote the case he was making for the adoption by the EP of a Draft Treaty on European Union. In debates over that Draft Treaty, and subsequently over the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty, the Italians were constantly to the fore, and often disappointed, in arguing for stronger and more democratic institutions – greater powers to the European Parliament, more progress towards a European government. The sovereigntists inside the Communists and Allies group fiercely opposed all of this. This debate contained within it, of course, further debates on the precise role and powers of the EP, the nature of European democracy, the role of the nation-state, the Europeanisation of party politics, the desirability or otherwise of TNPs, and the emergence of a European party system without which an elected European government, answerable to the European Parliament, would be difficult to imagine. Increasingly, also, in the 1980s, the question of ‘communist identity’ came into play. Long before its decision to transmogrify into the communist Partito Democratico della Sinistra (PDS), and before it would become obvious that that PDS would be a social democratic party, pure and simple (as opposed to a ‘new left’ formation such as the Swedish Left Party or the German Die Linke), the PCI (again under Spinelli’s influence) was discussing the need to move beyond the confines of the communist family in order to build a ‘historic compromise’ between pro-European and anti-nationalist forces at the pan-European level. Such strategic thinking implicitly called into question not only the

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traditional dichotomy between communists and social democrats but even that between left and right. The PCI contributed to the work of the EP’s Institutional Commission (of which Spinelli was relatore generale, or principal spokesperson), and approved the Draft Treaty on European Union which this body produced in 1984. Needless to say, when the EP voted on the Treaty, the PCI voted in favour, the PCF – or those of its members who bothered attending the vote – against. Although both the Single European Act of 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 would represent severe disappointments to European federalists, similar divisions in voting can be noted. It is important at this stage to note that, despite lamenting the fact that the Single European Act represented a much watered-down version of the EP’s Draft Treaty on European Union, failing to deliver either the strong institutional reforms promised by the Draft Treaty or the attention to social harmonisation and political unity that the PCI desired, the PCI leadership nevertheless decided to vote in its favour (Dunphy, 2004: 64). This compromise, justified on the grounds that a small step forward was better than no movement at all, would be followed in subsequent years by further compromises, including PCI (by now, the PDS) acceptance of the Maastricht Treaty. Although a case can be made for the genealogical link between the Ventotene Manifesto and the Single European Act (and possibly Maastricht), the contrast between these documents – the first, revolutionary and idealist, the others pragmatic and neoliberal – could scarcely be more different. Yet, from an accumulation of such compromises is the line between ‘strong reformism’ and ‘weak reformism’ crossed. The point is that both support for Maastricht and subsequent European Union Treaties (whether uncritical or accompanied by caveats) and a critical rejection of these Treaty developments on the grounds that a truly integrated Europe needs more and better, can be defended with reference to Ventotene. Path dependency does not predetermine one path only. The contemporary centrist Democratic Party in Italy – into which the majority wing of the old PCI would eventually evolve after several changes of name and party identity – can espouse neoliberalism and strong support for the EU as presently constructed with reference to a tradition stretching back to Ventotene that emphasises the need to replace left–right divisions with that between the ‘party of Europeans’ and the ‘party of nationalists’. But, equally, Left Europeanists such as the PRC and others close to the EL, who secured the election of Altiero Spinelli’s daughter, Barbara, as one of their MEPs in the 2014 EP elections, via the ‘Another Europe with Tsipras’ electoral list, can also cite the idealism of Ventotene in their opposition to the neoliberalism that they see as leading and corrupting the European integration process. To assert that the latter position is somehow ‘Eurosceptic’

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is to accept the right of European power elites to define Europeanism without challenge, and to re-write the history of European federalist thought. Thus one ends in the untenable position of classifying a convinced Left Europeanist party such as Syriza as ‘Eurosceptic’ (as do Halikiopoulou, Nanou and Vasilopoulou, 2012: 519), whereas in fact that party’s internal opposition accused its leadership of being such passionate pro-Europeanists that they were willing to countenance a complete loss of radicalism in 2015–16 by accepting EU-mandated austerity programmes rather than consider for a moment any withdrawal from the Eurozone let alone the EU itself (Kouvelakis, 2016). (For a full discussion of Syriza’s persistent and consistent Europeanism, see Nikolakakis, 2017a.) Back in the late 1980s, however, attempts to define a strong reformist Left Europeanist position by some such as the PCI MEP Luciana Castellina (1988) were drowned out by paralysing divisions within the Communists and Allies group between a growing tendency to accept the EU at all costs, and outright rejectionism. Further divisions between the main component parts of the Communists and Allies group can be seen in the realm of foreign policy: Il PCF si concentrò su battaglie a favore della politica estera dell’Unione Sovietica, usando il PE come cassa di risonanza … L’atteggiamento del PCI fu completamente diverso. Sin dagli anni settanta aveva cercato di aprire collegamenti diretti tra Europa Occidentale e Blocco Sovietico mirando a giocare un ruolo di mediatore. In questo il PCI fu sostenuto dal Partito Socialdemocratico Tedesco (SPD). Così gli italiani iniziarono anche la strategia della ricerca di collaborazione con le forze più a sinistra della socialdemocrazia (tra che anche il Partito Socialista francese). The PCF concentrated on battles in favour of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy, using the EP as a public platform …The attitude of the PCI was completely different. Since the 1970s, it had sought to open direct links between Western Europe and the Soviet Bloc, seeking to play the role of mediator. In this, the PCI was supported by the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Thus, the Italians initiated also the strategy of seeking collaboration with the most left-wing forces of social democracy (including the French Socialist Party). (Calossi, 2011: 94)

Given that such a huge disparity between the European policies of the main components of the Communists and Allies group existed from the beginning, and became more glaring as the 1980s went on, one may be forgiven for asking how and why the group managed to survive as long as it did. The answer is that it was never really conceived as more than a flag of convenience, which allowed its member parties to avail themselves of

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EP resources and opportunities from which they might otherwise have been excluded. The ‘nationalists’, led by the PCF, always insisted on the confederal nature of the group. It was always intended to provide the loosest form of co-ordination. There was never any intention of allowing it to impose a ‘group line’, let alone a parliamentary whip system; never any possibility of permitting it to violate the absolute right of each party to determine its own policy and strategy. The inability of group MEPs to reach agreement on any major issue of European policy was repeatedly hailed by the group’s (PCF) General Secretary, Gérard Laprat as evidence of ‘unity in diversity’, even though disunity in diversity would have been a more honest appraisal (Laprat, 1985: 229). For the ‘Europeanists’, led by the PCI, the group was a necessary staging post, given their parties’ historical point of origin. Its inability to rise above the status of a flag of convenience did not in any way inhibit their expression of pro-European positions, or even prevent them from playing leading roles in the struggle for a United States of Europe. On the other hand, it fell well short of being capable of promoting the organic unity of pro-European political forces, or even strategic convergence on the left, that they became increasingly convinced was necessary. Above all, it would never be capable of propelling the left towards the development of its own TNP. By 1989, the Communists and Allies group was clearly an anomaly. That said, the PCF, PCP and KKE might well have been happy to continue with the group provided it remained largely emasculated, and provided the PCI continued to accept the principle of ‘non-interference in the affairs of other communist parties’. By 1989, however, the PCI had every reason to wish to encourage reformist and pro-European elements within the ranks of other communist parties, as well as to go beyond the confines of the communist family. (The PCI’s lists for the 1989 EP elections, for example, even included the French political scientist, Maurice Duverger, who had often been in open polemic with the PCF; he was subsequently elected.) The stagnation of European integration and the rise of neoliberalism were sufficiently alarming developments in their own right. By the end of the 1980s, they were also inextricably tied up with signs that the reform process in the USSR was running into difficulty and that the ‘socialist’ regimes of Eastern and Central Europe were in severe difficulties. A strong EU that could exercise a benign influence on developments in the East and a new pro-European leftist identity that could allow the PCI to escape isolation and decline were now strategic priorities for the PCI leadership. Accordingly, in the run-up to the 1989 EP elections, the PCI let it be known that it was seeking a new alignment within the post-89 EP and that the Communists and Allies group was effectively at an end.

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Post-1989: regrouping and reassessing after the ‘watershed’ After the third direct elections to the EP in 1989, the PCI succeeded in reaching agreement with the PCE, the Greek Eurocommunists and the Danish SF on the formation of a Group for the European United Left inside the EP, which would be a strongly pro-Europeanist grouping committed to seeking an organic relationship with the Socialist Group, and through this relationship contribute to a broader realignment of pro-European left and progressive forces. The PCF and its PCP and KKE allies (joined by one MEP from the Irish Workers’ Party, Proinsias de Rossa) formed a hard Eurosceptic and orthodox communist Left Unity group. In the polemics that followed the split, the PCF’s René Piquet, who became President of the Left Unity group, charged that our Italian comrades have, with the others in the group, a fundamental difference on the institutional question. They want total supranationality, European political union. But for our part, this wasn’t sufficient reason for not working together. We could have lived with that divergence. So what was the rest of the problem? Our Italian comrades have decided to enter into the Socialist International, and, in this parliament, join the Socialist Group. So that is the reason why they couldn’t stay with us and decided to leave. (Piquet, 1990: 16–17)

The PCI, by contrast, argued that the decision it took with its pro-European leftist allies to launch a new group was necessitated in order to allow its MEPs to avoid any misunderstanding arising from sharing the same EP grouping with ‘those elected from parties whose strategic platform on the subject of European integration has proven irreconcilable with the PCI’s’ (PCI, September–October 1989). It is difficult to say with certainty if Piquet’s assertion that the PCI had already (by June 1989) decided to join the Socialist International and the Socialist Group in the EP is accurate, or if this decision came slightly later. Certainly, there were those within the PCI at this stage – and not only among the ranks of those who would subsequently form the PRC – who still hoped that the Group for the European United Left might prove more than a stop-gap measure on the way to total assimilation by mainstream social democracy: that it might, indeed, together with the Socialist Group, work for the convergence of all left, progressive, environmentalist parties and movements of a pro-European persuasion in one big European Left Party. Berlinguer, who had never been afraid to criticise the inadequacies of social democracy, had often expressed this hope. But Berlinguer had died in 1984; Spinelli had died in 1985. And, unfortunately for such dreams, events were rapidly overtaken by events in Eastern and Central Europe and the USSR.

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It would certainly be a travesty to say that the PCI and its allies welcomed the collapse of the USSR. They did, however, strongly support Gorbachev’s process of reform, supported the Soviet decision not to prop up the Eastern European regimes by military force, and, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and regime change, supported EU membership expansion eastwards. By contrast, the PCF and its allies were either lukewarm about Gorbachev (PCF) or outright hostile (PCP and KKE) and regarded the fall of the USSR and the Eastern European regimes as acts of betrayal. Although the PCF would belatedly come to terms with the changes that had taken place from 1994 onwards, and subsequently modify its European policy as we have seen, the PCP and KKE have refused to budge in either respect. For both these parties, EU expansion eastwards remains an act of imperialist aggression. For the post-Berlinguer PCI leadership, or at least the greater part of it, events in the East proved that there was now no alternative to mainstream social democracy. The transformation of the majority of the PCI into the PDS in 1991, and that party’s subsequent entry into the Socialist International and the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, meant an acceptance that the dream of uniting all progressive left forces in one big European Left Party that was greater than (and more radical than?) the social democratic family was now over. For those in the PCI minority who formed the PRC (and from 1998, the even smaller Party of Italian Communists (PdCI)) something of the Berlinguerian/Spinellian European federalist idealism lived on, but increasingly harnessed to a greater willingness to attack the neoliberal direction of EU policy and to emphasise that there is more to Europe than the neoliberal strictures of Maastricht or the tepid reforms of Amsterdam. And when a European Left Party that aspired to unite communist, socialist, feminist, environmentalist and other radical left traditions in a pan-European party federation was launched in 2004, it might claim to embody something of Berlinguer’s vision. But it would, of course, be a much-truncated version of it – and take the form of a small political formation to the left of social democracy and not One Big Left Europeanist project that succeeded in dragging social democracy towards more decidedly radical and Europeanist positions. It would, moreover, involve precious few parties (actual or potential) of government and have very limited access to the corridors of power. In the short term, of course, the absorption of the PCI/PDS majority into the Socialist Group left its PCE, Danish SF and Greek Left allies, as well as the half dozen MEPs who joined the PRC, without a European parliamentary home. After the 1994 EP elections, as we shall see further in chapter 3, these parties would come together with the national sovereigntists in the PCF,

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PCP and KKE to form a new Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left. It is tempting to see the GUE/NGL as a re-run of the old Communists and Allies group – another flag of convenience forced on its component parties by the numbers game inside the EP but prevented by chronic divergences from attaining any degree of political coherence. And to some extent this is true, as we shall see, and forms an important part of the background to the decision to give birth to the European Left Party. Conclusion In this chapter we have demonstrated how a profound divide between that section of the radical left hostile towards all things supranational and that section which has tended to view nationalism and protectionism as regressive and reactionary has both preceded a radical left presence in the European Parliament and has deeply marked the radical left’s potential as an effective actor from its earliest days inside the institution. We have seen that this divide has shaped RLP attitudes towards European integration, with some seeing the ideals of European integration as embodying the dream of a European (and ultimately perhaps, world) socialist government, and others seeing the EU project as inherently anti-Soviet, anti-communist and serving the interests of multi-national corporations. We have also seen that this dichotomy overlaps with, and is in part explained by, other lines of division within the radical left family: between Eurocommunists and left socialists who have sought to formulate paths to socialism that are fully compatible with the sorts of liberal democratic values that have underpinned Western European democracy since 1945, and pro-Soviet or Marxist-Leninist parties and groups that reject such views as class betrayal; between parties that operate in political environments where nationalism and nationalist isolationism have been profoundly discredited by the experience of the twentieth century – for example, Italy, Germany and Spain – and those that operate in environments where strengthened nation-states and ‘national roads to socialism’ still seem to pack potential as agents of social and class transformation; and between those who operate in countries that can boast of highly developed welfare states and higher levels of social protection than the EU espouses – and who may see the EU as a threat to these standards – and those who operate in countries with relatively low levels of social protection and, perhaps, high levels of elite corruption – and who are tempted to see ‘Europe’ as a potential solution to otherwise insoluble ‘national’ problems. We have also seen that the accumulation of compromises that some Left Europeanists have made in the name of ‘the European project’ has, on

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occasion, led to a distinctive blurring of the line between a strong reformism that seeks to transcend European capitalism and a weak reformism that accepts a role in its management; and that this can lead some parties to ‘exit’ the family of the radical left altogether. This, in turn, can increase the ire of the sovereigntists, leading to accusations that any form of Left Europeanism whatsoever will lead to assimilation and incorporation into the institutions of European and global capitalism. These divisions have of course continued into the 1990s and up to the present day. This is the essential background to the emergence of first the GUE/NGL group in the EP in 1994, and later the EL in 2004, to which we turn in chapter 3.

3

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The origins and emergence of the European Left Party

It was far from obvious after the tumultuous events of 1989–91 that the debilitated forces of the radical left could re-coalesce to recapture even the minimal levels of cohesion and co-operation that they had possessed before 1989. After all, domestically parties’ electoral ratings went into freefall; many merged or transformed, in several cases into non-radical parties of the centre-left (the major instance being, as noted, the PCI becoming the Democratic Party of the Left and later the Democratic Party) or ecological left (the Communist Party of the Netherlands merged into the GreenLeft in 1989). Such was the disarray that for some analysts communist parties were no longer even conceivable as a coherent party family (Bull, 1994). Internationally, too, the omens were not good. For a long time, as the previous chapter demonstrated, the European communist parties’ position vis-à-vis the EU could be regarded as reflecting a negative critique rather than a positive vision of a post-capitalist Europe, with prevalent divisions between national sovereigntists and Left Europeanists hamstringing the development of the latter. The challenge of autonomously coming to a coherent position, still less developing a genuine ‘positive’ transnationalism, was forbidding (Hanley, 2008). In short, it is unsurprising that it took the European Left Party fifteen years to emerge after the fall of the Berlin Wall; perhaps it is more surprising that it emerged at all. This chapter traces the history and prehistory of the EL’s emergence, showing that despite the aforementioned divisions, aspirations towards greater transnationalism remained present among the radical left in the immediate aftermath of the USSR’s demise, and that it began to develop far greater focus towards the end of the 1990s when the aspiration to form a new European Left Party first appeared. However, mistrust and lack of consensus continued to dog the project, with a number of competing initiatives threatening it from the outset. Only very tentatively and slowly, then, did the EL emerge as a nucleus of the European radical left. Given that, in reality, the EL project was a long

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time in the making, we therefore need to trace its immediate origins back to the early 1990s. This chapter will first provide an overview of the disparate radical left transnational initiatives that emerged prior to the EL, before analysing the proximate causes for the emergence of the EL and tracing its initial policy platform. Throughout, it will be shown that, despite the huge legacy of ideological division and distrust within parties, the processes of European integration and the ideological preferences of the Europeanist radical left parties have combined to push two groups centrestage in the activities of the European radical left: the first such group was the GUE/NGL in the European Parliament, and the second, the EL itself. Blatant nationalism, latent transnationalism? Given the domestic travails of radical left parties in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR and the evident switch of some former members of the communist party family towards (sometimes virulent) nationalism, we might expect ‘internationalism’ to mean precious little today. However, this chapter will show that this is emphatically not the case. Radical left parties’ national interests certainly take more obvious priority than they ever did in the Soviet era (even for the Europeanists): as one Portuguese MEP argued, the tale of the two decades following the Soviet Union’s demise has been the dominance of ‘national stories’ among the European left over and above ideological distinctions (Portas, 2010). Nevertheless, for most, commitments to international and EU-level cooperation and solidarity remain strong, and indeed have intensified. Just as at a national level, the international radical left is undergoing complex processes of ongoing decline (particularly among the communist parties), re-emergence (particularly among the new left and new anti-capitalist parties) and organisational/ideological mutation (see also March and Mudde, 2005). However, the overall picture is of increasingly coherent consolidation since the late 1990s, of which the appearance of the EL is the main sign. While falling far short of a new International, the broadly cohesive international strategic and ideological outlook of the European radical left (partially excepting the sovereigntists) is clear evidence of its increasing coherence as an identifiable ‘party family’. The principal forms of contemporary radical left transnationalism are complex, but can be divided as follows (see also Gleumes and Moreau, 1999; March, 2011): 1) Party-to-party bilateralism: formal and informal bilateral/regional contacts between parties.

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2) Party-to-regime bilateralism: bilateral contacts between parties and still-existing communist regimes and/or non-communist but sympathetic regimes. 3) Party-to-party multilateralism: coherent international radical left party forums and organisations. 4) Party participation in ‘front’ and ancillary organisations: for example, trade unions, youth groups and peace groups, many of which maintain international contacts. 5) Party participation in social movements: principally, the global justice movement (GJM). The last two spheres, where parties compete for influence with nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and pressure groups, are examined in greater detail in chapter 6, where the EL’s relationship to the wider ‘movement’ is discussed. The first two spheres have little direct relevance to the emergence of the EL (although, as we shall see, bilateral contacts formed by some of the ‘entrepreneurs’ in this project, principally the German Die Linke, certainly helped disseminate the idea more widely). Moreover, the fact that parties tried to maintain traditional bilateral contacts across regions was a necessary precursor towards developing a broader aspiration towards transnationalism. However, most relevant for our discussion is sphere 3: new multilateral forums formed from the early 1990s onwards and helped consolidate contacts and policy positions among the European radical left, without ever being sufficient in themselves to generate a greater impetus towards transnationalism. The decline of traditional multilateral forums Nevertheless, for much of the post-1991 period, a parallel and more powerful impetus than transnationalism was the accelerated cell-division and debilitation of the traditional institutions of communist international co-operation. Such organisations as still exist maintain a very tenuous, nebulous presence. They are without exception completely irrelevant to wider European politics and have generally been superseded by the regional party conferences and newer EU-centric organisations outlined below. Certainly, there has been no serious attempt to re-create the Comintern, although such aspirations are still occasionally heard. There was a brief attempt by the French, Greek and Portuguese communist parties to maintain a ‘third-and-a-half ’ International with East Germany, Vietnam and North Korea in 1990 (Bell, 1996). This was followed by the New Communist International, founded in Sofia in 1995 with support from North Korea and North Korea’s staunchest European ally, the then-tiny (Maoist)

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Workers’ Party of Belgium. However, the New Communist International only ever existed on paper (Gleumes and Moreau, 1999). The Workers’ Party of Belgium gradually grew in influence (it gained two seats in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in 2014), and until 2014 hosted the annual International Communist Seminar, a major worldwide communist gathering. Nevertheless, for all but the most hard-line communists (such as the KKE), close relations with North Korea are anathema. Similarly, although there were a number of initiatives to preserve the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s international networks in the early 1990s, these were entirely unsuccessful. Most prominent has been the Union of Communist Parties–Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which after 1993 acted as the main discussion forum for nineteen former components of the CPSU, facilitating exchanges of information and delegates (Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), 2011). Yet this organisation was more an attempt to hold on to former CPSU assets than to form a new International per se, and never sought to expand beyond the former USSR. It is almost entirely an ephemeral organisation today. No Trotskyist or Maoist Internationals have occupied the vacuum. They always lacked sufficient state support to impose even formal unity, and their subdivision has proceeded apace. There are now at least twenty Trotskyist Internationals, including several Fourth Internationals claiming to be the original founded in 1938 by Trotsky. There are even several nascent Fifth Internationals! The primus inter pares is arguably the Reunified Fourth International, founded in 1963.1 It is allegedly the largest (although since Trotskyist Internationals never publish membership figures this is impossible to verify), containing over sixty tiny groups. The most significant of these was undoubtedly the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), the leading French extreme left party in the 1990s and early 2000s (with three MEPs between 1999 and 2004). However, since its transformation into the New Anti-Capitalist Party in 2008 the party has loosened its ties to the International. Elements within the Danish Red–Green Alliance and Portuguese Left Bloc also participate in the Reunified Fourth International. Of the competing groups, the London-based Committee for a Workers’ International and International Socialist Tendency also claim a broad geographical spread.2 Currently the most important member of the former is the Socialist Party in Ireland (formerly Militant), which has had national and council seats since the late 1990s (latterly as part of the Anti-Austerity Alliance) and even one MEP in 2009–14. Its sister-party is the less successful Socialist Party of England and Wales, which is currently a member of the non-parliamentary Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). The most prominent parties in the International Socialist Tendency are

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the Socialist Workers’ Party in Ireland, which forms the kernel of the People Before Profit Alliance (with three seats in the Irish parliament and one seat in the Northern Irish Assembly) and its sister Socialist Workers’ Party in the UK, which has been traditionally leery of electoral coalitions but briefly participated in TUSC in 2010–17.3 The direct political impact of all the Trotskyist Internationals is very meagre. However, they are prolific online publishers and have a wider influence via entryism into larger parties such as the PRC and the Spanish IU, or broader social movements such as the anti-globalisation movement ‘Globalise Resistance’, founded in Britain in 2001. Finally, Maoist Internationals have been more negligible still in European (and world) politics, given that the Chinese Communist Party has never consistently sought to support a Comintern-like structure; indeed, they are largely confined to the global south (Alexander, 2001). The only organisation with much of a European presence is the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations, formed in 1998 by the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, and inviting some thirty parties to infrequent conferences, including Maoists in France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Turkey (van Hüllen, 2008).4 Even this group amounts in Europe to little more than a collection of entirely insignificant micro-splinters. For example, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany has never got more than 0.1 per cent of the vote in German national elections. The kaleidoscope of emerging initiatives Only gradually has the impetus to greater dissolution been arrested with the emergence of a number of new formations. However, for most of the 1990s at least, these organisations tended to revolve around nuclei of ideologically or regionally homogeneous parties. While some declared more pluralist, integrative aims, these never progressed much beyond lowestcommon-denominator networking. A principal example was the NELF. New European Left Forum The NELF was formed in Madrid in 1991 on the initiative of the Spanish IU. Its significance was four-fold. First, founding parties aimed for a ‘breach with Stalinism and with the model of a “New Type of Party”, the critical reappraisal of their own past, inner party pluralism and the goal of democratic socialism’ (Ettinger, 2004). As Liberté put it (2005: 19): ‘Le NELF avait comme idée de montrer qu’il existait un espace ouvert entre les partis Stalinistes et les partis socio-démocrates’ (‘The NELF had the idea

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of showing that there was an open space between the Stalinist parties and social democratic parties’). Secondly, the NELF marked the first attempts of the radical left to form extra-parliamentary organisations on a specifically European rather than global basis. This reflected the increasing reality of European integration: the 1992 Maastricht Treaty (among other things initiating monetary union and greater political integration) made ‘Europe’ a reality in mass political consciousness and fostered multiple attempts to increase, adapt or resist integrative processes. Thirdly, the NELF marked an intensification of the efforts of the Left Europeanist parties (noted in the previous chapter) to eschew the traditional forms of communist-led transnational co-operation and organise separately from the orthodox communist national sovereigntists, although any prospect of the NELF becoming a truly ‘Europeanist’ vehicle was complicated by the participation in NELF of more sovereigntist Nordic parties. Finally, the NELF indicated the first rudimentary efforts by the radical left to bridge organisationally traditionally historical and ideological divides. That it did so is also logical; a number of its initiators (such as the IU itself, the Dutch Green Left and Italian PRC) were themselves so-called ‘broad left’ entities – long-standing coalitions of divergent left tendencies, one of whose explicit aims was to foster a pluralist, non-sectarian ideological trajectory.5 The NELF proved to be an attractive proposition as a trust-building and networking exercise. Meeting twice-yearly in different European cities, it gradually expanded to encompass a diverse spectrum of parties around the axis of the French PCF and German Die Linke (see Table 3.1). At its peak, it had twenty-two members and permanent guests and over thirty observers, although very few of these were from former Eastern Europe (Van Hüllen, 2008: 467). It furthered links between parties as diverse as the Dutch Green Left, the Nordic Green Left parties and the Communist parties of France, Italy and Austria, and helped cement connections with the EP and extra-parliamentary groups such as the European Social Forum. As an indication of its broad spread, its membership by 2008 included the Dutch Green Left, the Danish Socialist People’s Party and the Catalan Greens, all of which by then sat in the Green group in the EP. The NELF proved to be a direct precursor for the European Left Party: it was no coincidence that the first contacts between the founding parties of the EL took place within this body (Calossi, 2011: 100). The NELF provided a space for a broad range of parties of the non-Stalinist left to maintain voluntary dialogue and exchange ideas. It even helped consolidate the ideological core of the European radical left. As Hudson notes (2000: 18), the NELF’s most significant role was in forging an international policy

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Table 3.1  The NELF: participants at 34th Meeting, Rome 2008 Party

Country

Status

SV V VAS

Norway Sweden Finland

Member Member Member

SF RGA EÜVP Die Linke PCF PST IU PRC PdCI Synaspismós Déi Lénk BE ÖDP ICV GL AKEL KPÖ PCP SP Sinn Féin SP-USA DSP

Denmark Denmark Estonia Germany France Switzerland Spain Italy Italy Greece Luxemburg Portugal Turkey Spain Netherlands Cyprus Austria Portugal Netherlands Ireland USA Australia

Member Member Member Member Member Member Member Member Member Member Member Member Member Observer Observer Observer Observer Observer Observer Invitee Invitee Invitee

Other European Network NGLA NGLA, GUE/NGL EL (from 2009), NGLA, GUE/NGL EGP*, Greens/EFA EL (from 2010), EACL EL EL, GUE/NGL EL, GUE/NGL EL EL, GUE/NGL EL, GUE/NGL EL*, GUE/NGL EL, GUE/NGL EL, EACL EL, EACL, GUE/NGL EL EGP, Greens/EFA EGP, Greens/EFA EL*, GUE/NGL EL GUE/NGL GUE/NGL GUE/NGL

Note: * Observer Source: Calossi (2011: 99).

consensus over such issues as anti-neoliberalism, democratisation of the EU, job-creation initiatives, increases in public spending and opposition to NATO-led militarism. Indeed, opposition to NATO action in Yugoslavia in 1999 helped extend contacts to Eastern Europe, with parties like the Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) and Russian KPRF involved in debates over European security at the Madrid NELF meeting in July 1999. Nevertheless, there were definite limits to this consensus. On the one hand, although it helped strengthen the ‘Europeanist’ trend among

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the European left, the NELF reflected the aforementioned ‘Cominternaversion’: it deliberately avoided the creation of any transnational structure in favour of loose networking. It never aimed to transform its organisation beyond its two annual meetings. Moreover, because it encompassed a wide disparity of policy dispositions on the issue of the powers and competences of the EU, the NELF could never play host to discussions about the birth of a left TNP. Indeed, questions of European integration proved to be at the margins of its attention (Calossi, 2011: 97). In practice, once these questions proved to be more salient, and moves to found the EL proceeded apace (see below), the NELF declined. It has not met since 2008 and became ‘a structure without an institutional frame’ (Scholz, 2010). Its last meetings were dominated by parties that were also members of the EL and/or the GUE/NGL, organisations whose attractiveness had by then clearly increased relative to the NELF (see Table 3.1). The Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left As noted in the previous chapter, radical left parties had a consistent niche in the European Parliament and after a considerable period of instability they began to consolidate. The absorption of the PCI/PDS majority into the Socialist Group left its Eurocommunist and left-socialist allies – the PCE, Danish SF and Greek Left, as well as the half dozen Italian MEPs who joined the PRC – without a European parliamentary home. After the 1994 EP elections, these parties would come together with the sovereigntists in the PCF, PCP and KKE to form a new Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left. (The suffix, Nordic Green Left, was added after the 1995 EU expansion brought Finnish and Swedish members to the Group from the post-communist or ‘new left’ Finnish VAS and the Swedish V.) We noted how the GUE/NGL can be seen, like the old Communists and Allies group, as another flag of convenience forced on its component parties by the numbers game inside the EP, but prevented by chronic divergences from attaining any degree of political coherence. This certainly forms an important part of the background to the decision to give birth to the EL. However, there were considerable elements of novelty, which meant that by the new century GUE/NGL had gone well beyond being a ‘communist’ group in any real sense. First, as already noted, was the entry into the Group of new left parties from the Nordic region that no longer possessed a communist or Marxist identity. Secondly, the entry of German MEPs after 1999 added a very important element of innovation, particularly as the German Party of Democratic Socialism (later Die Linke) was,

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for obvious historical reasons, strongly anti-nationalist and committed to the search for a European, not a national, road to socialism. Thirdly, the increased diversity of the Group, after the fifth and sixth direct elections to the EP (in 1999 and 2004), saw MEPs joining both from communist parties from new member states (AKEL from Cyprus and the KSČM from the Czech Republic), and from new left and left-wing parties from different ideological traditions (the BE from Portugal and the SP from the Netherlands), and even one party that might be more accurately described as radical nationalist rather than left at all (Sinn Féin from Ireland). While this increased diversity, from one perspective, made unity of purpose all the more difficult, it also added new vigour to those forces favouring a new and decisive push in the direction of launching a left TNP. This vigour would come from forces such as the PDS/Die Linke and the BE, as well as, as might be expected, from the PCE/IU, Synaspismós and the Italians. Finally, the PCF’s own movement in European policy, bringing it closer to the Europeanists than the PCP and KKE by the early years of the twentyfirst century, was important. So, like the NELF, the emergent GUE/NGL group’s opportunities and limitations provided a precursor to the EL. It provided another forum for contact and information exchange among a wide spectrum of European radical left parties (many of which were simultaneously NELF members). Like the NELF, the GUE/NGL can be regarded as furthering the consolidation of the radical left as a party family: on the most basic level it provided a space for radical left parties to organise independently of the social democrats and Greens (Calossi, 2011: 122). However, the GUE/NGL has always lacked strategic coherence and policy convergence. Its 2009–14 convocation included seventeen parties from twelve states of the EU-27, including for the first time Irish and Latvian Socialist Party MEPs. It was broader still after 2014, with twenty parties from thirteen EU states (see Table 3.2). Although many of the aforementioned new entrants into the GUE/NGL after the early 1990s increasingly favoured the idea of creating a left TNP, any possibility of creating this under the auspices of the GUE/ NGL was vehemently resisted by such parties as the KKE, Portuguese PCP and Dutch SP. Despite such internal divisions, a tentative policy consensus has emerged. Although, as described in the previous chapter, the divisions over the very nature of Europe are still stark, the GUE/NGL has put forward many concrete policy proposals such as the thirty-five-hour working week and the Tobin tax on international financial transactions, and in 2005–6 spearheaded (ultimately unsuccessfully) the opposition to the EU’s Services Directive (known as the ‘Bolkestein Directive’ after its author, Commissioner Frits Bolkestein) that aimed to create a single market for services



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Table 3.2  The development of the GUE/NGL: national components Convocation of European Parliament

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Party

1994/95–99 1999–2004

Start IU 9 PRC 5 PCF/FG 7 KKE 2 PCP/CDU 3 Synaspismós/ 2 Syriza V 3 VAS 2 SF PDS/Die Linke DIKKI PdCI LO–LCR SP BE KSČM AKEL Sinn Féin SC–LSP SP-Irl AE Podemos Individual MEPs* Total 33 GUE/NGL MEPs Total MEPs 626 5.3 GUE/NGL (% MEPs) Ranking of 5th GUE/NGL groups

End 9 5 7 2 3 2 3 2

Start 4 4 6 3 2 2

End 4 4 6 3 2 2

3 1 1 6

3 1 1 6

2 2 5 1

2 2 5 1

2

2004–9

2009–14

2014–

Start 1 5 2 3 2 1

Start 1

Start 4

End 1 5 2 3 2 1

End 1

4 2 2 1

6 2 2 1

4 3 6

2 1

2 1

1

1

1 1

7

7

8

8

7

2

2

2 1 6 2 2

2 1 6 2 2

2 3 4 2 1 1 1

2 2 4 2 1 1 1

1 3 2 2

7

2

2

2

2

2 3 5 6

35

42

49

41

41

35

36

52

626 5.6

626 6.7

626 7.8

785 5.2

785 5.2

736 4.8

766 4.7

751 6.9

5th

5th

4th

5th

5th

6th

6th

5th

Note: *MEPs elected on lists without group affiliation who then took an individual decision to join GUE/NGL. Source: Calossi (2011), www.parties-and-elections.eu, accessed 30 June 2017.

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within the EU.6 Furthermore, the GUE/NGL has become an active forum for international co-operation as the locus for frequent meetings between party leaders, receptions of national delegations and (in contrast to the situation before 1989) coherent policy statements on issues as diverse as labour legislation, US Missile Defence, EU–Palestine relations and climate change (GUE/NGL, 2009). Nevertheless, as a platform for the emergence of the EL, the GUE/NGL has been highly inadequate, not least because of its relatively small size (generally 35–52 MEPs, making it the fifth or sixth largest EP group). The more basic problem was that it emerged as an alliance of convenience driven by the EP’s regulations of financing and functioning – it was always better for smaller parties to be part of any EP group than be among the so-called Non-Inscrits (‘Non-Attached’) MEPs, who have few privileges (e.g. no rights to committee positions) (Calossi, 2011: 103). The lack of founding ethos combined with Comintern-aversion to provide a very loose format from the outset – not accidentally, the ‘Confederal’ name reflected this desire for autonomy. As its founding declaration stated, the GUE/NGL was a ‘forum for cooperation between its different political components, each of which retains its own independent identity and commitment to its own positions’ (GUE/NGL, 1994). Moreover, the founding declarations made no reference either to communism or socialism, thus weakening the Group as a motor for ideological consolidation. The amorphous nature of the GUE/NGL caused (and still causes) significant discontent among the more ardent Europeanist RLPs, which continue to regard it as a ‘technical’ or ‘occasional’ group, emerging as a product of electoral arithmetic and not strategic decisions, and being overall essentially inadequate to the task of providing coherent legislative presence for the radical left in the European Parliament. However much the GUE/NGL developed a ‘mode of harmonious cooperation’ (van Hüllen, 2008: 466), its true transnationalism remains stillborn. We shall return to this question in chapter 6. Suffice it to say for now that the GUE/NGL’s relationship with the EL continues to be highly problematic. The European Anti-Capitalist Left Another initiative recognising the EU as the main forum for action was the EACL, set up in 2000. The EACL was initiated by small parties of a broadly post-Trotskyist extraction, most of which did not participate in the NELF or GUE/NGL. These parties took a more anti-integrationist position than the Europeanists, basing themselves on opposition to the ‘bourgeois’ nature of the EU, yet remained suspicious of the national sovereigntist communists – historically they had regarded these as Stalinist

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bureaucratic deviations from true Leninism. The key actors in the EACL included the French LCR, the Danish RGA, Portuguese BE, and from Britain the Scottish Socialist Party, Socialist Workers’ Party and Respect. At its zenith, the group had a dozen members, with eight observers (van Hüllen, 2008: 477). The EACL emerged as a product of several factors. First among these was the Trotskyists’ attempts from the mid-1980s onwards to ‘form a revolutionary pole against European integration’ (van Hüllen, 2008: 472). Second were attempts by the ‘broad left’ parties to widen co-operation between divergent left-wing currents. This was epitomised above all by the Portuguese BE, one of the EACL’s prime movers, who saw one of their primary aims as bridging competing traditions: ‘we continue to have a different, unitarian approach. We are members of EL, have links with NELF, different extreme lefts, NPA, Anglo-Saxon Trotskyist left, Callinicos etc.’ (Portas, 2010). A third factor was increasing co-operation via the GJM, emergent after the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. Finally, we may mention that the increasing pace of European integration fomented increasing counter-tendencies. Indeed, the EACL initiative was formed at a March 2000 counter-summit against the EU in Lisbon to protest the Nice Treaty process and thereafter it held twiceyearly summits to coincide with those of the EU. In sum, before the EL emerged, the EACL proved attractive to radical and extreme left parties which shared the ‘broad left’ perspective and sought to co-operate closely with the movements – parties such as the PRC and Synaspismós which eventually became key drivers in the EL alongside the BE also joined the EACL (although unlike the BE, only as observers). Hanley (2008: 154) regarded the EACL as once a serious rival for the EL. Indeed, although the group remained a network rather than an organisation, it did aspire to form a common left list for the 2004 EP elections. It did not ultimately succeed, in part because the EL proved a more attractive proposition for parties like the PRC and Synaspismós, which effectively ceased participation after joining EL (Trevor, 2003). Moreover, with the transition of the French LCR into the New Anti-Capitalist Party and the internal problems that followed, the EACL largely fell into abeyance from 2005–8 (Portas, 2010). The post-2008 economic crisis provided the opportunity for a return to consolidation and co-operation, and in this context the EACL declared that: The anti-capitalist left has to match the international organisation of capitalism. Our strength is limited, but it is greater when combined. Through meeting and discussing together we can arrive at common initiatives and actions and, we hope, to define the political basis of a European anti-capitalist regroupment. (European Anti-Capitalist Left, 2011)

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Table 3.3  Participants in the EACL (London Conference, 12 June 2011) Party

Country

LCR/SAP Radnicka Borba (Workers’ Struggle) RGA NPA Counterfire Socialist Party Socialist Resistance Socialist Workers’ Party APO SEK People Before Profit SP-Irl Socialist Workers’ Party International Socialists Socialist Alternative Politics Polish Labour Party BE Scottish Socialist Party En Lucha (In Struggle) IA POR Socialist Party

Belgium Croatia Denmark France Great Britain Great Britain Great Britain Great Britain Greece Greece Ireland Ireland Ireland Netherlands Netherlands Poland Portugal Scotland Spain Spain Spain Sweden

Other European Network

EL

EL, GUE/NGL, NELF

Source: European Anti-Capitalist Left (2011).

Nevertheless, the EACL has once again fallen into irrelevance. Although 2011 brought excellent election results for some of its key members (such as the Danish RGA and in Ireland the Socialist Party and People before Profit Alliance), most of its twenty-three members are now entirely groupuscular revolutionary Trotskyist parties (see Table 3.3). The EACL has not met formally since 2012 and ambitions to provide an alternative to the EL are no longer realistic. The International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties The final relevant initiative emerges from the national sovereigntists (principally the KKE and PCP), which have re-instituted the Soviet practice of annual international communist conferences. The first was held in May 1998. Dedicated to ‘Communist parties in actual conditions’, it was

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organised by the KKE in Athens to commemorate both its 80th anniversary and The Communist Manifesto’s 150th anniversary (Gleumes and Moreau, 1999). This meeting drew fifty-seven parties, and became the prototype for annual International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties organised worldwide on themes such as opposition to EU education reform and labour policies, NATO and the 2003 Iraq war, anti-militarism and solidarity with Cuba. For example, the November 2007 meeting in Minsk, Belarus, was organised by the Russian KPRF and Communist Party of Belarus to commemorate the October Revolution’s 90th anniversary, and gathered 154 representatives of 72 communist and workers’ parties (Solidnet, 2007). These meetings are wholly traditional – there is no aspiration towards true multilateral organisation, and they are internationalist and global, with Europe being discussed only as an element of global imperialism. However, they have certainly developed greater organisational weight and complexity. The meetings now have a working group, and since 2009 the annual International Communist Review has been published on the website www.iccr.gr. In addition, the KKE (which has increasingly seen itself as the nucleus of a new internationalism) set up Solidarity Network (www.solidnet.org) as one of the first (albeit rudimentary) attempts to inform and co-ordinate international communist activity online. The party has also presided over frequent regional initiatives, such as a January 2011 Balkan Meeting of Communist Parties, encompassing a range of tiny South-East European communist parties (such as the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia and Turkish Labour Party), and meetings inviting CPs from the South-East Mediterranean and Middle East. But other parties have also produced initiatives – for example, the KSČM organised a Prague commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the ‘defeat of fascism’ in April 2005. Such conferences play a significant organisational, informational and propagandistic role, gathering as they do parties across Europe and from as far as Argentina and Sudan. Despite a nucleus of conservative communists, reformist communists (the PCF, PRC) and non-communists (the Swedish V) have occasionally attended. However, given the miniscule political weight of many participants (e.g. the Communist Party of Britain), the main achievements are undoubtedly psychological. Certainly no party including the KKE is willing or able to take on the funding burden relinquished by Moscow. However, the IMCWP is more capable than other initiatives of providing an alternative pole of transnational activity to the EL, since, although many of its attendees are micro-groupuscules (Table 3.4), it does include a number of European parties of considerable electoral weight such as the KKE, PCP, AKEL, KSČM and the Communist Parties

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Table 3.4  European Participants in the IMCWP (17th Meeting, Istanbul 2015)

Party

Country

PVDA/PTB KPB SRP AKEL

Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus

KSČM KPiD/DKP SKP DKP Communist Party of Britain KKE MMP Communist Party of Ireland Workers’ Party of Ireland Communist Party of Lithuania Communist Party of Macedonia New Communist Party of the Netherlands Communist Party of Norway PCP

Czech Republic Denmark Finland Germany Great Britain

KPRF KPSS RKRP–KPSS Communist Party of Serbia PCE PCPE Communist Party of Sweden

Greece Hungary Ireland

Other European Network

EL*, GUE/NGL, NELF* EL*, GUE/NGL EL EL* (until 2016) GUE/NGL

Recent national election result (% of national vote) 3.7 (2014) – (2014) (1) 0.0 (2015) 25.7 (2015) 14.9 (2013) n/a 0.3 (2015) 0.0 (2009) n/a 5.6 (2015) 0.6 (2014) 0.0 (2016)

Ireland

0.2 (2016)

Lithuania

Illegal

FYROM

n/a

Netherlands

0.05 (2003)

Norway

0.0 (2013)

Portugal Russia Russia Russia Serbia Spain Spain Sweden

GUE/NGL, NELF*

EL, GUE/NGL, NELF

8.3 (2015) 19.2 (2011) n/a 2.2 (1999) – (2016) (2) 21.2 (2016) (3) 0.1 (2016) 0.01 (2014)



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Table 3.4  European Participants in the IMCWP (17th Meeting, Istanbul 2015) (Continued) Other European Network

Recent national election result (% of national vote)

Party

Country

Communist Party of Turkey KPU Union of Communists of Ukraine

Turkey

0.11 (2015)

Ukraine Ukraine

3.9 (2014) n/a

Notes: *Observer; (1) Participates in coalition with the Bulgarian Socialist Party; (2) Participated in coalition with Serbian Socialist Party; (3) This result is for United Left coalition, of which PCE is part. In 2016, it was part of Unidos Podemos coalition. ‘–’: did not contest. Source: www.parties-and-elections.eu; www.parlgov.org; www.wikipedia.org, accessed 1 August 2018). There have been more recent meetings (e.g. in 2017 in Russia), but the participants’ list is unavailable. See for example www.solidnet. org/export/sites/default/meetings-and-statements/imcwp/19th-internationalmeeting-of-communist-and-workers-parties/, accessed 1 August 2018.

of Russia and Ukraine. Moreover, although some eventually joined the EL, a number have continued to view it with undisguised ideological hostility. For instance, a 2012 article in the International Communist Review attacked the ‘heirs of Eurocommunism’ in the Spanish PCE, whose ‘revisionist approaches can [allegedly] coexist naturally with forces that have fully renounced … the class struggle, with all kinds of social democrats, Trotskyists and every modern variety of opportunism, both right and left, as they already do … in the European Left Party’ (Turrero, 2010). The KKE has gone further still, both in its attacks on the EL and in its increasing insistence that something approximating a new Communist International is needed in the fight against ‘revisionism’. For example, in 2011 the party argued that the disappearance of a Communist International weakened the working class in its struggle against capitalism: Which class does not have an international expression towards the capitalist power which is organised at a nation-state level and internationally? The working class. Besides the obvious need for this, we must examine the causes of the problems concerning the promotion of the international organization of the ideological and political vanguard of the working class. In the opinion of the KKE, the problem is not chiefly an organizational one,

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but ideological-theoretical, which of course reflects the split of the working class at a national level. The ideological unity of the international communist movement has been disturbed and this is what needs to be restored. This is the basic duty for all the [communist parties] –irrespective of their various names – which have the necessary working class composition in their base and in their leading bodies, which ensured the will of the vanguard of the working class to organize the struggle against capitalist exploitation and not to compromise with it. (Mpellou, 2011)

The reason for the disappearance of this international unity was given as the pernicious influence of ‘revisionism’, even upon the then-ruling communist parties in the dying days of the Soviet-style regimes. The essential precondition for the restoration of a ‘new international’ was rigid adherence to ideological orthodoxy. The KKE was in little doubt as to what that struggle entails in today’s conditions: Another current of revisionism and opportunism known as ‘Eurocommunism’ eroded the labour movement in the developed capitalist societies and continues to do so, on the one hand maintaining the communist symbols and on the other by creating an opportunist European organization, the European Left Party (ELP). The ELP utilizes and foments existing weaknesses and difficulties in [communist parties], e.g. in Latin America and Asia, weaknesses that spring from the relatively delayed development of capitalism in these countries. The ELP ‘pushes’ [communist parties] into a line of alliance with bourgeois forces of other imperialist centres – so-called allies – (e.g. the EU) against American imperialism regarding them as allegedly allied forces. (Mpellou, 2011)

The KKE’s vehement, consistent and intransigent opposition to the EL is a theme we shall return to more than once. Suffice it to say now that this opposition reached its apogee in 2014, when the KKE left the GUE/NGL group (of which it had been a constituent member since its founding in 1994). In October 2013, in the run-up to the 2014 European parliamentary elections, it formed the INITIATIVE of Communist and Workers’ Parties, essentially a European section of the IMCWP, which was open to ‘(e)very communist and workers’ party from an EU member state or associated state, as well as from other European countries’, with the aim of ‘study[ing] and elaborat[ing] European issues and … coordinat[ing member parties’] activity’ (INITIATIVE, 2014). It was abundantly clear that the INITIATIVE aimed to consolidate opposition to the EL and to promote an alternative (national-sovereigntist) view of the EU that explicitly denounced Europeanism and its adherents. As the founding declaration argued: It is our assessment that the European Union is the European imperialist centre, supports the aggressive plans against the peoples, and is aligned with the USA and NATO. It has militarism as a structural element … We believe



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in the right of every people to choose its own sovereign path of development, including the right to disengage from the multi-level dependencies on the EU and NATO, as well as the right to choose socialism. We are not full members of the so-called ‘European Parties’, which are formed by the EU and amongst them the so-called ‘European Left Party’. (INITIATIVE, 2014)

Be that as it may, the INITIATIVE’s potential to become an alternative pole of attraction for European RLPs has been hamstrung by its inability to lure other sympathetic parties (e.g. the PCP, AKEL and the KSČM) away from either the GUE/NGL or EL. With the KKE itself having just two MEPs sitting among the ‘Non-Aligned’ in the 2014–19 European Parliament, the INITIATIVE is largely a club of entirely marginal parties (Table 3.5). Towards the Creation of the European Left Party Accordingly, by the turn of the millennium a number of competing and overlapping radical left initiatives had emerged. In the EU at least the largest, most diverse and overall most significant were the GUE/NGL and NELF. But neither of these was up to the task of forging a common European left strategy or identity, and nor were they intended or designed for such purposes – both deliberately eschewed anything that might prove divisive by threatening the autonomy of each participating party: the GUE/ NGL avoided strategy and the NELF avoided institutionalisation (Scholz, 2010). Accordingly, the ‘Europeanists’ who dominated the NELF and had a strong base in the GUE/NGL grew increasingly unhappy with these forums and pushed the EL project forwards. Already at a June 1998 NELF meeting in Berlin, leaders of a number of parties, led by the German PDS and Italian PRC, gathered in Berlin to discuss new ways of deepening cooperation and collaboration at the European level which would ‘build up a more concrete collaboration … to convey a common profile to [the] European Left’, starting with a common address to the 1999 EP elections (EL, 2009b). This was followed in January 1999 by a meeting in Paris attended by leaders of thirteen parties who formulated an appeal for the forthcoming 1999 EP elections: As a result of this meeting [the parties] … for the first time elaborated and passed a common request concerning the European elections, addressing all people living in the EU. In it [they] formulated common aims and key ideas for a social, ecological, democratic, peaceful, and solidarity-based Europe as well as an outline of common goals for their cooperation within the EU. (EL, 2009b)

In the wake of those elections, the President of the German PDS, Lothar Bisky, and the leadership of the Greek Synaspismós took the initiative in

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Table 3.5  Participants in the INITIATIVE of Communist and Workers’ Parties Party

Country

Recent national election result (% of national vote)

Party of Labour of Austria Belarusian Communist Party of Workers – Section of the CPSU Union of Communists in Bulgaria Party of Bulgarian Communists Socialist Labour Party of Croatia Communist Party in Denmark Communist Revolutionary Party of France Pole of Communist Revival in France Unified Communist Party of Georgia Communist Party of Greece Hungarian Workers’ Party Workers’ Party of Ireland Communist Party Latvian Socialist Party Socialist People’s Front Communist Party of Macedonia Communist Party of Malta People’s Resistance Moldova Communist Party of Norway Communist Party of Poland Communist Party of the Soviet Union Russian Communist Workers’ Party – Communist Party of the Soviet Union New Communist Party of Yugoslavia Communist Party of Slovakia Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain Communist Party of Sweden Communist Party of Turkey Union of Communists of Ukraine New Communist Party of Britain

Austria Belarus

n/a n/a

Bulgaria Bulgaria Croatia Denmark France France Georgia Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania FYROM Malta Moldova Norway Poland Russia Russia

0.2 (2013) 0.2 (2009) 0.0 (2015) n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 5.6 (2015) 0.6 (2014) 0.2 (2016) 0.3 (2016) - (2014) (1) 1.2 (2012) 0.2 (2002) 0.1 (1987) n/a 0.0 (2017) n/a n/a 2.2 (1999)

Serbia Slovakia Spain

n/a 0.6 (2016) 0.1 (2016)

Sweden Turkey Ukraine UK

0.0 (2018) 0.1 (2015) n/a n/a

Note: 1) As part of electoral list of social democratic party ‘Harmony’. Source: www.initiative-cwpe.org/en/participating-parties/; www.wikipedia.org, accessed 11 September 2018.

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urging follow-up meetings to prepare the way for the launch of a common European Left Party in time for the 2004 EP elections. An initiative group worked on the manifesto and statutes during 2003. A summit of interested parties in Berlin in January 2004 adopted the draft manifesto and approved the convocation of a Founding Congress in Rome on 8–9 May 2004, at which the EL was finally born. That the EL emerged when it did should be seen as a propitious combination of Europeanist ideological zeal and political opportunity. In terms of ideological zeal, the Europeanists argued that the informal co-operation provided by the NELF and GUE/NGL was useful but could no longer provide a Europe-wide response to the challenges of neoliberal globalisation; they had ‘a strong common urge to pool their forces to influence the course of European events more strongly’ and to forge ‘an upgraded, more effective intervention’ (Ettinger, 2004). For the Europeanists, ‘the alternative to today’s EU cannot be withdrawal into national quarters’. On the contrary, supranationalism (with co-ordinated policy-making and shared strategic thinking) was necessary in an era of resurgent neoliberal globalisation and US hegemony. In terms of political opportunity, the sense of urgency was certainly increasing, and this indeed helped the momentum towards founding the EL. The main factors that increased the Europeanists’ conviction that the time for the EL was nigh in the early 2000s included: • Influence by the anti-neoliberal and environmentalist social movements after the European Social Forum in Florence in 2002 and subsequent transnational mobilisation against neoliberal globalisation. The EL aimed to become an attractive and reliable partner for the GJM (Hanley, 2008: 146; Karatsioubanis, 2010a). • The prospect of strengthening the anti-war movement against US militarisation in Afghanistan and Iraq. • The prospect of articulating a pan-European defence of the European social model, seen as the core of European identity. • The perceived need to accelerate EU integration (in particular Eastern enlargement) by freeing it from ‘Euro-Atlanticism’ and from President Bush’s calls for ‘a united Europe under an expanded NATO’ (Trigazis, 2003). • Reflecting the aforementioned ‘top-down institutionalisation’ and ‘internal creation’ of TNPs by the EP itself, the dual deadlines of EP elections in June 2004 and introduction of EP-administered funding for European political parties in July 2004 were pivotal in forcing the EL’s emergence to take advantage of new material and financial opportunities at a speed which some deemed hasty and controversial (van Hüllen, 2008; Scholz, 2010).

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• The need to counteract rival radical left groupings, particularly the EACL and IMCWP, also drove the EL’s integration process at a speed it might not otherwise have maintained (Hanley, 2008: 146). There were fifteen founder members of the EL at its May 2004 Congress, with four observers. Significant organisational consolidation was reflected by the fact that by April 2007 the party had eighteen members and nine observers, and by 2012, twenty-seven members and eleven observers. By 2018 this had declined slightly to twenty-four parties and seven observers (plus four partners, a new category instituted in 2017, as described in the next chapter). This was mainly because of some defections (e.g. the PG and German Communist Party) and other parties becoming defunct, such as the member party the Communist Party (Flanders) and observer parties such as the Polish Young Socialists and Greek A.K.O.A. (Renovative Communist and Ecological Left) (see Table 3.6). However, in pure numerical membership and geographical coverage, the EL had swiftly become one of the most significant European radical left organisations: equalled only by the NELF and the GUE/NGL, and with clearly a more ambitious intent. Indeed, it was an early aim of the EL to be maximally inclusive: from the beginning all founding parties agreed that party work had ‘to take place openly and transparently’, to ‘involve the membership of the parties’ and to address the ‘sovereignty and independence of the parties, which, especially at the European level, has a lot to do with past “patronising” from Moscow’ (European Left, 2009a). The founders respected the fact that ‘[t] he Left in Europe consists of diverse, and in part opposing, political and social formations, programs and worldviews, which differ in their backgrounds and regional origins, experiences, and attitudes toward the EU’. Nevertheless, precisely for this reason, and reflecting the Europeanist aspirations of the founders, they expressed the aspiration that the left ‘has to express itself as united at the European level and develop necessary concrete and alternative proposals for a different EU, and a different Europe together’ (European Left, 2009a). This inclusiveness was everywhere evident at the first congress. In the run-up to the event, party founders aimed to invoke a wide variety of revolutionary symbols; for example, visiting the memorials to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Berlin in January 2004 and Antonio Gramsci’s grave in Rome in May of the same year. The EL was even founded on 9 May, the ‘day of liberation from Fascism’ (van Hüllen, 2008: 468). The choice of Faustino Bertinotti (the leader of the Italian PRC) as the EL’s first Chairperson also fitted this logic: the PRC was widely recognised throughout the 1990s as an innovative and pluralist formation that had ostensibly successfully incorporated a wide variety of historically antagonistic left-wing trends



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Table 3.6  EL members and observers, 2004–18

Country

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Austria Belarus

Founding members (May 2004) Communist Party of Austria

Belgium Bulgaria Cyprus

Czech Republic Denmark

Estonia

Finland

Party of Democratic Socialism

Estonian Social Democratic Labour Party (later, United Left Party)

France

French Communist Party

Germany

Party of Democratic Socialism, Germany (later, Left Party)

Members (2018) Communist Party of Austria Belarusian Party of the Left ‘Fair World’ Communist Party (WalloniaBrussels) Bulgarian Left

Party of Democratic Socialism Red–Green Alliance (known in Danish as Enhedlisten, or Unity List) Estonian United Left Party 

Communist Party of Finland Left Alliance French Communist Party Left Party

Observers (2018)

Progressive Party of Working People New Cyprus Party United Cyprus Party Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

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the european left party Table 3.6  EL members and observers, 2004–18 (Continued)

Country

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Greece Hungary

Italy Luxembourg Moldova

Portugal Romania San Marino Slovakia Slovenia Spain

Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom

Founding members (May 2004) Synaspismόs Workers’ Party (later, Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party) Communist Refoundation Party

Socialist Alliance Party Communist Refoundation of San Marino Communist Party of Slovakia Communist Party of Spain United Left United and Alternative Left (Catalunya) Labour Party of Switzerland

Members (2018)

Observers (2018)

Syriza Workers’ Party of Hungary 2006 Communist Refoundation Party The Left Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova Left Bloc Romanian Socialist Party

The Left Communist Party of Spain United Left United and Alternative Left (Catalunya) Labour Party of Switzerland Freedom and Solidarity Party

The Other Europe with Tsipras

Communist Party of Slovakia

Left Unity

Source: www.european-left.org/about-el/member-parties/, accessed 11 September 2018.

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and also broadened its links to involve the social movements. Accordingly, Bertinotti was an ideal symbol of inclusiveness: ‘Only the PRC was in a situation to take such an initiative. This party holds a position as intermediary – “bridge” as they put it – between the two currents that exist inside this “alternative left” ’ (CP and non-communist) (Vercammen, 2002). The EL’s initial statutes continued the theme. At the outset, it defined itself in broad terms as a ‘flexible, decentralised association of independent and sovereign European left-wing parties and political organisations which works together on the basis of consensus.’ It was open to ‘socialist, communist, red–green and other democratic left parties of the member states and associated states of the European Union (EU) who [were] working together and establishing various forms of cooperation at all levels of political activity in Europe’ (European Left, 2004). Clearly, then, one cardinal founding aim of the EL was to bridge differences between the ‘old’ left (the communists, socialists and the labour movement) and the ‘new or post-materialist left’ (feminist and environmental groups) (Hanley, 2008: 146). Vital in this regard was the EL’s denunciation of Stalinism: the EL’s statutes condemned ‘undemocratic, Stalinist practices and crimes, which were in absolute contradiction to socialist and communist ideals’ (European Left, 2010b). Accordingly, the EL aimed to show that it was unafraid to make an unambiguous break with the past, and to take potentially controversial decisions in favour of maximal unity. Other party decisions taken at the Founding Congress underlined the cautious but inclusive manner in which the EL envisaged proceeding. The party aimed to collaborate with the GUE/NGL, NELF and EACL. The statutes declared that the party aimed to produce ‘common guidelines for the elections to the European Parliament’ rather than a common manifesto (European Left, 2004). However, and perhaps slightly ambiguously, member parties were to subscribe to a common ‘political programme (manifesto)’, which indeed was an outcome of the May 2004 Congress. Other potentially ambiguous elements included the lack of real substantiation to the criticism of Stalinism – no party statement then or since has elucidated the EL’s views on the demerits of ‘really existing socialism’ (to quote the Brezhnevite self-description, used without irony by proponents of the old regimes – and with considerable irony by their opponents). Nor was the party’s view of ‘another Europe’ that it demanded spelled out in much detail initially – although such detail did come later. On the one hand, since the party saw Europe as ‘a new space for the integration of more and more countries’ and ‘both an opportunity and a challenge to regain the political initiative for Left forces’, this indicated further the dominance of the Europeanist view. On the other hand, the party’s declarations were very general, with aspirations to ‘a Europe that says no to war and militarization … a

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Europe of diverse cultures, of freedom of spirit … a Europe open to a world that resists capitalist globalisation and open to the world … a democratic Europe’ being more akin to slogans that real policies (European Left, 2004). In a similar spirit, the 2004 manifesto was a very broad, aspirational and detail-free document. It argued that ‘new hope’ and a ‘new option for a change’ were emerging in Europe, which was ‘a space for the rebirth of struggles for another society’. This new hope would be based on the ‘values and traditions of socialism, communism and the labour movement, of feminism, the feminist movement and gender equality, of the environmental movement and sustainable development, of peace and international solidarity, of human rights, humanism and antifascism, of progressive and liberal thinking, both nationally and internationally’ (European Left, 2004). There was not much excluded in such a definition! The manifesto was similarly nebulous elsewhere, expressing the aspiration to develop policies rather than specific policies themselves. It repeated the sentiment that the EU was ‘an increasingly important space for alternative politics’ and sought to defend the ‘original character of the European social model’ and not the ‘market values which today define [the EU], in particular through the Maastricht treaty policies and the decisions of the European Central Bank’. It decried the commodification of everything in today’s EU ‘from labour to the whole life cycle’, and placed particular blame for this at the door of the failed ‘social democratic concept of the Third way’ which did not resist, but indeed promoted this process. However, the failure of the social democrats offered the hope that the European Left Party might spearhead ‘a deep-rooted social and democratic transformation of Europe’: this Europe would be autonomous from US hegemony; open to the South of the world; alternative to capitalism in its social and political model; active against growing militarisation and war; and in favour of the protection of the environment and the respect of human rights, including social and economic ones (European Left, 2004). The few specific intentions the manifesto spelled out included freeing Europe of the ‘antidemocratic and neoliberal policies of WTO and IMF, refusing NATO, foreign military bases and any model of a European army leading to increasing military competition and arms race in the world’. Europe should be freed from nuclear weapons, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict solved according to UN resolutions; the ‘stability pact’ and the European Central Bank orientations should be changed to favour full employment and training, public services and a bold investment policy, and measures in gavour of the environment. The taxation of capital flows must be imposed. The EL promised to make sure the elected European institutions would ‘have more powers of action and control’. Such institutions included the European Parliament and the national parliaments as

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well as the representative committees (the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions). Perhaps it is too harsh to judge this manifesto by the standards of those of developed TNPs. After all, the EL was formed just a month before the June 2004 EP elections, and in forming even such a nebulous manifesto it had already gone beyond the common appeal of 1999 and indicated a level of (albeit lowest-common-denominator) consensus on the radical left that had not been achieved at European level since the creation of the Communists and Allies group in 1973. Indeed, the manifesto was entitled ‘It’s Just the Beginning’. What the EL certainly achieved in 2004 was momentum; despite its aspirations to co-operate, the EACL and NELF were soon eclipsed and the EL became one of the central nodes in the European left, however fragmented this still was (Figure 3.1 illustrates how the EL fitted into the existing web of radical left networks as they stood in 2012, before the EACL and NELF became redundant). There was doubtless a mixture of motives and degrees of clarity and commitment among the founders of the EL. To recall Hanley’s terms from chapter 1: the ‘entrepreneurs’ (those who drive the pace in the TNP) were clearly the core group of Europeanist founder members – Synaspismós, the German PDS, the French and Spanish communist parties and Italy’s PRC, whose starting point was that the EU was an effective space for concerted left-wing action. For them, the EL represented a necessary acceleration of moves towards finding an organisational form that would enable more concentrated efforts at co-ordinated policy-making and shared strategic thinking on the European left in order to combat dominant neoliberalism. That is not to imply unanimity among these founder members – as noted in the previous chapter, the PCF has tended to be more hesitant about moving towards a truly transnational party. Nevertheless, this core group saw ideological and practical rationales for the creation of a TNP as such. The main instigators for the formation of the EL are considered the PDS and PRC. For the PDS, as Hanley (2008) points out, the EL was something of a ‘winning gambit’; not only did the party consider there to be no alternative but to work within the EU in order to develop a stronger left presence across the continent, but this effort would also strengthen the party’s own role. Like the PDS, the PRC also helped to re-bridge lasting divisions within the party family, especially those between the communist tradition and the ‘new left’ (the ‘decantation’ function of TNPs). The party had built up ample domestic experience of this in the 1990s and was well placed to project this experience on the transnational plane; not surprisingly Bertinotti summed up the chief achievement of the EL in its first three years as fostering ‘mutual understanding, the willingness to learn from each other’s experiences and

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SPIrl

GUE/NGL European Left Party

SFIrl

VAS

V

SV

SF GL^

Syn

EACL

ICV ^

SP^

NELF Die Linke

BE

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ˇ KSCM

*

IMCWP

IU KKE

LSP

PCP ^

AKEL PCF *^ RGA PdCI

Lénk

*

PRC

SKP

KPÖ ^

PST

EÜVP

ÖDP

DKPGer PAS

Figure 3.1  The European Left Party in the web of European radical left networks, 2012 Notes: * observer member of the EL; ∧ observer member of NELF. For reasons of clarity, only a selection of parties is included. Source: Authors’ calculations – developed and amended from Calossi (2011, 2018).

not to think like a central authority but like a plurality of experience and cultures from which to draw lessons’ (Bertinotti, 2007). A second group of parties would fit into the ‘consolidator’ bracket: parties that were not pace-setters but which were happy with the emergence of the TNP and which endorsed it primarily for pragmatic, rather than ideological reasons. In this group fit most of the smaller parties without national parliamentary representation, such as the Estonian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (now the United Left Party) and the Romanian Socialist Alliance Party (now the Romanian Socialist Party). Most of these parties hoped for an external source of support, both moral and financial, which is a well-documented motive for joining a TNP. In addition, those smaller parties in Eastern and Central Europe saw involvement with a

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predominantly Western European party as conferring a degree of legitimacy to their activities, or even their existence, in their home countries, motives which had already led many Eastern social democratic parties to join the Socialist International in the 1990s.7 Nevertheless, not all smaller parties are ‘consolidators’: the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) was part of the EL initiative group and has remained enthusiastic about EL activities, playing a leading role in its ‘Transform!’ think-tank, while the Czech Party of Democratic Socialism (SDS) has also been relatively enthusiastic. These parties fit into the ‘entrepreneur’ category. However, a large number of parties fit either into the categories of ‘hesitant consolidators’ or ‘resisters’. The former group includes those parties such as the Cypriot AKEL, the KSČM and Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS), who have preferred to remain EL observers rather than become full members, and have maintained cordial but distant relations with the EL. The ‘resisters’ are a larger group still: these include national sovereigntist communists such as the KKE and PCP and a number of more Eurosceptic non-communist parties, such as the Nordic Green Left parties (the VAS, SF, SV, V and VG) and the SP in the Netherlands. Such parties are opposed either to the very concept of a European TNP, or to the specific form it has taken in the EL, or more usually both. The motivations of these nonjoiners will be explored further in chapter 6. It suffices to note now that their non-commitment has been a perennial weakness of the EL. Indeed, the Nordic Green Left parties formed the Nordic Green Left Alliance (NGLA) in Reykjavík, Iceland in February 2004, the timing of which clearly indicated a wish to opt out from the EL founding process. The NGLA did not aim to be a new party, but merely a loose forum of independent and sovereign parties that sought to reinforce existing regional co-operation. However, it has had little visibility since its founding moment. That notwithstanding, although VAS eventually joined the EL in 2009, and none of the other NGLA parties is hostile to EL, they have expressed no wish to upgrade their ties with it. Paradoxically, the Danish RGA, although more militantly euro-rejectionist than the NGLA parties, has indeed become a full EL member. Overall, despite the EL’s emergence as a central nexus among the existing radical left networks, the absence of such parties has significantly vitiated the EL’s founding claim to take pan-European radical left unity to a new stage. Moreover, this weakness is further compounded by the fact that a number of the EL’s more loyal core members are utterly marginal in their domestic party systems – parties such as the Romanian Socialist Party (PSR), Estonian United Left Party (EÜVP) and Czech SDS cannot compensate in terms of enthusiasm for the weight and momentum that AKEL

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or the Dutch SP could bring to the EL, were they ever to upgrade to full membership or join. After all, these parties, not to mention the Nordic Green Left parties, the KSČM, KKE and PCP, have all enjoyed aboveaverage electoral success.

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Conclusion The emergence of the EL in 2004 was the product of a fraught process of decomposition and recomposition on the radical left. It was driven by the combination of Europeanist ideological zeal of some of its core members, the funding incentives provided by European legislation and a growing sense of missed opportunities at the turn of the decade. There was a real sense of frustration among many that they had not only lost the historical initiative, but were also relinquishing any ability to fight back against dominant neoliberalism (Chountis, 2010). After all, this was the decade when the Socialist International, albeit itself in crisis, successfully recruited a plethora of ex-communist parties to its cause across Eastern Europe. The achievement in forming the EL should not be exaggerated. Certainly, the EL produced very much a lowest-common-denominator declaration at the outset; certainly, it conspicuously failed to encapsulate the full spectrum of the European left initially. Its founding members were keenly aware of their current limitations and the size of the future task. There was pragmatic caution, not triumphalism: this was a new party composed of members who were ‘acting out of strategic defense [sic] in a situation where neo-liberal policies dominate, a situation in which many countries have to accept heavy losses in elections’ (European Left, 2004). Yet, neither should the result be minimised. The EL’s 2004 manifesto was apt; this was just a beginning that at the very least succeeded in becoming an important node of activity and demonstrating momentum and a level of attraction to several parties that were not members at the outset. A certain level of bridge-building towards the non-communist left was achieved. As Hanley (2008: 152) notes, the creation of the EL was far more than mere opportunism, but marked a ‘change of mindset’ whereby key parties consolidated the transition from ‘negative transnationalism’ towards Europeanist positions that envisaged fighting for change within the EU. Moreover, given the intransigence of the negative transnationalism still espoused by some of its key critics (above all members of the IMCWP such as the KKE and PCP), it is certainly arguable that the EL could not have achieved much more than it did in 2004. The main, daunting, challenge would be to augment that early momentum and ensure that the EL did indeed become the ‘upgraded, more effective intervention’ that its founders envisaged.



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Notes 1 http://www.fourthinternational.org/, accessed 30 July 2019. 2 http://www.socialistworld.net/; http://internationalsocialists.org/wordpress/ about/, accessed 30 July 2019. 3 The Socialist Workers’ Party still participates in the Scottish TUSC, on the grounds that, whereas the independent left should not compete with UK Labour’s socialist leadership under Jeremy Corbyn, the more centrist Scottish Labour Party needs to be opposed from the left. 4 http://www.icmlpo.de/, accessed 30 July 2019. 5 Although, unlike the other two, IU is not a full party but an (albeit nearpermanent) coalition of parties and groups. 6 The most notorious element of the directive was its ‘country of origin’ principle that permitted EU firms to comply only with the laws of their ‘home’ country (where they were registered). The GUE/NGL argued that ‘Bolkenstein’ would engender a ‘race to the bottom’ in workers’ rights and ‘social dumping’ by companies relocating to less regulated economies (e.g. in Eastern Europe). 7 According to then EL Board and Secretariat member, Stelios Pappas, even such a prominent figure as Lothar Bisky, Chairman of the German Left Party and (from 2007–10) of EL itself, saw PDS–Left Party involvement in EL as a ‘pathway to the West’ (Pappas, 2009).

4

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The organisation, structure and political presence of the European Left Party

As students of political parties are well aware, questions of internal party organisation, structure, decision-making processes and procedures, and opportunities and openings for membership participation, involvement and control are never simply administrative questions. They are highly political matters, and impinge upon the nature and identity of parties. In this chapter we investigate some of the organisational, structural and procedural characteristics of the EL, as well as aspects of its modus operandi, with a view, above all, to asking how such issues impact upon the degree of Europeanisation of the party as well as its political visibility and effectiveness on the European political stage – what we might regard as its political presence. First, we comment briefly on the distinction between full member parties, observer parties and organisations with which EL has signed partnership agreements (a new category of association, introduced in 2017). Then, we examine the internal organisation of the EL – the role of party Congresses, the General Assembly (introduced in 2017), the Executive Board and the Council of Chairpersons. Next, we look at the question of individual membership and how well developed or otherwise the concept has been. We then move on to examine the role of the EL within the ambit of the European Parliament. Finally, we consider some of the other possibilities for involvement in politics and policy-making initiatives that EL offers, including its attempts to broaden the scope of its activities and to reach out to the wider European left. In short, the purpose of this chapter is two-fold: to consider how the organisational structures and policymaking processes of EL affect both the effectiveness of EL as an actor on the European stage and its degree of Europeanisation; and to examine whether EL has succeeded in its aim of becoming a networking party that facilitates left co-operation in general.

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Full members, observer members and EL partners

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At the time of writing (2019), the EL had twenty-six full member parties and organisations, nine observer member parties (including the recently admitted Sinistra Italiana) and had signed partnership agreements with four others. Article 5 of the EL statutes – most recently amended by the fifth party Congress in Berlin in December 2016 and by the General Assembly meeting in Brussels in June 2017 – states that: Membership to the EL [sic] is open to any left party and political organisation in Europe that agrees with the aims and principles of the political programme (manifesto) and accepts these statutes. Their membership is granted by decision of the members. Other parties and political organisations may apply for observer status or might be invited by the members to become observers to the EL. Number of member parties is unlimited, but the minimum number of full members is three. Should the number fall below this threshold, the Association is obliged to start procedures for its dissolution.

Article 7 deals more explicitly with both the procedure by which parties can join, and the distinction between full members and observers, as well as introducing the category of ‘EL partner’: • A member party or political organisation of the EL with full rights and duties can become [sic] any left party or political organisation that is represented in the European Parliament, or in the National parliaments or in the Parliaments of regions [representatives] in regional assemblies within the EU member-states. • In EU member states with no regional level it will be sufficient for a party or political organisation to have representatives on the municipal level, if a municipal parliament represents at least 20 percent of the country’s population. • Parties or political organisations, coming from EU member states or non-EU member states, can become members of the European Left with full rights, irrespectively if they have parliamentarian representation [sic] on different levels. • Membership in the EL does not prohibit the membership in other associations [sic], including outside the European Union if their acting [sic] is not contrary to the aims and principles of the EL. The structure of the EL allows political organisations which are politically close to the EL to take part in its activities in a flexible manner. If desirable for both sides, EL can establish a cooperation protocol for this purpose, and the respective organisations are entitled the designation [sic] ‘EL partner’. The main criterion here is the political consent with the basic positions of the EL; the decision-making process inside the EL on this issue follows the rules for decision about membership issues.

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• Applications for membership in the EL are discussed and decided by the Council of Chairpersons on a basis of proposals from the Executive Board, and ratified by the general Assembly on suggestion of the Executive Board on the basis of the application, the rules and political programme presented by the applicant. The decision by the Council of Chairpersons has to be based on consensus. • The temporary / provisional suspension from participation in activities, or the cancellation of membership in the EL in case a member party or political organisation seriously violates statutes and political aims are carried out through the same procedures as the admittance. • The applications for observer status is [sic] decided in the same way, except for the need of ratification. Observer parties or political organisations take part in the meetings, to which they are invited, as consultants. They can make proposals to the Executive Board for examination and decision making. • Member parties or political organisations that want to leave the EL have to declare this officially; the same procedure applies to observers and individual members. (European Left, 2017a).

The distinction drawn here between full members and observers is a little vague. However, the main differences appear to be three-fold. First, observers are not required to give as clear and unequivocal a commitment to the EL statutes and programme (which include, for example, a condemnation of Stalinism) as are full members. Secondly, whereas full members must demonstrate the existence of some level of electoral support (however scant, it might be added) by securing some elected representation at least at the level of local or municipal government in their home states, this requirement does not apply to observers. This makes it possible for organisations that are not political parties as such, and therefore do not contest elections, to apply for observer status, while a strict interpretation of the statutes would suggest that they would be excluded from full membership. An example might be Democratic Left Scotland (DLS) – a small non-party, networking organisation which includes members of the Scottish National Party, Labour, the Greens and others – which applied for observer status in 2012. In the event, DLS found its application for observer status went unanswered for several years.1 When it was actively revived in 2017, DLS opted for the new category of ‘EL partner’, signing a partnership agreement with EL in Vienna in March 2018. Thirdly, full members are by definition fully involved in the policy-making processes and leadership of the EL, each of them sending two representatives to the Executive Board, as well as nominating delegations to party Congresses and electoral conventions. Observers, by contrast, are not represented by right on these bodies and can only ‘take part in the meetings, to which

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they are invited, as consultants’, and ‘make proposals to the Executive Board’. The distinction between full members and observers has nothing to do with whether a country is an EU member state or not: full membership of the EL is available to parties from outside the EU, in contrast with most other TNPs (see chapter 7 for a discussion of this point). Rather, the category of observers performs several important functions for the EL. First, it allows the EL to draw into its orbit parties that may have doubts or hesitations about its politics but also harbour a certain amount of good will towards its objectives – in the hope that they may later ‘upgrade’ to full membership. An example might be the RGA which, as an extremely Eurosceptic organisation, at first viewed EL with some suspicion. However, after a period as an observer, the RGA opted for full membership in 2010. Another example might be those Central and Eastern European left parties that, without being out-and-out Stalinist parties (and thus judged ‘beyond the Pale’), nevertheless are divided internally between what might be called ‘nostalgists’ and ‘progressives’. The EL has no desire to ‘abandon’ these parties to the clutches of what Seán Hanley has called ‘chauvinocommunist nationalism’ (quoted in Hudson, 2012: 133), but rather wishes to encourage the more progressive and radical elements. A clear example is the KSČM, which has long been divided internally between elements that resent and distrust the EL’s strong condemnation of the Stalinist past – and that have therefore opposed suggestions of full EL membership– and elements such as former party Vice-Chairperson and MEP, the late Miloslav Ransdorf, who endorsed both Czech membership of the EU (Hudson, 2012: 142) and full KSČM membership of the EL. Observer status allows this party to stay ‘on board’ until, hopefully from the EL’s point of view, the internal balance swings in favour of the progressives. Yet another example concerns AKEL. The dominant left party – indeed, one of the two main contenders for government office – in Cyprus, with around 30 per cent of the popular vote in most elections, AKEL is obviously an attractive ‘catch’ for the EL. Yet, the complicated and intimate history of Cypriot and Greek communism means that AKEL – at least for the current generation of its leadership – is much more strongly bound, emotionally and historically, to the fiercely anti-EL KKE than it is to the Greek radical left Syriza party, which is of course a full EL member (Polycarpou, 2012). And this is despite the fact that AKEL in government pursued policies that are markedly more ‘revisionist’ and social democratic than anything espoused by either the EL or Syriza, both of which the KKE condemns as ‘revisionist’ (for a scathingly critical assessment of AKEL’s ‘weak and hesitant’ performance in government between 2008 and 2013, see Charalambous and Ioannou,

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2015). Some commentators might question AKEL’s motives in opting for observer status; one GUE/NGL official in the European Parliament told the present authors that ‘observer is the key word here. AKEL might be seen as observing developments in the EL camp on behalf of the KKE’ (O’Donnell, 2010). But, for the EL, the relationship is better than none at all. In all of these cases, observer status allows the EL to fudge divisions, hesitancies and suspicions and to keep open a working relationship with important parties, in the hope of future improvement. In a similar fashion, observer status might prove attractive in the future to parties such as the Icelandic VG or the Norwegian SV, which do not appear able or ready to follow the Finnish VAS or the Danish RGA into full membership of the EL, but do not either share the ‘rejectionism’ of the Danish SF, which has opted for a strategic alliance with the Greens, rather than the EL, or that of the Swedish Left Party, which has opted to stand aside from any close alignment with the EL. In all such cases, observer status and partnership agreements are useful in emphasising the EL’s desire to act in a flexible manner and as a networking party. Secondly, the financial benefits that observer status allows the EL to reap should not be overlooked. Put quite simply, MEPs from observer parties can of course be counted in a TNP’s total under EU legislation; and without the four MEPs from the KSČM and the two MEPs from AKEL, the EL would struggle to survive and flourish financially. In a similar manner, the introduction of a new category of ‘EL partners’ in 2017 might be seen as an attempt to further broaden the possibilities for political co-operation – and for welcoming ‘into the family’ political parties and networks that are not yet ready or willing to contemplate even observer membership. The first of these partnership agreements was signed with A BAL – Balpárt (The LEFT – Left Party) of Hungary, a new left party founded in 2014 by civil society organisations as well as some formers members of the Hungarian Socialist Party and the Hungarian Green Left. The agreement granted the Hungarian Left Party the right ‘to use the symbols and the material of the EL in joint resp[ective] common activities, campaigns and other events with the EL or with individual EL member and observer parties’ and to use the same with the EL’s agreement in its own activities and campaigns. The partner ‘will be invited to take part in all major political events of the EL’, to participate in EL working groups, to attend ‘one Executive Board per year’ and to ‘send two invited guest delegates to the EL Congress’ (European Left, 2017d: 2). Similar partnership agreements followed with the Austrian Transformation Party, der Wandel, with the French new left party, Ensemble! (founded in 2013, and formerly part of the now dormant Left Front in France with EL members, the PCF and the PG), and with Democratic Left Scotland.

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The chain of command: leadership, hierarchy and policy-making within the EL According to the EL statutes, there are six main party organs involved in the decision-making and policy implementation processes: the Congress, the General Assembly, the Council of Chairpersons, the Executive Board, the Presidency and the Political Secretariat. The party statutes give the Council of Chairpersons the task of ensuring that rules of procedure are developed to guide the mode of work of all party bodies. It is worth considering the powers and functions of these organs, in theory and in practice. The party Congress Article 14 of the EL statutes specifies the powers of the party Congress. It has all the powers of the General Assembly plus it: • elects the EL chairperson and Vice-chairperson/s on the basis of a proposal by the Council of Chairpersons following a rotation principle; • elects the treasurer on the basis of a proposal by the Executive Board; • elects the Executive Board consisting of two members of each party in accordance to [sic] the nomination by each respective member party; • elects at least three and odd [sic] auditors. (EL, 2017a: 11)

Article 15 stipulates that a Congress shall be held at least once every three years, in a different member state of the EU or a non-EU European state where an EL member party exists, having been convened by the Executive Board which can also convene an emergency Congress. This article also stipulates that a Congress may be convened at the request of 25 per cent of its delegates. However, Calossi (2011: 117) is surely right in pointing out that this provision contains an internal contradiction as those delegates are unlikely to be selected until a Congress has already been convened and preparations are underway. In the year when a Congress is convened, it fulfils the duties also of a General Assembly. Articles 16 and 17 stipulate that each member party of EL shall have an equal number of delegates to a Congress (although parties do not have to nominate their full complement of delegates, which seemingly undermines the principle of equal representation). In what is another ambiguous, if not contradictory, statement, the number of delegates per member party is declared to be twelve, followed by the stipulation that ‘the key for the number of delegates is decided upon by every Congress for the next Congress’. Yet more ambiguity is contained in the statement that ‘[t]he delegates are elected by their parties with respect to the [sic] gender equality, i.e. with at least 50 % of women’ (EL, 2017a: 11). Presumably if 70 or 80

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per cent of delegates were women this would be compatible with the statutes – but scarcely with gender equality. Congress can only take decisions ‘if at least half of the members are present or presented, its decisions are taken by the majority of delegates present at its session’. A further contradiction is introduced by the stipulation that ‘each delegate [has] one vote’ – but that decisions have to be taken by ‘consensus’, which presumably means that a minority can block the will of the majority. There is no provision for individual members of the EL to elect any delegates and, in fact, individual members are thus excluded from direct participation in what is intended to be the supreme policy-making and decision-taking forum of the party. Representatives of observer parties and organisations, MEPs from various EP left groups and MPs from national parliaments, and non-delegate members of the EL Executive Board may all attend as non-voting participants, and the Executive Board may invite representatives of other parties and organisations to attend as observers. In practice, the emphasis on consensus might be expected to undermine the role of Congress as a forum for open and rigorous debate and exchange of views. And, indeed, it might be argued that recent Congresses have tended towards the ritualistic adoption of motions prepared in advance by the Executive Board or EL working groups on the basis of a unanimous show of delegates’ cards.2 The General Assembly As EL statutes acknowledge, ‘the authority of the General Assembly is determined by law’ (EL, 2017a: 14). In other words, this is a new tier of the party’s structures, introduced in 2017 as part of an overall review of EL structures and procedures necessitated by changes in EU and Belgian law and in order to continue to qualify for EU funding. From 2017, the General Assembly has met once a year (except in years when a Congress is being held) and, in many ways, has taken on functions and roles previously ascribed to the Congress. The General Assembly consists of members of the Executive Board and the Council of Chairpersons; in addition, the Executive Board can invite more delegates from the member parties on the basis of an equal number from each party. The Executive Board convenes the General Assembly sixty days in advance (thirty days in the case of an emergency); it can also be convened if one-fifth of the member parties write to the EL President demanding such. Deliberations can only take place if at least half the members are present. Articles 23, 24 and 25 of the EL statutes specify the functions and powers of the General Assembly, and it seems destined to play an important role in the future development and

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direction of the party. According to the statutes (EL, 2017a), the General Assembly has power over: • modification of the statutes; • nomination or removal of the presidency or its members; • nomination or removal of auditors; • approval of the budget and accounts; • dissolution of the Association (the EL itself ); • exclusion of a member; • transformation of the Association into an association with a social aim; • all other cases where the statutes provide for its decision. In addition, it: • determines the political guidelines of the EL between the Congresses and adapts decisions of the Congress to the current political situation; • adopts the annual agenda of the EL; • determines [the] political platform and strategy of the EL for the elections to the European Parliament; • comments on the report of activities for the preceding period and on the programme for further work presented by the Executive Board; • proposes discussions of and/or within member parties or political organisations on political developments or special questions. The General Assembly may also adopt changes to the party statutes if these are thought to be necessary to bring them rapidly into line with changes to European law and regulations. However, such changes have to be ratified at the next party Congress. As can readily be seen, these are potentially sweeping powers and the General Assembly might seem ready to develop as the most powerful leadership body within the party. This is reinforced by the fact that its membership is smaller than that of a party Congress. However, once again, contradictions arise between the declared aim (in the statutes) that General Assembly decisions can be reached by a majority vote, and the pledge to respect consensus. Although it is too early to say whether this innovation will lead to significant changes in policy, strategy or direction, the dogged pursuit of ‘consensus’ means that the EL may continue to lean more towards a Confederal and inter-party model of decision-making in which dissenters exercise an effective veto over the majority. That said, the power of the General Assembly to propose discussions on political developments or

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‘special questions’ within member parties does represent a potential step in a more ‘Europeanist’ direction.

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The Council of Chairpersons According to Articles 18 and 19 of the EL statutes, the EL Council of Chairpersons meets at least once a year and comprises the leaders of all member parties as well as the President and Vice-Presidents of the EL itself. It can also invite other representatives of EL bodies or from member parties to participate in its meetings. The Council has ‘the rights of initiative and of objection on important political issues’ with regard to the Executive Board, and it ‘adopts resolutions and recommendations that are passed to the Executive Board, and decides on applications for EL membership’ (European Left, 2017a: 12). Once again, it is empowered to take decisions by majority vote but also to respect the consensus principle. Membership of the Council of Chairpersons as of 2018 is given in Table 4.1. Until the third EL Congress in Paris in December 2010, there was just one Vice-Chairperson. The decision to increase this to four was a controversial one, taken in conditions of considerable organisational and democratic chaos, and without much discussion.3 Miguel Portas of Portugal’s BE called instead for a double presidency, shared between a man and a woman, and a First Secretary to concentrate on specifically European affairs. However, he did not pursue this proposal. The election of a Chairperson, four vice-Chairpersons and a Treasurer by a single secret ballot was clearly intended to strengthen the leadership, just as the initial spread of posts between a Frenchman, a German, a Greek, a Spaniard, a Moldovan, and a Portuguese was intended to ensure regional coverage and inclusion. For some, this signalled ‘a collective leadership … and this is a good thing to come out of the Congress. The Vice-Chairpersons issue is a sign of the increasing divergence and complexity of the EL; if there were just one Vice-Chairperson there would be disquiet as this would be very unrepresentative’ (Soeiro, 2011). For others, however, the institutionalisation of a bigger, more collective leadership may in theory look more democratic, but in practice might lead to a slower and more cumbersome decisionmaking process as even the smallest of parties acquires greater leeway to hold things up in the name of ‘consensus’. And this, in turn, of course, is more likely to suit those who distrust rapid progress towards a fullyfledged TNP and prefer the model of confederation. According to Helmut Scholz (2012), the EL under Laurent may have been more responsive to member parties; but this ran counter to the hope that the EL might develop as its own political subject. The party now developed ‘more joint working and more leadership’ and a smaller, more professionalised and tighter

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Table 4.1  Composition of the Council of Chairpersons of the EL, 2018 Name

Member party represented

EL role

Gregor Gysi

Die Linke – Germany

Maite Mola

PCE – Spain

Paolo Ferraro Pierre Laurent Margarita Mileva Meline Klaus Mirko Messner Sergey Kalyakin

PRC – Italy PCF – France Bulgarian Left – Bulgaria KPÖ Austria KPÖ Austria Party of the Left ‘Fair World’ – Belarus SDS – Czech Republic EÜVP – Estonia Communist Party – Finland VAS – Finland PG – France Die Linke – Germany

President (formerly Chairperson) Vice-President (formerly Vice-Chairperson) Vice-President Vice-President Vice-President

Milan Neubert Valev Kald Juha-Pekka Väisänen Paavo Arhinmäki Jean-Luc Mélenchon Katja Kipping (Bernd Riexinger) Attila Vajnai Paolo Ferraro Frank Jost Vladimir Voronin Catarina Martins João Semedo Constantin Rotaru Alberto Garzón Jose Luis Centella Joan Josep Nuet Gavriel Pinson Alper Taş Bilge Seḉkin Ḉetinkaya Vladimir Caller

Workers’ Party 2006 – Hungary PRC –Italy Déi Lénk – Luxemburg PCRM – Moldova BE – Portugal BE – Portugal PAS – Romania IU – Spain PCE – Spain United Alternative Left Catalonia – Spain Labour Party – Switzerland ÖDP– Turkey ÖDP– Turkey Communist Party WalloniaBrussels – Belgium

Source: Adapted from www.european-left.org/english/about-el/councilchairpersons/, accessed 31 January 2018. It should be noted that information on this site is not always complete and sometimes confusing. No Council member is recorded for some member parties – for example the Danish Red–Green Alliance, so we have had to assume these posts are vacant. Where two Council members from the same party are listed, we have assumed that these must be alternate or substitute members, as the statutes are quite clear in allocating one seat to the Chair of each member party (the EL President and Vice-Presidents are obviously exceptions to this rule). According to Karatsioubanis (2010a), some member parties have a joint leadership, but these joint leaders would never attend together (which confirms our thesis about alternate members).

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secretariat, but there was less interest for it ‘to develop as a structure with a strategic input at EU level’. Nevertheless, Scholz saw this not as a settled result, but as an open process which might change again in the future. Indeed, the election of Gregor Gysi as party President in 2016 and the introduction of General Assemblies in response to change in European law offer hope for greater dynamism to the ‘Europeanists’.4

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The Executive Board The Executive Board of the EL consists of the President, Vice-Presidents, Treasurer and further members elected by the Congress on the basis of two per member party, one man and one woman. According to Article 21 of the statutes, the Executive Board meets at least twice per year, although its convening can also be requested by a member party or organisation. Article 22 stipulates that: • The Executive Board carries out the decisions on the basis and orientations of the Congress and General Assembly and in accordance with the Council of Chairpersons. • The Executive Board is responsible for organising the daily work of the EL. It is responsible for the creation, composition and functioning of the Secretariat. The Executive Board has to adopt the rules of its own work as well as the rules of the work of the Secretariat. • The Executive Board determines the political guidelines of the EL between the General Assembly meetings. It proposes, plans and convenes political initiatives for the EL, and convenes conferences or thematic meetings. It sets up permanent or ad hoc working groups on special political issues and questions, chooses their responsible staff and fixes their tasks in accordance with the plan of action established by the Congress. • The Executive Board convenes the Congress and General Assembly meetings, fixes the proposals for time-table and venue, and suggests the standing orders and agenda (European Left, 2017a: 14). According to full-time EL head office worker, Giorgios Karatsioubanis (2010a), the Executive Board regularly makes proposals to the Council on how to move the work of the party forward. This can lead to ‘bottle-necks’: ‘If the Executive Board is delayed, then this means that the Council of Chairpersons needs to be delayed too.’ The Executive Board elected by the Fifth Congress in Berlin in December 2016, and still in office at the time of writing in 2019, is given in Table 4.2. Not all of the member parties, according to the information

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Table 4.2  Composition of the Executive Board of the EL, 2018 Name

Member party represented

Role within EL

Gregor Gysi Maite Mola Paolo Ferraro Pierre Laurent Margarita Mileva Brigitte Berthouzoz Waltraud Fritz-Klackl Joachim Tischler Yanina Huzouskaya

Die Linke – Germany PCE – Spain PRC – Italy PCF – France Bulgarian Left – Bulgaria PST – Switzerland KPÖ – Austria KPÖ – Austria Party of the Left ‘Fair World’ – Belarus Party of the Left ‘Fair World’ – Belarus Communist Party WalloniaBrussels – Belgium Communist Party WalloniaBrussels – Belgium Bulgarian Left Bulgarian Left SDS – Czech Republic SDS – Czech Republic RGA – Denmark

President Vice-President Vice-President Vice-President Vice-President Treasurer

Aleksej Eliseev Nicole Cahen Jean-Pierre Michiels Boian Kirov Irina Aleksova Claudia Haydt Jiri Hudecek Anne Overgaard Jørgensen Victor Polyakoff Juha-Pekka Väisänen Dan Koivulkao Saila Ruuth Anne Sabourin Vincent Boulet Sophie Rauszer Corinne Morel-Darleux Claudia Haydt Judith Benda Eleftherios Stoukogeorgos Olga Athaniti Attila Vajnai Giovanna Capelli Marco Consolo Murray Smith Inna Shupac Luis Fazenda Lucia Stanciu

EÜVP – Estonia Communist Party - Finland VAS – Finland VAS – Finland PCF – France PCF – France PG – France PG – France Die Linke – Germany Die Linke – Germany Syriza – Greece Syriza – Greece Workers’ Party 2006 – Hungary PRC – Italy PRC – Italy Déi Lénk – Luxemburg PCRM – Moldova BE – Portugal PAS – Romania

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Table 4.2  Composition of the Executive Board of the EL, 2018 (Continued) Name

Member party represented

Dumitru Stanciu Cristina Simó Alcaraz Alba Blanco

PAS – Romania PCE – Spain United Alternative Left Catalonia – Spain United Alternative Left Catalonia – Spain Labour Party – Switzerland Labour Party – Switzerland ÖDP – Turkey ÖDP – Turkey

Ramon Luque Sonja Crivelli Norberto Crivelli Asli Aydin tbc

Role within EL

Source: www.european-left.org/about-el/executive-board, accessed 31 January 2018.

available to the authors, seem to have availed of their right to nominate two members for election to the Executive Board. The Presidency Perhaps the single most important position within the EL is of course that of the party President (formerly, Chairperson), elected by the Congress on a proposal from the Council of Chairpersons, and according to the rotation principle. The Congress also elects ‘one or more Vice-chairpersons [VicePresidents] on a gender quota basis’ (European Left, 2017a: 16). Article 29 of the party statutes lists the main role and powers of the EL President/ Chairperson as being to represent ‘the EL in the public sphere in the contacts with representatives of organisations and institutions, including the EU authorities, Trade Unions, non-governmental organisations and associations’. He or she is assisted by a collective presidency, composed of the four Vice-Presidents and the Treasurer. This ‘fulfils the role of “conseil d’administration” in Belgian law, representing the EL legally, financially and administratively’ (Article 26). The General Assembly may replace a member of the Presidency who dies, resigns or is dismissed before their mandate is complete. The Presidency meets at the instance of the party President, or on a proposal by any two members of the Presidency and takes its decision by majority vote. If the vote is tied, the party president has the casting vote (this appears to be the only decision-making process within the EL that is not bound by the invocation on ‘consensus’).

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organisation, structure and political presence of the el 107 The key nature of the post of party President can perhaps best be gauged by comparing the Chairpersonship of Lothar Bisky, an activist Chair who sought to push forward the EL project, albeit in a consensual manner, with that of his successor, Pierre Laurent, who was elected at the Paris Congress in December 2010. Laurent (who was re-elected at the fourth party Congress in 2013) repeatedly failed to respond to pleas from individual members for a clear definition of their role (see below) and was perceived by some other EL figures as distrustful of the transnational project and content to take things at a much slower pace.5 The election of Gregor Gysi as party President at the Fifth Congress in Berlin in 2016 was perceived as heralding a renewed impetus and desire to overcome some of the structural problems of the EL.6 A problem that the EL faces is that the rotation principle means that the post of party President tends to move around (at least the larger) EL member parties, and the priorities of the President may therefore, understandably, reflect the priorities and ideological and strategic orientations of his or her own member party. Thus, as some member parties are markedly more ‘Europeanist’ or ‘sovereigntist’ than others, there is an in-built tendency towards a ‘stop/start’ approach which is not good for either party momentum or a clear sense of direction. The Political Secretariat The Fifth party Congress (2016) also saw reform of the secretarial support available to the top party leadership. A Political Secretariat is specified in Article 30 of the party statutes as fulfilling ‘the duties of a CEO, being tasked with the daily management of the Party, including the authority to take the decisions needed for this task’. The Political Secretariat is led by a co-ordinator and is made up by members elected by the Executive Board, having been proposed by the Council of Chairpersons, on the basis of gender equality. The Political Secretariat is charged with: • supporting the Presidency; • running the regular business and preparing the meetings of the Executive Board; • executing the decisions and respective orders of the Executive Board; • maintaining close relationships with the whole prime executives of the member parties; • maintaining contacts with member and observer parties and political organisations; • supporting EL working groups; • maintaining relations with the media in cooperation with the Presidency;

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• maintaining the contact of the EL with the Parliamentarian Groups in which there will be deputies of Left Parties in the EP and other European/ international institutions, and so on; • running the archives; • securing transparency of all political work; • guiding the work of EL head office; • reporting on its work at each Executive Board meeting (European Left, 2017a: 17).

These tasks amount to a huge burden of responsibilities and it is doubtful if the secretariat has anything like the personnel or resources necessary to discharge these responsibilities effectively. For example, under-staffing at the EL head office in Brussels has contributed to an inability to respond to queries or to communicate with members effectively.7 Individual membership: an important innovation? One of the EL’s innovations was individual membership. Whereas most TNPs now allow some type of individual membership to supporters of member parties, the EL was among the first to do so. Moreover, the EL was long the only TNP to allow individual membership to activists outside member parties (although ALDE now allows ‘associate membership’ for individuals and the Greens have ‘supporters’). These members can form friendship circles which may be admitted to EL observer status. However, the EL has struggled, unsuccessfully and at times with a marked lack of enthusiasm, to find a meaningful or convincing role for its individual members; from the beginning, powerful forces within the party were opposed in principle to the very concept while others have dragged their feet in the interests of ‘consensus’. At the first party Congress in 2005, individual membership was introduced initially for a ‘period of experimentation’, with a final decision on whether to continue with the innovation to be taken at the second EL party Congress in Prague in November 2007. This duly happened, at least on paper (although arguably nothing was subsequently done to resolve the many problems in giving concrete form to the measure). Individual membership is governed by Article 8 of the amended party statutes, which states: The EL introduces the opportunity of individual membership as a contribution to its future development. In countries where full-right member parties or political organisations exist, each member party or political organisation is free to decide to carry out this opportunity and to adopt – for its own country – the most convenient approach and practical methods. According to that approach women and men residents of an EU member state can

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become individual members of the EL. In countries where full-right member parties or political organisations exist they can form friendship circles associated to these parties of the European Left. Citizens of other European countries associated to the EU can also apply for individual membership. They can join or create a national group of individual members applying for observer status in the EL. (EL, 2017a: 8)

In practice, this formulation allows for considerable diversity in the extent to which individual membership has been implemented between national contexts. In effect, individuals across Europe may join directly without belonging to any national political party, provided the member party/parties in their home country do not object to individual members. But where a member party does object – or where several member parties or organisations exist in a nation-state and they adopt differing attitudes towards individual membership – then it is far from clear how the rights of individuals outside of those parties to join the EL directly can, or will, be upheld. In some countries, such as Italy and to a lesser extent Germany, it was initially claimed that substantial numbers of individual members had participated. Indeed, the German EL member-party, Die Linke, has granted all its individual members the right to join the EL as individual members also (although a miniscule number appear to have done so). In others, such as France (owing largely to the PCF’s opposition), individual membership developed much more slowly. For years, there appeared to be only one individual member of the EL in France: one of the MEPs elected on the Front de Gauche electoral list in 2009 was not a member of either the PCF or the PG and so was permitted to become an individual EL member to comply with regulations governing the funding of European parties (Soeiro, 2011); this number seems to have increased modestly since 2010. The EL head office in Brussels does not maintain an accurate list of the number of individual members but in 2010 it estimated that there were around a thousand such members in Italy and 300–400 elsewhere in Europe, mainly in Germany (Herberg, 2010). One of the problems here is that individual members do not have to pay membership dues; party cards are not issued on an annual, or even regular basis: instead, once issued, an individual membership card is assumed valid indefinitely until and unless the member resigns. The result is that there is no real way of telling how many individual members remain active (or even, one might add, alive). In the UK, where there is no full member party of the EL to date, and where both Left Unity (an associate member) and Democratic Left Scotland (an EL partner) are tiny organisations, there are probably several dozen individual members. In May 2016, the EL head office claimed a total of just 325 individual members, citing countries with more than 10 such individual members as: Belgium (46), Germany (44), UK (41), Italy (34), France

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(19), Spain (16), Unknown (21). The occasion was a survey sent to all 325 individual members, seeking their views on the situation in individual membership within the EL. That only 29 of the 325 individual members bothered to reply is perhaps an indication of how low the morale of individual members had sunk after years of virtual neglect (European Left, 2016e). (Incidentally, those who did reply complained of the failure of the EL to communicate with them and the lack of opportunities for involvement and participation in the life of the party.) Moreover, the statutes do nothing to clarify the role or purpose of individual membership, the extent to which individual members can participate in policy-making or hope to influence the decisions of EL leadership bodies, or indeed the extent to which individual members might contribute to the new style of politics to which the EL commits itself on paper (e.g. through involvement in social movements against neoliberal globalisation). Individual membership has been controversial. Supporters of developing individual membership, such as the Portuguese BE, see it as one way of developing a new pan-European political consciousness, linking the TNP directly to members who consider themselves Europeans without the mediation of a national party (Hilário, 2010). Critics, such as the PCF, dislike the category for precisely the same reason. It is surely no coincidence that the PCF, in the context of domestic French politics, strongly opposed opening the FG to individual membership and insisted on it remaining an alliance of parties for similar reasons (Krivine, 2011: 45). The critics also have reservations about the practicalities of involving individual members in decision-taking and policy-making; in short, they cannot see ‘the rationale or the practicality’ (Hilário, 2011). Carmen Hilário, member of the Portuguese BE and former member of the Board of the EL, is worth quoting at length. Declaring her belief that individual membership would be retained and expanded after the (then pending) third party Congress, she continued: The opposition of some parties is not an opposition to individual members per se but is linked to another thing: should the EL be a confederation of parties or a coming together of parties, movements and people? The latter is my position. This is a natural position for some new left formations because we have it in our genes, so to speak. But it is a bit more difficult for some of our comrades who have longer histories and more hierarchical organisations. It is also a question of a certain mistrust – ‘how do we grant them [individual members] a voice?’ With parties, it is straightforward – two members from each party (one man, one woman) on the EL Executive Board. But with scatterings of individual members, how are they to be represented? Will we have to stop having Executive Boards and have assemblies instead? How will these

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things clash and evolve? The thing is we never had problems with individual members involved in working groups because these working groups didn’t have much pressure to bring to bear on the Executive Board and didn’t have much power, so it was OK. So, it is above all a problem of representation and involvement in decision-making with some traditionalists fearing that the power of parties will be undermined. Right now, we are still debating the issue. (Hilário, 2010)

However, years after this interview was conducted, the issue is still being debated. It has not only been those on the more ‘sovereigntist’ wing of the EL (who prefer to see the party as a confederation of national parties rather than as a genuine TNP) who have deep reservations about the concept of individual membership. These ‘sovereigntists’ can certainly be relied upon to oppose such proposals as a Europe-wide constituency of individual members who could elect representatives to the Executive Board to sit alongside representatives of member parties. But even some of the more ‘Europeanist’ elements of EL, such as the PCE and parts of Syriza, are doubtful about how individual members can be presented in the policymaking and leadership structures without jeopardising both traditional parties and well-worn forms of representative democracy. For example, former EL head office full-time staffer, Giorgos Karatsioubanis expressed deep doubts about the practicalities of involving individual members in the leadership and decision-taking structures in a meaningful way: ‘How can an individual represent another individual and have the same democratic legitimacy as an individual representing a party membership? My reservation is on this point’ (Karatsioubanis, 2010b). By contrast, fellow former head office staffer Martin Herberg strongly favoured the development of individual membership but admitted that ‘we have individual members and they can form friendship circles but we haven’t worked out how to integrate these friendship circles into the decision-making structures. We need to find an approach that allows for progress here. Clearly, some parties are traumatised by competition from movements and groups at the national level and fear this happening at the European level also. At the moment, we are stuck’ (Herberg, 2010). Until a meaningful role might be found for individual members, Herberg believed that ‘it would not be good to say “come, come, come and join” – because we don’t offer a clear role.’ (Ominously, Herberg left his employment at EL head office in 2012 because, according to a colleague, he felt that he was ‘fed up tilting at windmills’.8) In short, the expansion of individual members’ rights and the clarification of their role have been strongly circumscribed by the lack of full support from the EL leadership. In a party whose modus operandi is characterised by the search for consensus, there has even arguably been a

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reluctance to confront the issue openly and fully for fear of worsening divisions. Instead, individual membership has proven more of a damp squib to date than a great innovation. No effort has been made to recruit individual members or even to publicise the party’s existence to those outside traditional party politics or in countries without an EL member party (admittedly, financial limitations might also affect the ability to do so). ‘Eligible’ individuals who have applied for membership have complained of having to do so three or four or more times before receiving any acknowledgement.9 Little direction or help with the establishment of friendship circles appears to be forthcoming from the party centre. Some EL parties and members clearly hoped that the third party Congress (Paris, December 2010) might mark a step forward for individual membership. Carmen Hilário, for example, expressed her hope that the Paris Congress would be inundated with numerous proposals for clarifying and expanding the role on individual members, including representation on the EL’s leadership structures (Hilário, 2010). In fact, the third Congress was a bitter disappointment for those hoping for progress on this issue. Individual membership was not discussed or debated at all, and individual members arriving at the Congress were required to register as ‘guest auditors’. The British trade unionist, Stephen Spence, the only individual member permitted to address the Congress, complained that the rights of individual members had declined since the second Congress, when they had been permitted to speak more freely; and that a proposal to allow their representation on leadership bodies had been squashed through opposition from both the PCF and Synaspismós (which later became Syriza) (Spence, 2010). The fact that individual members are not permitted to put forward motions or proposals for discussion – that being a prerogative of the member parties and organisations – proved an insurmountable obstacle. In the aftermath of the third Congress, some individual members again took up the cudgel to campaign for clearer rights and roles. One of the few positive steps taken by party head office had been to facilitate the establishment of an online listing that individual members could opt to join, thereby communicating with each other. In autumn 2011, this initiative was used to gather a petition that was forwarded to Pierre Laurent, national Secretary of the PCF and, since the third EL Congress in Paris in December 2010, the EL party President. This petition argued forcefully that: due to lack of will from national parties, the lack of democratic rights of individual members in the EL has remained unfortunately unaddressed. Currently, individual members have responsibilities (they have to pay contributions),10 yet in return they do not have any rights. We cannot select delegates to the congress and in times between congresses we do not possess any

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statutory, organizational, technical or financial resources and possibilities to influence or contribute to the policies of the European Left. This situation is in our view no longer acceptable and raises fundamental questions for all of us. A party aiming at a radical but democratic change of all areas of society cannot handle the question of inner-party democracy in such a negligent way, whether it relates to 2000 or only 10 members.

The petition went on to complain that ‘unfortunately at the Paris Congress this topic was not confronted and we do not have the impression that the Executive Board has paid any attention to this problem since the Congress. The reason surely lies in the fact that there is nobody in the Board representing the interests of individual members. Instead there are only representatives of national parties, unable to do so as individual membership is beyond their remit.’ The petition then asked Laurent to take the issue seriously and come up with proposals for a solution.11 For months, this petition went unanswered and unacknowledged, leading to a steady stream of further correspondence from some individual members to the party centre that even included an ominous warning that ‘they [the EL leadership] need to know that there are now individual members discussing taking the EL to the European Courts if this cannot be resolved. The EL cannot legally accept individual members, take membership subscriptions and refuse to provide a representative structure.’ 12 Finally, in April 2012 a reassurance was received (but not from Laurent) that the Statute Commission was willing to explore options for increasing the role of individual members within the existing rules and would engage in further discussions. On 9 October 2012, one of the activists who had taken a leading role in campaigning for the rights and future of individual members within the EL, Stephen Spence, reported that ‘it is [now] said that it will be resolved at the Congress in 2013. I’m afraid similar things were said around the 2nd Congress in Prague and the 3rd in Paris and I now have little faith much can change. After eight years of trying, I fear that individual membership is unlikely to have a workable future in the UK … Individual membership of the European Left Party looks suspiciously like a dead duck.’ 13 One measure of how little had actually been achieved is to examine how the Greens have developed a structure of representation for their Individual Supporters Network.14 Granted, individual supporters are not individual members (i.e. the supporters have to be members of parties), but the Greens have at least made an attempt to get individuals to organise collectively horizontally and in a bottom-up way alongside parties and to build a Europe-wide consciousness (or citizenship and supranational democracy, as they put it). The network also reports to the Greens’ leadership bodies, so it is at least notionally relevant at the top level. ‘The Network is run by a coordination team consisting of nine grassroots Greens elected

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by Network members, and four representatives of other Green structures, nominated by the EGP Committee, one of which is a member of that committee, and one from the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA) in the European Parliament’ (More O’Ferrall, 2010). Although it is worth noting that the Individual Supporters’ web and Facebook pages became inactive after mid-2015, the attempt to construct a more formalised space for activists outside the national party structures is significantly more advanced than EL has managed so far. If the third Congress did nothing whatsoever to resolve the issue and, in fact, might be said to have dodged the problem of individual membership almost entirely, the fourth and fifth Congresses added little by way of clarification (although a group of Italian individual members met with Pierre Laurent a few weeks in advance of the fifth Congress to raise the role of individual membership with him – see Musacchio (2016)). However, in early 2016 the Executive Board did ask the Political Secretariat ‘to have a closer look into the situation of the individual members of the EL and to come forward with some ideas of what we could do to improve our relations’ (European Left, 2016c). The Political Secretariat then wrote to all individual members soliciting ideas and proposals, and launched a significant initiative in July 2016 when it began circulating individual members with regular composite emails, styled as individual member newsletters, each containing numerous policy documents and other forms of information. Yet, though this was intended to make individual members feel closer to the party, much of the information contained in the newsletters was readily available on the EL general website, and the newsletters did nothing to clarify how individual members might play a wider and more meaningful role in the party – although an opportunity for individual members to contribute articles to the newsletter was created. The Secretariat acknowledged that ‘we know that a newsletter is not enough, but it is a start … More steps will follow. And although the EL is mainly a party of parties, it is also an All-European Party, an All-European network of people who want to be part of an All-European social and democratic struggle whether they are a member of any party or not’ (EL, 2016c). The Secretariat pledged to ensure that six newsletters for individual members per year were produced and that an internet forum for individual members to facilitate exchanges of political views was established. It warned, however, of a lack of resources at party head office and appealed for volunteers to help with initiatives. Eighteen months later, an average of three newsletters per year had been produced and no internet forum had yet emerged.15 However, in October 2016 the Secretariat announced that a small working group within head office, involving an individual member, was working on the establishment of the internet

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forum, and that the goal was to establish a platform limited to individual members (with login and password) that could facilitate communications between them, communications with Executive Board members, and political discussions, as well as providing a means for individual members to feed ideas into the party’s bodies (European Left, 2016d). Yet this had not appeared by the time of writing (2019). The EL in the European Parliament At the other end of the organisational spectrum, so to speak, from the role of individual members lies the important issue of the co-ordination of the work of elected parliamentary representatives. We refer, of course, not to elected representatives in national parliaments; no European-level party is remotely sufficiently well developed as to effect that task; but to members of the European Parliament. Surely, that body offers an ideal forum in which TNPs such as the EL can make their presence felt. However, the record appears to be disappointing, with the EL scarcely making any visible impact at all, in no small part due to self-effacement and self-imposed invisibility. This requires some explanation. As already explained (see chapter 2 above), the GUE/NGL confederal group in the EP can in no way be seen as the European parliamentary group of the EL, even if all EL MEPs belong to it. In 2004–8 the EL (observer parties included) encompassed just twenty-seven of the fortytwo MEPs of the GUE/NGL group. After 2009, the proportion increased only marginally (24 of 35, from 64 per cent to 69 per cent). After 2014, the proportion actually fell (28 of 52, down to 55 per cent) – this is the lowest proportion of affiliation of any EP group except the radical right (which does not have a TNP). Moreover, since 2004 the GUE/NGL has included a number of significant parties – principally the Portuguese and Greek communists, Dutch Socialist Party, Swedish Left Party, Irish Sinn Féin and, since 2014, Podemos from Spain – that have not joined the EL. However, it is not simply a question of tension or division between the TNP and the parliamentary group; if this were the problem, the EL would not be unique, as in general ‘fear of [TNP] encroachment upon the realm of the national party and the European Parliamentary Groups remains a considerable obstacle to [TNP] development’ (Day and Shaw 2006: 105). More seriously, such is the suspicion and resentment felt by some eurosceptic members of the GUE/NGL group towards the EL that EL voluntarily renounced any attempt to organise the MEPs belonging to its member parties as a formal subgroup within the GUE/NGL in order not to exacerbate inner-Group tensions (Bisky, 2010; Herberg, 2010; Karatsioubanis, 2010b). This is despite the fact that greater co-ordination of

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subgroup voting positions would not violate any GUE/NGL rules, and indeed already takes place within the NGL caucus (membership of which has been extended to both Sinn Féin and the Dutch SP). But becoming a subgroup is regarded as the surest way of splitting the GUE/NGL to such a degree that no constituent subgroup could muster the twenty-five MEPs necessary to form an official EP group. When becoming head of the GUE/NGL group in 2009, former EL Chair Lothar Bisky had hoped for a different outcome, arguing that the EL should move beyond a ‘party of parties’ into a more integrated party ‘visible as an actor in its own right and present in the consciousness of its members’, while still preserving GUE/ NGL’s pluralism (Bisky, 2009). Although this view was supported by many of the more federalist members of the EL (such as Die Linke, Synaspismós and the Portuguese BE), it proved highly sensitive within the wider GUE/ NGL (with the KKE leading opposition, and vigorously opposing Bisky’s election as GUE/NGL Chair) (Lepola, 2010). Partially in an effort to defuse tensions, Bisky stood down as EL Chairperson at its third Congress in December 2010. However, the hostility towards his leadership from within the GUE/NGL continued and in March 2012 he demitted the leadership of the GUE/NGL group also, to be succeeded by Gabi Zimmer of Die Linke, who was perceived as much less threatening by the anti-federalists: according to one GUE/NGL official, Zimmer doesn’t push an EL agenda and is a much better organiser.16 There is little evidence that the EL’s reluctance to organise inside the European Parliament has improved working relations within the GUE/ NGL group (privately, several MEPs have exhibited deep dissatisfaction with group functioning). Indeed, this act of self-effacement, while arguably damaging the development and strengthening of the EL as a TNP, has not in any way lessened the strident and sectarian attacks upon it by the likes of the KKE (which, in any case, left the GUE/NGL group after 2014). Moreover, it may have increased the image of the EL as ineffective and irrelevant to what transpires within the EP. The Dutch Socialist Party MEP Denis de Jong, for example, simply regarded the EL as ‘dead’ (de Jong, 2011). The prominent former Irish Labour MEP, Proinsias de Rossa, professed in 2010 never to have heard of the EL, nor to have encountered a single initiative that it had undertaken within the EP (de Rossa, 2010). The EL’s self-restraint has led to complaints from some EL supporters that it lacks any visible presence whatsoever within the EP. The Czech communist ex-MEP, the late Miloslav Ransdorf, regarded as being on the most ‘Europeanist’ and pro-EL wing of his party and an advocate of its ‘upgrading’ from observer to full EL membership, protested that the EL was entirely invisible inside the EP: ‘even if we wish to meet with guests in our capacity as the EL, we have to go across to the EL head office to do so,

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organisation, structure and political presence of the el 117 in case it [acting as the EL inside the EP] might offend some people’ (Ransdorf, 2010). In 2011–12, there were even rumours that the anti-federalist communist parties wanted to create their own EP grouping in opposition to any attempt to co-ordinate the activities of the EL parties; but as neither side possessed anything like the necessary numbers, such talk subsided after some weeks (Lundy, 2011). Of course, it may well be that further institutional consolidation of the EL as a TNP will take place at some future point. Various EL leaders have admitted that if the parliamentary arithmetic permits, the possibility of the EL forming its own EP group outside the GUE/NGL is up for discussion (Bisky, 2010; Herberg, 2010; Hilário, 2010; Karatsioubanis, 2010b). This eventuality might have become more likely if the EP Committee on Constitutional Affairs’ recommendations for a proportion of MEPs to be elected from an EU-wide constituency (in which TNPs, and not national parties, present candidate lists) had been implemented before the 2014 elections, although, as noted in chapter 1, these recommendations were withdrawn from plenary debate in early 2012, and their medium-term implementation is now extremely unlikely. The EL’s Europeanists, in particular those from Die Linke, were unequivocally in favour of these proposals. However, for now at least, it seems that the EL has at best chosen the path of quiet compromise over accelerated institutionalisation, or at worst entered a period of stagnation and dormancy. Transnational policy discussion and policy-making: opportunities and openings Since its foundation, the EL has sought to explore ways in which it can broaden the process of transnational policy discussion and, to an extent at any rate, transnational policy-making. In this section, we will highlight three avenues that have been explored: the formation of networking groups; the pursuit of an ECI in line with EU Treaty provision and, following its rejection by the Commission, the search for new ways of campaigning at a transnational level; and the contribution to the political presence of the EL made by the Transform! network and journal and the organisation of summer universities involving activists and intellectuals. The EL as a networking party Officially, the EL sees itself as having adopted ‘open structures’ geared to maximise participation in policy formulation, and central to such ‘open structures’ is the principle of a networking party. In pursuit of this aim, the EL has founded a series of working groups, to which individuals,

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groups and civil organisations can belong, including the participation of movements and groups outside the formal membership of the EL itself. (For example, groups of trade unionists close to the Danish SF and the Norwegian SV, neither of which is an EL member or observer party, have taken part in the deliberations of the EL working group of trade unionists.) Each of these working groups is co-ordinated by a member of the party Executive Board, who is responsible for liaising with the party and giving political momentum to the group. The groups themselves are free to organise as they see fit, for example via a mailing list or a website. To date, ten such working groups have been created. They are: the Economic Policy group, the Education group, the Energy and Climate Policies group, EL FEM (the feminist network), Freedom and Civil Rights group, Latin American group, LGBT Queer network, the Middle East group, the Trade Unionists network, and the Youth network. The fifth Congress in Berlin in 2016 approved a motion calling for the formation of an eleventh working group, on the United States and Canada, to promote co-operation and co-ordination with the left in those countries. In addition, a number of regional forums have been created to co-ordinate activities between parties sharing regional concerns, such as the Permanent Forum of the European Left of Regions, the Balkan regional forum, the Mediterranean Forum and the Alps-Adriatic Forum. It is difficult to judge how effective or worthwhile these groups always are in practice. By far the most visible are the EL FEM and the Trade Unionists network, both of which hold regular conferences and events and have a visible presence at EL Congresses and summer universities (see also chapter 6). Personal experience and anecdotal evidence suggest that several others, such as the LGBT Queer network, may only exist on paper. Towards the end of 2012, a clear effort was made by EL head office to impose tighter co-ordination on the activities of the working groups and networks. A memo was issued, asking all such groups to specify any planned events or activities they proposed for 2013 and to explain how these related to one of four key priorities that the EL party leadership had identified: the fight against austerity, the fight against financial markets, freedom and democracy, and peace. Group and network members were also asked to specify any street activities or media exposure they had planned, which organisations outside the EL or other groups within its structures they would be engaged with, and what the financial implications were. The groups also made a more visible contribution at the fifth party Congress in Berlin in December 2016, when they presented policy discussion papers for consideration by delegates. There is no doubt that greater co-ordination was intended to make for a more visible and more coherent EL presence on the European political

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organisation, structure and political presence of the el 119 stage. A report from the party Council in October 2012 pointed out that, faced with a political upsurge of protest against austerity in Greece, Portugal, Spain, France and other countries, the EL needed to step up its game: ‘Facing the liberal consensus in Europe, it is an imperative to make the political alternative visible. Faced with the crisis of liberal solutions, new political spaces are open. We must work on the identification of the EL as the force that carries political alternative. We must act now, having in mind the Congress of the EL and the European elections in 2014’ (European Left, 2012b). A clear role was envisaged for the groups and networks in making the party more visible, above all in the context of its attempt to make use of Treaty provision for an ECI being struck down by the European Commission before the move had even properly got off the ground. From the ECI to an EL Identity Card The ECI has been hailed as one of the main provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force on 1 December 2009. The ECI, it was claimed, would help to deepen democracy within the European Union by enabling direct participation by citizens. The initiative allowed for a petition of one million signatures of EU citizens, who are nationals of at least one quarter of the member states, calling upon the European Commission to propose legislation in an area of EU competence. The earliest possible date to register an ECI with the Commission was 1 April 2012, with 9 May 2012 being set aside as the formal launch day. The third EL Congress in Paris in December 2010 had already identified the launch of an ECI as a major activity for the party in the coming years. Although some EL member parties – such as the Danish RGA – flatly refused to participate in the collection of signatures, on the grounds that even mounting an ECI challenge served to legitimise the EU, the majority of member and observer parties and organisations seemed happy to participate in what would be a major pan-European drive by the party – and an occasion to raise the party’s political profile and visibility on the European stage. Throughout 2011 discussions had continued on what shape the ECI might take in challenging fiscal orthodoxy, and in July 2012 the party announced that ‘with a citizen’s committee composed of politicians, trade unionists and members of social and cultural movements, the EL [has] registered at the European Commission a European Citizens’ Initiative for the creation of a European public bank dedicated exclusively to social and ecological development, and solidarity’. The task of gathering the one million signatures was scheduled to begin in September 2012 (European Left, 2012a).

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However, in September 2012 the European Commission rejected registration of the party’s ECI, claiming that the act it sought – the establishment of a publicly owned bank – was beyond the competence of the EU. The Commission statement read: ‘we have not seen any regulation in the treaties which may help as a legal basis for the adoption of a juridical act of the Union which [sic] main objective is the one you indicate. In conclusion, the Commission considers that there is no juridical act in the treaties which allows presenting the proposal of a juridical act which establishes an organism of these characteristics’ (European Left, 2012d). Naturally, the EL reacted with fury to this decision, arguing that ‘by blocking this initiative, the commission has just demonstrated its disdain towards the citizens’ participation for the construction of Europe’ (European Left, 2012d). The party saw the decision as effectively attempting to delegitimise and remove the possibility of any opposition to austerity from being expressed within the structures of the EU itself. However, the EL was determined to push ahead and organise the broadest possible public opposition to austerity and to use the proposal for a European public bank as a rallying call and to raise its own profile, hence the calls for tighter and more effective co-ordination of groups and network noted above. The party declared that ‘the refusal of the Commission to register the ECI proves that the advocates of the liberal consensus are afraid of such debate. We will not give up this ambition because we know that no country can survive alone and that we must rely on popular mobilization. We will find new ways to promote the Europe we want’ (European Left, 2012b). Indeed, the EL subsequently became involved in attempts to launch ECIs on water privatisation and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Accordingly, the Council of Chairpersons of the EL outlined a strategy for 2013 that aimed at channelling the momentum gained with the proposed ECI into the outlining of an ‘EL identity Card’ – a clear profile with simple, recognisable demands and slogans that would form the basis for pan-European campaigning by the party. This work would revolve around four key priorities: Refusal of austerity and [giving] priority to solidarity, social and ecological development • Investment Plan to boost employment and ecological transition • Recovery of threatened industries and industrial cooperation into the public hand [sic] • Defence and development of public services • Workers’ Unity: harmonization of social rights and wages by the top [sic]

organisation, structure and political presence of the el 121 Refusal of dependence on financial markets and fiscal justice • EU Summit on Debt: cancellation of a portion of the debt and a moratorium on the repayment • European Public Bank • Changing of the statutes and the mission of the European Central Bank • European exceptional Tax on wealth and fight against tax evasion

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Rejection of authoritarianism and rebirth of democracy and liberties • Strengthen the powers of national and European elected assemblies • Protecting workers’ rights (strike, demonstration, unions’ rights) • Promote popular intervention in institutions and companies Peace and refusal of domination • Open the debate on defence expenditures and submission to NATO • New economic and trade relations with the rest of the world. (European Left, 2012b)

With all of this in mind, the EL Council resolved to take a number of concrete steps to give shape to its transnational campaigning. These included (but were not confined to) proposals to: • Launch a campaign of the EL: organise throughout the year, meetings, debates, common poster campaign, joint calls of personalities, laws or resolutions to support these ‘axes of rebuilding’; • Propose a citizens’ political action, common to all countries in order to involve people, with initiatives like ‘votations’ or petitions, which may take different forms depending on national traditions and political cultures; • Establish networks of solidarity of all possible forms, ensure the presence of Europeans in other countries during major mobilizations to give visibility to solidarity; look for dialogue with trade union forces seeking political interlocutors; continue and strengthen cooperation of elected people of the EL in different places of power; • Build joint activities in the assemblies; promote spaces for dialogue between elected representatives; • Share our proposals at Florence; • Help the building of an alternative summit (of progressive forces): Participate the WSF in Tunis. (European Left, 2012b)

Clearly, this was a highly ambitious – perhaps, overly ambitious – list of aspirations and aims. It is, in this respect, of some significance that the fifth Congress in Berlin in December 2016 struck a more humble tone, recognising the need to give greater effect to the EL’s anti-austerity programme by creating ‘a permanent framework for progressive forces in Europe’. It declared that ‘we must always work better with the many forces that will not join EL’ by taking the necessary steps to enter a ‘new stage in

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our ambition for the convergence and solidarity of progressive forces’. Specifically, the party pledged itself to be ‘resolutely audacious’ in seeking new ways to deepen co-operation with all the forces in GUE/NGL, with new political forces emerging in countries like Spain and Poland, with civic initiatives and citizens’ movements, without prejudice to their stance on European institutions or the Euro currency, and even with members of the Green and social democratic party families (European Left, 2016b). The party set out its proposal to make a ‘qualitative leap forward’ by initiating an annual forum of all progressive forces in Europe, based on the São Paolo forum, to which all political, social, trade union, intellectual and NGO forces would be invited. The first such forum was held in Marseille in November 2017 and was attended by four hundred people, representing a range of organisations and initiatives. A working group, heavily dominated by EL personnel, was established to make the European forum an annual event, with an emphasis on enhancing participation by trade unions and civil organisations and representatives of other left forces (European Left, 2017c). Clearly, the launch of the annual European forums, and the broader work towards a convergence of left and progressive forces, is seen as a vital part of the EL’s networking character. Transform! and the EL summer universities As Calossi (2011: 130–3) points out, Transform! European Network for Alternative Thinking and Political Dialogue was founded in 2001 during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in Brazil, and thus pre-dates the formal birth of the EL; however, in order to take advantage of the provision of EU funding for pan-European think-tanks affiliated to transnational parties, Transform! was effectively adopted as the think-tank of the EL from 2007 onwards. As a Europe-wide think-tank, Transform! incorporates various foundations and think-tanks associated with individual member parties of the EL, such as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Germany), The Left Forum (Finland), the Nicos Poulantzas Institute (Greece) and Espaces Marx (France). The network maintains an active and informative website; organises series of seminars and events at which academics and activists close to the EL can debate pan-European issues and developments; and publishes an online journal – also called Transform! – which, although its articles vary in quality from the genuinely intellectually stimulating to the drearily propagandistic, nevertheless plays its part in the search to construct that most elusive of creatures, the European citizen who thinks and acts in pan-European terms.17 Another EL innovation that deserves a mention is the introduction of annual summer universities, co-organised by the EL and the Transform!

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organisation, structure and political presence of the el 123 network and held each year in a different European country. The first of these was held in 2006 in Tavira, Portugal; subsequent universities were organised in Gosau, Austria (2007); Paris (2008); Valencia (2009); Chisinau (2010); Trevi, Italy (2011); Portaria, Greece (2012); Oporto, Portugal (2013); Werbellinsee, Germany (2014); Litomerice, Czech Republic (2015); Chianciano, Italy (2016); Budapest (2017), and Vienna (2018). Since its inception, the summer university has grown significantly, with the 2017 event attracting two hundred participants from twenty-five countries. Once again, the summer universities form an active part of the EL’s networking side, allowing contacts to be made and views exchanged between – mainly, but not exclusively, young – activists and intellectuals from across Europe. Conclusion In this chapter, we have examined the character of the EL as a party, in organisational terms and in terms of how it sees its campaigning and networking role. We have argued that such questions are not merely administrative but are highly political, and that they impact both on the degree of Europeanisation of the party and on its efficacy as an actor. We have seen that the EL has developed quite complex leadership, policy-making and decision-making structures, partly in response to changes in European law and partly in response to its own lofty ambitions. At almost every level (apart from the party Presidency), a potential contradiction exists between the desire to take decisions by majority vote (and thus to increase effective and speedy response to political developments) and the desire to adhere to a model of consensus that, in practice, accords equality to all member parties, regardless of their size or political weight, and thus allows each party to attempt to exercise a veto over policies or developments within the EL that it finds undesirable. In reality, this can of course mean that progress in the direction of a more effective (and certainly more federal) TNP is slowed down by the most reluctant or ‘sovereigntist’ members. We have seen, also, that some developments – such as the institution of an annual General Assembly with far-reaching powers and a more effective Political Secretariat – have at least the potential to give added weight to the EL and to rationalise its decision-making. The institution of not only full and observer membership status but, more recently, the new category of EL Partner also is designed to encourage party expansion. To date, achievements on this front are modest, but the admission to observer membership in 2017 of the electorally significant Italian Left (Sinistra Italiana) is an important step forward.

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One of the early innovations of the party, which held much promise in the eyes of the more ‘Europeanist’ parties and members, was the introduction of individual membership. Here, it seemed, was the potential to develop a genuinely pan-European constituency of members, committed to the idea of a European polity. However, individual membership has stalled, partly due to the party’s own internal contradictions and partly due to a lack of vision and perhaps of resources. It was only in 2016–17 – a dozen years after the party’s foundation – that serious consideration was at last given to the question of how to find a meaningful role for individual members. How this develops, and whether it can encourage individual members to join the EL in anything like significant numbers, remains to be seen. We have argued that the party’s fear of disrupting relations with non-EL members of the GUE/NGL Confederal group in the European Parliament, or of being seen to promote a divisive or sectarian approach in that body, has led to an almost self-effacing attitude within the EP. The EL lacks a clear presence or profile in the EP. This certainly works against a stronger European presence. On the other hand, the party has made considerable progress in developing its networking abilities and its contacts with broader European left forces. The role of working groups within the EL is not altogether clear – how they influence policy-making bodies to adopt the main policy documents they have produced, for example, is somewhat ad hoc. Nevertheless, they have allowed the EL to expand its networking, involving, for example, members of parties from countries such as Norway and Iceland that are not EL members to take part in the activities of some working groups. And while the various ECIs have not proven the catalyst for pan-European mobilisation that some in the EL might have hoped, the organisation of events such as the annual European forum has allowed it to reach out to a variety of left and progressive forces. The Transform! think-tank and the annual summer universities have further provided opportunities for networking, allowing participation by a range of non-EL individuals and forces. Speakers at EL summer universities have, for example, included representatives of Spain’s Podemos. It can be argued, therefore, that the EL has made considerable progress in organisational and strategic terms even if the party faces certain difficult internal contradictions and certain existential dilemmas, the most pressing of which is how to maintain organisational unity and political purpose in the face of a perceived ‘turn to the right’ by the only one of its members to currently occupy government office – Syriza in Greece – to which we shall turn in the next chapter.

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Notes 1 An EL source told the present authors that this might have been due to the fact that DLS was (wrongly) perceived by some EL members to be a nationalist and secessionist grouping. 2 This observation is based on the experience of one of the authors in attending several Congresses in a guest capacity. 3 This comment is based on personal observation. 4 This observation is based on off-the-record conversations with two leading EL officials. 5 Email correspondence from Stephen Spence, 9 October 2012. 6 This observation is based on an off-the-record conversation with a leading EL official. 7 This claim is based both on personal experience and on off-the-record conversations with leading EL members. 8 This comment is from a conversation in Brussels in July 2012 with an EL official who requested anonymity. 9 This, and the observations that follow, are based on interviews and conversations with individual EL members who requested anonymity. 10 In fact, a somewhat half-hearted effort was made to collect membership dues from individual members in the early years, with several individual members reporting to the authors that this amounted to a one-off payment that was never renewed, let alone on an annual basis. Article 10 of the party statutes, as approved by the fifth Congress in Berlin, states that ‘the Member Parties … have [the] duty of paying membership fees’ but that ‘Observer Parties and Individual Members have the same duties except the duty of Membership fee payment’. This seems to explicitly remove the duty of payment of membership fees from individual members. 11 These quotations are taken from correspondence published on the EL individual members email listing, available at http://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/ listinfo/individual-members-el, accessed 25 May 2012. 12 Correspondence from Stephen Spence to Waltraud Fritz-Klackl, member of the EL secretariat responsible for liaison with the Statute Commission, 10 March 2012, available at http://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/listinfo/individualmembers-el, accessed 25 May 2012. 13 Email correspondence from Stephen Spence, 9 October 2012. 14 Information available at www.greenyourope.net/about-us-2/about-us/history/ statement-of-purpose/, accessed 9 August 2012. 15 These appeared in July, October and December 2016 and March, July and December 2017. 16 This observation is based on conversations with a GUE/NGL official who requested anonymity. 17 For examples of Transform!’s publications, see its website: www.transformnetwork.net/en/, accessed 30 January 2018.

5

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Programmatic and policy coherence and development

An important criterion by which any European TNP may be judged is, of course, its ability to formulate both a coherent party programme and agreed party policy at the European level, and to have that programme and policy endorsed by and reflected in the national platforms of its constituent parts. To the extent that the European Left Party fails to do so, it can scarcely be said to have achieved former EL President Lothar Bisky’s declared goal of advancing beyond a mere conglomeration of national parties towards a genuine European party (Bisky, 2010). Given the fact that the EL’s electoral activity focuses on elections to the European Parliament – of which there have so far been three since the EL’s foundation: in 2004, 2009 and 2014 – it seems sensible to examine policy evolution against the backdrop of the manifestos or platforms agreed for those elections, supplemented by other important policy declarations emanating from EL Congresses. In this chapter, we examine policy development within the EL in some detail, always bearing in mind the extent to which policy development and attention to development of a pan-European strategy may be considered elements of growing Europeanisation. As part of this examination, we turn our attention to the impact on some national parties, focusing on a case study of Syriza in Greece – a key component of the EL from the outset and the only EL full member party to play a leading role in the formation of a national government. The Greek case study is especially important given the fact that Syriza’s leader, Alexis Tsipras, was EL’s candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission in 2014, and may be indicative of whether or not there is genuine policy spill-over, transfer, adoption or adaptation between the national and European levels. Given the relative political weakness of the radical left in Europe as a whole – certainly, relative to, say, the Christian democrats or social democrats – there has never yet been a scenario in which a number of European governments, let alone governments of member states of the European Union, have simultaneously been led by EL member parties. The reality is that Syriza remains a

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unique example, and experienced intense isolation within the EU during its early years in office. Its experience is therefore one that potentially holds important lessons for the EL, above all in terms of whether an EU, driven and motivated by the very neoliberalism and pro-austerity policies that the party exists to contest, would ever permit a member state led by an EL member party to implement policies that fly in the face of such neoliberalism. The fate of Syriza raises interesting questions about the feasibility of the EL implementing its policies at both national and European levels within the existing EU framework, even if it were to achieve the huge strengthening of democratic mandate necessary to do so. This, in turn, raises the related question of how the EL has responded to what it has undoubtedly seen as an unfolding ‘Greek tragedy’, above all in terms of the sharpening of its critique of the EU and the refinement and honing of its anti-austerity mobilisation strategy in the years since 2013–14. In this chapter, we also briefly look at some other parties where evidence of policy spill-over is very patchy indeed, such as AKEL and the Italian PRC, both of which have participated in coalition governments. All of this raises questions, not so much about the sincerity of the EL’s commitment to a pan-European politics, as about the practical prospects of its ability to drive forward its Europeanisation in policy terms. Finally, we examine some evidence for differences and divergence within the EL over both policy and the scope of the party itself. We argue that recent internal disputes within the EL over how to respond to what some members perceive as Syriza’s retreat in the face of EU pressure to implement austerity bring to the fore a fundamental existential question – what purpose there is to a radical left TNP if its component parts cannot contest neoliberalism any more effectively in government than do the social democrats – that the EL, perhaps understandably, would probably prefer to avoid for now. The EL’s programmatic and policy development, 2004–18 Policy statements and policy development within the EL during the period 2004–11 have been previously examined in at least three studies (Calossi, 2011; Hudson, 2012; Dunphy and March, 2013), which we draw upon in some of the summary that follows. The EL’s 2004 EP election manifesto was released too soon after the party’s birth to allow any realistic assessment. Indeed, it was exceedingly vague, promising ‘a broad social and political alliance for a radical policy change by developing concrete alternatives and proposals for the necessary transformation of the present capitalist societies’ (European Left, 2004). As we argued in chapter 3, it was a very broad, aspirational and detail-free document. However, the Athens declaration, produced by the EL’s first Congress in October 2005,

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the theses for the second Congress in Prague in November 2007, the manifesto for the 2009 European parliamentary elections, the Action Plan for 2010–13 agreed at the third Congress in Paris in December 2010, and the manifesto for the 2014 EP elections agreed at the fourth Congress in Madrid in December 2013, all represent considerable elaborations of party policy and programme. Subsequent detailed plans for action against austerity agreed during the period 2013–16 and at the fifth Congress in Berlin in 2016 represent further qualitative leaps forward in policy elaboration. The Athens declaration mounted an attack on the neoliberal direction of EU policy and the support of EU powers for what was seen as NATO’s aggressive and pro-war policies. It began to add flesh to the bones of the founding manifesto by highlighting the priorities of ‘campaigning against unemployment and social exclusion; to defend and rebuild welfare systems; for the improvement of working conditions; for a re-orientation of the EU budget and monetary policy, emphasising the bankruptcy of the Fortress Europe approach; in favour of a European peace policy; and for the abolition of NATO’ (Hudson, 2012: 50). The Athens Congress also specifically targeted the Bolkestein Directive (on the liberalisation and privatisation of public services and the lengthening of the working week) as the fruit of ‘capitalist globalisation’ and contrasted these measures with the goals of full employment, reduction in working hours and the importance of collective labour contracts (Calossi, 2011: 201). The theses for the second Congress in Prague in 2007 represent a further and much more detailed elaboration of these themes. As Kate Hudson points out (Hudson, 2012), the Congress identified two main themes in particular: capitalist globalisation and the EU and anti-militarism. Under the first rubric, the EL developed its most sophisticated critique of the direction of EU integration to date. The assault on workers’ rights, and on the public sector and the welfare state, and the EU’s contribution to worsening global inequalities were attributed to the continuing ideological dominance of the Maastricht Treaty criteria for economic growth, above all symbolised by the adherence of the ECB to the pursuit of narrow monetarism (as opposed to job creation) and by the enforcement of the 1997 Stability Pact, which forced countries to slash public spending. Hudson summarises the five key principles which would underpin EL policy as ‘full, qualified and secure employment; a leading role for public financial intervention; a sustainable economic model; defence of the public sector and public services; and guaranteed secure incomes and pensions at a level ensuring human dignity’ (Hudson, 2012: 52). The EL committed itself to the pursuit of ‘binding targets at the EU level’, for the ECB to be brought under the democratic control of the EP and for its statutes to be altered,

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for the introduction of a Europe-wide progressive and redistributive taxation system, and for the introduction of a Tobin tax on financial speculation (European Left, 2009b). There are two points that we might make about these policy elaborations at this stage. First, though admirably clear in some ways, they essentially amount to a call for a robustly Keynesian programme at the EU level and are compatible with a reformist, as opposed to an anti-capitalist, programme. They thus express very clearly an existential dilemma that is present at the heart of the EL, about what sort of party it is, or is in the process of becoming. Secondly, they imply a strong ‘Left Europeanism’, by which we mean an acceptance of the existence of the European Union and commitment to working to transform it from within in a progressive or left-wing direction. However, this Left Europeanism has never been made explicit. If it had been, it is difficult to see how an explicitly anti-EU party such as the Danish RGA, which campaigns for Denmark’s withdrawal from the EU and fought the 2014 European elections as part of the People’s Movement Against the EU, could later become a full member of the EL. In turn, this lack of explicitness on a matter which surely lies at the heart of a European TNP’s field of operations might be seen as inhibiting full policy clarification. The second section of the Prague theses concerned anti-militarism and here, of course, the EL could afford to be much more explicit, given much of the European left’s long-standing and visceral opposition to militarism, NATO, imperialism and US foreign policy. The theses committed the EL to fighting against the EU’s perceived militarisation. In particular, the EL attacked the development of a Rapid Reaction Force and any steps towards a fully-fledged EU army; called for the EU to act autonomously from the USA and to pursue a peace strategy; attacked the growth of the European armaments industry; called for an end to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a non-military strategy to be given centre-stage as far as relations with Iran are concerned, and for recognition of the rights of the Palestinians and the Kurds; and called for a non-nuclear strategy. In contrast to the 2004 manifesto, the EL’s manifesto for the 2009 European parliamentary elections, agreed at a summit in Berlin in November 2008, represents a considerable degree of policy convergence in terms that are both highly critical of the neoliberal direction of the EU and fairly specific about policy alternatives. Indeed, Lothar Bisky famously described the party’s success in drafting a detailed common manifesto for the 2009 EP elections as, in itself, a ‘minor miracle’ (Bisky, 2009). Given the broad range of parties involved in the EL by then, and the notoriously divisive nature of the ‘European question’ on the radical left, he may not have been exaggerating.

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The manifesto bemoaned the subordination of states and societies to ‘uncontrolled financial markets’ which was held to result in ‘a lack of democracy and the end of the welfare state’. It called into question such ideas as ‘the unchecked free circulation of capital [and] the liberalisation and privatisation of public services’. It reaffirmed opposition to the Lisbon Treaty as encapsulating ‘undemocratic and unsocial policies’ and called instead for strengthening democratic norms through popular petitions, enlargement of co-decision powers of the EP, and stronger relations between the EP and national parliaments; and for a new constitutional treaty to be discussed and voted on by citizens throughout the EU. The manifesto attacked the intrusion of neoliberal thinking into EU policies in areas such as longer working hours and longer working lives, the prevalence of the profit motive in public services, deterioration in living conditions, the growth of precarious working conditions and restrictive migration policies. It opposed a militarisation of EU foreign policy linked to NATO and pledged support for anti-war movements. It further called for a refoundation of the EU ‘on the basis of new parameters’, prioritising solidarity, citizens’ rights, a new relationship with the environment and full employment. The operations of the European Central Bank should be changed, its policies and priorities linked to employment creation, and its credit and money issuing brought under ‘public and social control’. The ECB’s statutes should allow the EP to have greater political control over certain areas (such as interest rate policy); the Growth and Stability Pact should be replaced by a new pact ‘focussing on growth, full employment, social and environmental protection’ and new taxes on capital movements and speculative capital should be introduced. The Tobin tax should be used to finance industrial initiatives that aimed at reducing global emissions and creating jobs. Sustainable European standards should replace policies of social and environmental dumping. The manifesto pledged the EL to fight against the working time directive extending working time up to sixty-five hours per week, with a maximum of forty hours a realistic immediate target and thirty-five hours a future target. A European minimum wage set at 60 per cent of the national average wage was sought. As can be seen, in all of these matters existing policy was built upon and detail was added. The manifesto sought a reinforcement of immigrants’ rights to avoid expulsions. A reversal of privatisation policies would see strong public services extended. Specific commitments were given in the fields of reduction of global emissions, waste reduction, reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, organic farming, and so on. Indeed, Calossi (2011: 204–6) believes that the emphasis devoted in the 2009 manifesto to environmental questions, the strong defence of the Kyoto Protocols, the advocacy of an

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enhanced role for the EU in combating global warming and reducing global gas emissions, and the support for sustainable development all constitute important innovative policy elements; and that the period since 2005 had seen a real maturation of the EL’s environmental policy. The manifesto committed the EL to the dissolution of NATO (seen as keeping European policy subservient to that of the USA) and the prevention of any new military blocs. Withdrawal of EU troops from Iraq and Afghanistan was strongly supported as was the closing of all NATO and US bases in Europe. In a crucial passage that clearly differentiates the EL from other forces on the anti-capitalist left, the manifesto declared that the ‘EL stands for the further enlargement of the European Union, and for a stable allEuropean structure to overcome still existing political and economic divisions in Europe’. To equip the EU for such an undertaking, it must be made more democratic: ‘the democratic reconstruction of Europe remains an urgent task of today’. The EL therefore supported, inter alia, a strengthening of individual and fundamental human rights; ‘the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights must become legally binding and be further developed. The EU should join the European Convention on Human Rights.’ New EU directives guaranteeing women’s right to free contraception and abortion within the national health systems and outlawing all forms of discrimination were supported. The European Court of Justice’s recent decision restricting workers’ and trade union rights was strongly criticised and calls were made for stronger and more transparent media and cultural policies. The subordination of education to profit and market-driven considerations was identified as a hallmark of the Bologna Process which was abhorred. On EU democracy, the manifesto pledged support for the EP to be given new legislative powers, for the Citizen-Agora process introduced by the EU to be strengthened, and for the introduction of referenda at national and EU levels on landmark decisions. Overall, the manifesto mounted a strong critique of the current direction of EU policy in most directions, while equally making it clear that the EL’s alternative was not a retreat to nationalist protectionism – or vague talk about a ‘people’s Europe’; but a series of concrete reforms of existing EU institutions, procedures and practices which, it was thought, could have the cumulative effect of reconstructing the EU from within (European Left, 2009b). All of this might seem to make the party’s ‘Left Europeanism’ much more explicit than before. Yet, in the aftermath of the 2009 elections, a number of parties that had always been strongly hostile to the EU, such as the Danish RGA and the Finnish Communist Party, were admitted to full membership, along with some, such as the Finnish VAS, that had

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recently moved to a much more Left Europeanist position. Indeed, as we saw in chapter 4, the RGA was able simply to opt out of an EL attempt, after the third Congress in Paris in 2010, to use the European Citizen’s Initiative to bring about internal change within the EU on the grounds that it considered the move to confer legitimacy on the EU. The third Congress of the EL in Paris in December 2010 can be seen as marking a certain loss of momentum. This, after all, was the Congress which saw the departure from the EL Presidency of Lothar Bisky who, like his Italian predecessor, Fausto Bertinotti, was a convinced European federalist who was not afraid to give voice to the dream of transforming the EL into an effective political actor at the pan-European level and not merely a confederation of national parties. He was succeeded at the helm by Pierre Laurent, whose PCF is traditionally of a more national sovereigntist orientation, even if it has changed considerably since the mid-1990s. As argued in the previous chapter, momentum slowed in the wake of 2010, but the Paris Congress nevertheless made its own contribution to the elaboration of party programme and policy, in the form of a three-year Political Action Programme, 2011–13 (European Left, 2010a). Some of the language of the Congress could be seen as balancing the concerns of the Left Europeanists with those of the ‘sovereigntists’. For example, warnings of a ‘substantial threat that the EU’s legitimacy crisis will worsen’ unless measures were taken to bring about a democratic renewal that should involve additional rights for national parliaments (as well as the European Parliament) were set alongside the declaration that there could be no ‘national solutions’ to the problems of poverty and inequality. The desire of some to keep the door open to more ‘sovereigntist’ elements on the radical left that had desisted from joining the EL might possibly be seen also in the rather awkward formulation adopted – ‘We, the Party of the European Left, together with other socialist, communist, and red–green parties and organisations – widely regarded as the current plural, European left.’ (A similar conception might be said to underpin the EL’s continuing self-effacement inside the European Parliament where, in any case, the electoral arithmetic did not permit consideration of an EL parliamentary grouping, separate from that of the GUE/NGL.) Moreover, some EL officials complained privately to the present authors that a political structure which (as we have seen in chapter 4) awarded equal voting weight on the party Board to the smallest and largest member parties was slowing down policy-making as the search for compromises was protracted and that the production of the 2011–13 Political Action Programme in time for the 2010 Congress was ‘tortuous’ (Dunphy and March, 2013: 528).

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The Political Action Programme 2011–13 elaborated party policy, in the light of the worsening financial and debt crisis, in a number of ways. It called for: a European approach to the debt crisis that would see partial annulment of the debt (the amount was not specified); the replacement of the EU’s Crisis Management Mechanism with a permanent protective mechanism of solidarity that would come to the rescue of states (including those outside the Eurozone) in the early stages of debt crisis; enabling the ECB to provide member states with low-interest credit to finance social development; taxation of all speculative transactions; new taxes to be imposed on big capital and financial assets; abolition of tax havens established inside and outside of European territory and the banning of hedge funds and junk bonds; creation of a European public rating agency so that European countries would no longer be held hostage by private rating agencies; and issues of Eurobonds to allow member states to borrow at reasonable rates. The Programme also called for: the enactment of new EU laws to ensure that immigrant workers earned no less than existing workers; the overturning of EU rulings that undermine the right to strike; the insertion of a Social Progress clause into all EU primary legislation; the dissolution of the European Defence Agency and its replacement by an EU Agency for Disarmament and Reconversion; and an end to any military engagement of the EU abroad. While welcoming the adhesion of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights, the party called for further development of human rights, above all for a policy on immigration that stopped scapegoating refugees and that recognised gender-specific and nonnational persecution as grounds for claiming asylum, protection of the rights of child refugees in particular, and rejection of the FRONTEX system of border controls. The period between the third Congress in Paris (December 2010) and the fourth Congress in Madrid (December 2013) of course saw a major worsening of the financial and debt crisis in the EU with devastating consequences for a number of countries, and Greece in particular. In Greece, of course, unlike elsewhere, it was the EL’s local component, Synaspismós (later Syriza) that would emerge as the main voice of opposition to austerity, and a challenger for governmental power in 2012–14. Moreover, the EL’s decision to adopt the charismatic young leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, who was also a Vice-President of the EL, as its candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission after the 2014 elections, effectively ensured the close identification of the entire party with Greek resistance to austerity and helped to turn the 2014 EP election campaign into a highly personalised one. In what follows we discuss the impact on policy

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development of the 2013 Congress and the 2014 manifesto, and the implications of the ‘Tsipras factor’ on the 2014 campaign. The 2013 Congress opened with a reminder to delegates of the somewhat clumsy and slow policy-making process within the party. Only proposed amendments to the party statute that had been presented to the member parties first, and had gained the approval of the member parties, could be presented to Congress for approval. Other proposals which had not gone through this lengthy procedure would not be presented for voting. Moreover, only a ‘brief and concise’ summary of the Programmatic Platform for the 2014 European elections would be presented for congressional approval. ‘A wide range of contributions to the further development of specific points concerning the various aspects of the programme’ which had been ‘proposed by Party members, working groups, or networks of women and trade unionists’ would not be presented for discussion and approval on the somewhat extraordinary grounds that ‘not all points of this document are applicable at the European level, or in all countries’ and ‘they do not require, therefore, unanimous agreement, taking into account the diversity of national situations’ but could form the basis for ongoing discussions (European Left, 2013b). This decision, on the face of it, seems to reduce the Congress to the role of a body that approves the principal points of the party platform proposed by the Executive Board, while depriving working groups, networks and individual party members of any real input into policy-making. The suspicion has to be that the party leadership was anxious to avoid any chance that a Programmatic Platform that was the product of a process of compromises and trade-offs inside the Executive Board every bit as ‘tortuous’ as that in 2010 should not come ‘unstuck’ through any display of grass roots democracy. This point as regards the EL’s policy-making procedures illustrates again that the EL remains essentially a conglomeration of national parties rather than the autonomous actor in its own right of which Lothar Bisky had dreamed. The Programmatic Platform for the 2014 EP elections consisted of five basic axes: • Resist austerity – for a new model of development; • Give power to the people – for a citizens’ revolution; • For a social Europe – for a Europe of rights; • For fair trade with the world – refuse the big transatlantic market; • For a Europe of peace. Under the rubric of ‘Resist Austerity – for a new model of development’, the Platform called for a Citizens’ Audit of public debt and for a cancellation of what it called ‘illegitimate debt’. Austerity plans should be stopped

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and economic activity encouraged that was compatible with environmental protection and the creation of secure and properly paid jobs. Budgets should be geared towards solidarity and a reduction of social, regional and gender inequalities. The economic growth model should embrace sustainability and the fight against global warming, and a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy should prioritise food safety. Under ‘Give power to the people – for a citizens’ revolution’, the party called for the rebuilding of Europe through a rejection of ‘the existing European Union Treaties’. It is exceptionally vague as to what this might mean in practice – dissolution of the EU, or a gradual reform from within? The Platform called for moves to ‘respect popular sovereignty’, to ‘regain power over finance’ and to ‘facilitate citizens’ involvement in EU decisionmaking’, as well as support for worker’s rights and trade union freedoms. All of this is, in essence, a reaffirmation of existing policy and adds little or nothing to the Platform of the previous party Congress. However, the more detailed proposals which were not submitted for congressional approval point to potential conflict within the Executive Board in that proposals for increased power to the EP are balanced with proposals for increased powers to national parliaments, with one submission even arguing that ‘budgetary power must be given to the national parliaments. They should also be able to control and participate in EU decision-making’ (European Left, 2014a). Taken literally, this would surely be a recipe for a total paralysis of the European integration process and it is difficult to see how European federalists on the radical left could be comfortable with such a proposal. ‘For a social Europe – for a Europe of rights’ reaffirms the EL’s longstanding policies in support of right of access to work, decent wages, health care, education, pensions and social services, as well as equal rights for women, LGBT people, migrants and the disabled. Again, little is added to existing policy. ‘For fair trade with the world –refuse the big transatlantic market’ did contain several new policy elaborations. It calls for a referendum about the transatlantic market in every country ‘where it is possible’ and an immediate stop to negotiations on the TTIP agreement. It calls also for action to be taken against US spy networks in Europe, for the suspension of the Israel/EU Association Agreement ‘as long as Israel violates international human rights’, and for new Mediterranean regional agreements and the renegotiation of free trade agreements with Latin America and the Caribbean on a non-exploitative basis. Finally, ‘For a Europe of peace’ simply reaffirmed existing policy commitments against NATO, militarism and imperialism, and for a dismantling of the European armaments industry.

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Together, with the addition of what might even be considered a sixth axis, ‘A new model for ecological development’, which committed the party to fighting for ecologically sustainable agriculture, for public transport and against market solutions to carbon emissions, against the privatisation of natural resources and in favour of public ownership of the production and distribution of energy, these axes constituted the EL’s manifesto for the 2014 European elections. Arguably, the Programmatic Platform presented at the 2013 Congress was the least ambitious and the vaguest, in terms of policy development and elaboration, in the EL’s history. This, in turn, may reflect what we have remarked upon elsewhere as a perceived loss of momentum between the Paris (2010) and Madrid (2013) Congresses. However, in one crucial respect, the Madrid Congress was genuinely innovative – it took a decision that was to impact upon and influence the nature of the 2014 campaign for the European elections. The Congress decided to submit a candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission. In a statement explaining the rationale behind the candidature, the Madrid Congress of the EL declared that: The meaning of this candidacy is very clear. We do not believe that this new measure is able to democratize the EU. It will not hide, as leaders of political parties dominating the European construction hope, the growing and unbearable authoritarianism of their decisions and of the non-elected institutions like the European Commission and the Troika. Our candidacy will strongly criticize the non-democratic nature of these institutions, their mode of nominating, and demand for a democratic rebuilding of the Union, respecting the sovereignty of the peoples and of the European nations. Our candidacy will be a megaphone for all citizens who want to stop austerity and open the way for a social, ecological and democratic rebuilding of Europe. There is no reason, during the electoral campaign of the 2014 European elections, to leave the monopoly of speaking to forces responsible for the crisis. We offer this candidacy for all the forces wishing to unite for a different future of human progress in Europe. The candidacy will try to gather step by step many citizens and political forces with a common message in the EU countries: ‘No to austerity, rebuild a Europe of solidarity and justice’. (EL, 2013b)

It was almost a foregone conclusion that the candidate in question should be the young leader of Greece’s Syriza, Alexis Tsipras. Greece, of course, had been for several years the European country widely seen as most vulnerable to the harsh austerity strictures imposed by the Troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund.1 In just a few years, Tsipras had led the Greek

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component of the EL from 4 per cent (2009) to 27 per cent (2012) of the popular vote in Greece, making it the leading and most important force of resistance to austerity, in Europe as well as Greece. The EL now offered his candidacy for the European Commission Presidency as a way of galvanising its European elections campaign; but, more than that, as a way of reaching out to other anti-austerity forces and building bridges. Within seven months of the 2014 EP elections, as we shall see, Tsipras would lead Syriza to 36.3 per cent of the popular vote in Greece, forming a coalition government with a small right-wing party and embarking on what would prove to be a strategy of compromise with major and uncomfortable implications for the EL. The Tsipras candidacy, the 2014 European elections campaign and the prelude to Syriza in government As we have commented elsewhere, it is a well-known fact that European Parliament elections are ‘second order’ elections, and that during European election campaigns European policies often tend to get forgotten. Given that EL policy has largely developed in line with European election campaigns, it might be argued that there is very little evidence that it actually impacts much on the EL member parties. We may observe that some of the smaller parties adopted the 2009 manifesto wholesale, but equally that others scarcely mentioned it during their campaigns. The Tsipras candidacy allowed the EL to add to the ‘minor miracle’ of a common manifesto in 2009, another minor miracle in 2014 – that of a genuinely common electoral campaign. Tsipras played a highly visible and energetic role during that campaign, emphasising common themes everywhere he went. He helped launch the campaign of the FG in Paris and attended rallies in Berlin, Prague, Galicia and Lisbon. Indeed, he helped the EL reach out to other anti-austerity forces, sharing a platform, for example, with the former socialist President of Portugal, Mario Soares, who pledged support for his anti-austerity message. He attended a highprofile academic-sponsored public meeting at Dublin City University in Ireland, a country without an EL member party. But it was undoubtedly in Italy, which Tsipras visited on several occasions, and where he concluded the EL’s campaign with a mass rally attended by tens of thousands in Bologna on 19 May 2014, that Tsipras had the biggest impact. The Italian radical left has since 2008 in particular been plagued by internal divisions and sectarian squabbling, causing it to fall below the threshold needed to secure parliamentary representation and, by 2014, leaving it without any representation in either the European or Italian parliaments. The Tsipras candidacy acted as a catalyst for fusion on

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the Italian radical left, encouraging intellectuals, activists in the social movements and parties such as the PRC and Left Ecology Freedom to form an electoral list – Per Un’Altra Europa – con Alexis Tsipras (known usually as the Lista Tsipras) – which finally succeeded in passing the 4 per cent threshold set for these elections in Italy and securing the Italian radical left three seats in the EP. (One of those seats, significantly, was won by Barbara Spinelli, daughter of the late Altiero Spinelli, perhaps the greatest left exponent of European federalism of all time.) In this way, the EL might be said to have not only encouraged policy convergence and joint campaigning on shared themes, but also to have helped unify the badly fragmented Italian radical left. Tsipras campaigned on the basis of the EL manifesto, agreed at the Madrid Congress of course. But he emphasised the more pro-European and ‘reformist’ aspects of that manifesto. For example, he declared that ‘The Eurozone is teetering on the brink of collapse. This is not due to the euro per se but to neoliberalism – to the set of recessionary austerity policies that, far from supporting the single currency, have undermined it. But, along with the single currency, they have also undermined public trust in the European Union and support for further and deepening European integration. It is for that reason that we believe that neo-liberalism is the accelerator of Euroscepticism. This is not our Europe. This is only the Europe we want to change’ (European Left, 2014b). And, he continued: [F]or the entire discussion on democracy in Europe to be meaningful, the European Union needs its own strong budget and a European Parliament which decides budget allocation, oversees budget execution along with national Parliaments, and controls budget performance. The democratic reorganization of the European Union is the political objective par excellence. To this end, we should extend the scope of public intervention and citizen engagement and participation in European policymaking and service design. In parallel, we should empower institutions with direct democratic legitimacy, such as the European and national Parliaments. That implies concrete political initiatives, at a first stage to restore the primary role of national Parliaments in drafting and deciding upon national budgets. That means suspension of articles 6 and 7 of Regulation (EU) 473/2013 (the second of the two-pack legislative acts for the Eurozone countries) on monitoring and assessing national draft budgetary plans, which gave the European Commission the right to scrutinize and revise national budgets before the respective Parliaments can do that. At a second stage, as mentioned earlier, it implies greater involvement of both the European and national Parliaments in the oversight of the European budget. It also implies institutional enhancement of the European Parliament as mechanism of democratic control of the European Council and the European Commission.

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As can readily be seen, the tone of this passage is much more unambiguously Europeanist (as opposed to sovereigntist) than the language used in the Madrid Programmatic Platform, even if they are easily reconciled. Tsipras also made a calculated pitch for the support of social democratic voters who were pro-European but disgusted by the impact of austerity policies and the abandonment of attempts to articulate an alternative vision of European integration by the mainstream social democratic parties. In his programmatic declaration, he quoted the British Labour leader Aneurin Bevan, ‘a genuine social-democrat and political father of the British National Health Service, [who said that] for us power means “the use of collective action designed to transform society and so lift all of us together” ’. He called upon ‘the ordinary European citizen who traditionally has been voting for the social-democrats … to vote for hope and change – to vote for the European Left. So that we can together rebuild our own Europe of labour, culture and ecology.’ We have already seen how he received the endorsement of Mario Soares in Portugal. At a seminar organised by the Bruno Kreisky Forum in Vienna in September 2013, he had appealed ‘to Europe’s social democrats’ to ‘join us in a common project: the project of stabilizing the Eurozone – a first step towards an open, democratic and cohesive Europe’ (Tsipras, 2013: 45). His message throughout seems consistent in arguing that the social democratic parties had betrayed the vision of a democratic and socially just Europe by embracing policies of austerity; and that only the radical left, represented by the EL and its allies, could save and renew that original social democratic vision of Europe. In the event, although the GUE/NGL confederal group in the European Parliament did increase its strength from thirty-five to fifty-two MEPs in the 2014 elections, the result was a rather disappointing one for the EL (as we saw in chapter 4, only twenty-eight of those fifty-two GUE/NGL MEPs belonged to EL member and observer parties). The big exception was Greece, where the EL (in the form of Syriza of course) polled 26.7 per cent and became the single biggest political party, with five MEPs. In terms of policy transfer from the European to the national level (and vice versa), Syriza is an interesting case in point, not only because it might reasonably be expected to play an even greater role inside the EL than in the past, in the light of its electoral and political success; but also because some commentators believe that it already illustrates one of the best examples of policy transfer and policy influence from TNP to national party level. Nikos Nikolakakis (2017a), for example, argues explicitly that from the time of the second EL Congress in 2007, Synaspismós (and later Syriza) harmonised its policy almost entirely with the EL’s. The party majority led

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by Tsipras harmonised its position on participation in the Eurozone, resistance to austerity, and partial cancellation and ‘Europeanisation’ of the debt with that of the EL. In 2010, Syriza issued a Political Decision that declared: ‘We are aware that the economic model that the EU has adopted is currently at a dead end. As a result, Syriza together with the EL should bring about the re-foundation of the economical and political architecture of the EU.’ And the alternative solution is the struggle of the European peoples for the change of the balance of powers at a national level, and the common, coordinated fight for another Europe. A democratic and social Europe, freed from monetarism and the impositions of the Capital. The fights of the European working classes open a new path for the European future. For such a future we fight next to the European Left Party, which recently called for ‘a social and political dynamic in order to re-build a unitary, European front, a forum of alternative propositions, which would address humanitarian and ecological issues’. We would like to express our gratitude to the EL’s support to the Greek people and its struggles. (Syriza, 2010: 2–3)

Against this, a minority within Syriza around the so-called Left Platform argued that the Euro and the EU itself were unreformable from within and that Greece should withdraw from both - ‘neither the Eurozone nor the EU can be reformed or re-founded but only overthrown’ (Left Platform, 2013). A similar position, of course, is held by some within the EL, such as the Danish RGA. Nikolakakis (2017a, 2017b) also argues that both Syriza and the EL blamed the neoliberal character of the European integration process for the depth of the crisis the EU faces – rather than the EU per se. This has helped Syriza – and, alongside it the EL – to pitch for the support of pro-EU but disillusioned former social democratic voters. Indeed, the Political Resolution of the First Congress of Syriza, held in July 2013 and approved by the party majority, praised the EL and Syriza’s activity within it as proof that Syriza was an internationalist force, building allies across Europe in its response to the debt crisis. The Congress declared, for example, that ‘Syriza is obliged to be the leading force in initiating a debate relating to a critique of capitalism, and the request for … a socialism with freedom and democracy, both in Greece and in Europe through the coordination of the European Left party. We shall try to take advantage of both our and our EL comrades’ experiences relating to socialism’ (Syriza, 2013). Nikolakakis (2017a) concludes that ‘the still ongoing debate relating to the Greek national debt, one of the main questions in Greek politics, was mainly shaped by the EL’s congress held in Brussels in April 2014. In addition to that, the EL plays a vital role in Syriza’s strategy involving the government of the left, and the domino effect that such a government

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could have upon in other European countries.’ The reference to the influence of the EL’s Brussels 2014 conference on the European debt crisis is perhaps unsurprising, given that the EL had organised this conference partly at the urging of Syriza and that both Tsipras and another Syriza leader, Yannis Millios (a member of the EL Economic Policy Working Group) played important roles in its proceedings (see European Left and Transform!, 2014, for an account of the discussions). The argument that the EL might influence Syriza’s governmental strategy, even if this is not quite the same thing as arguing that EL policy spillover has determined what Syriza has attempted to achieve in office, is extremely interesting, given that disappointment and disillusionment with Syriza’s performance in government from 2015 to 2018 was marked in many radical left quarters and even led to dissension within the EL. Without doubt, if we could demonstrate that a TNP such as the EL had played a role in influencing the policy content of a government led by the radical left, this would be solid evidence of a profound Europeanisation of the radical left’s culture – and in the face of an unprecedented crisis of the European Union. At the time of writing (2019), it was still too premature to pass definitive judgement but the record to date is not encouraging. As we shall see, Syriza’s failure so far in government to mount anything more effective than a relatively modest social democratic resistance to EUimposed austerity (critics have actually accused it of capitulation) calls into question the practicality of EL parties being able to implement an antiausterity policy – and lies behind the desperate need that the EL perceives (see chapter 4) to broaden the anti-austerity coalition beyond the ranks of the traditional radical left parties. Indeed, the Political Document approved by the fifth EL Congress in Berlin in December 2016 reflects a growing sense of unease at the deepening of the crisis facing Europe, and the European left in particular; and a profound sense of existential anxiety in the face of the difficulties of articulating a convincing strategy. The Political Document claimed that ‘crises and divisions have worsened throughout the whole of Europe, to the point of becoming an existential crisis for the European Union’. The pursuit of austerity has created growing societal imbalances, increasing support for racist and populist forces, and giving rise to a situation in which ‘the whole European edifice is creaking and could collapse. The entire European project is again being called into question, even its foundations.’ The bullying and pressure placed on the Syriza government in Greece was compared with the decision of the UK to leave the EU (so-called Brexit), both pointing to ‘the brutality of the relationship of forces … at the very heart of the European Union’ (all quotations from the Political Document are from European Left, 2016a).

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The fifth Congress, which approved the Political Document, painted an apocalyptic picture of a Europe that is teetering on the brink of an even bigger social collapse and a renewed financial crisis – against an international background that has worsened considerably with the recurrence of wars, the worsening of the ecological crisis, and the election of an unprecedentedly reactionary regime in the USA: Austerity policies are leading to major social regression across Europe. Wages, collective bargaining agreements and social benefits are the permanent target of austerity policies. The ruling classes are exploiting the crisis to take their revenge for the social rights won through the struggles of workers in the twentieth century. Mass unemployment, job insecurity and poverty are disfiguring all European societies. Current free trade within EU borders without any form of social harmonization favours social dumping, widespread deregulation and lowering of the price of labour.

As a result, the EU has become a ‘machine that accelerates the massive destruction of employment and is manufacturing unemployment and poverty’, thus increasing gender inequality also; and, far from being a force for regulation, the EU ‘now promotes policies that are exacerbating the crisis and its consequences’. The fifth Congress saw a democratic crisis within the EU that had by now reached truly shocking levels. The contempt of the EU elites for popular opposition to austerity reached its apogee in ‘the diktat imposed on Greece and on the government of Alexis Tsipras and Syriza [which] was preceded by what can only be described as a banking coup whose aim was to cut the country’s lifeline. It demonstrates the brutality of the methods used by the Troika to put pressure on countries, and their total disregard for the verdict of the polls.’ At the same time, the EU did nothing in the face of the rise of ‘ultranationalist, authoritarian and clerical governments’ in parts of Eastern Europe, allowing such governments to flout EU rules on migrants, and even exploiting the migrant crisis to place further pressure on Greece. The Political Document presents a stark choice between three possible scenarios: if there is no change of direction, and the EU continues on the path of ‘authoritarian federalism’ and ‘fiscal authoritarianism’, then the whole edifice may crumble; alternatively, Europe may ‘remain mired in austerity and mass unemployment, behind its closed borders’; or a progressive change of direction must be contrasted to that dilemma – a ‘union of European peoples based on sovereignty and solidarity’. The fifth Congress does not abandon the fundamental Left Europeanism of the EL, but it does mark a pronounced sharpening of its critique of the EU. The issue of whether a ‘Europe based on social justice and solidarity’ can be built through reform of the EU from within, or must at this stage of necessity

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involve a dissolution of the EU as a bloc is, perhaps deliberately, fudged. Maybe, given the political experience of Syriza in particular, or given the rapid pace of change in general, the EL no longer feels able to base a viable political strategy on a simple answer to that question. The Congress, instead, looked beyond the issue of EU membership itself to the construction of the broadest possible alliances of progressive forces against austerity. Such alliances should be guided by principles that ‘imply a fundamental challenge to the present framework of the European Union’. The Congress committed itself to a formulation that contested the intransigence shown by EU elites towards Syriza in Greece with a commitment to strengthen democracy at both the national and European levels. This certainly represents a shift of emphasis away from the idealism of the Berlinguer/ Spinelli vision of a United States of Europe (see chapter 2). But, for the EL, this shift is arguably necessitated by a realistic assessment of how little mileage that idealism retains in the face of the EU’s ruthless pursuit of neoliberal orthodoxy and austerity and its determination to crush governments that oppose the logic of both. Thus, the EL, at its fifth Congress argued: Europe must not substitute itself for individual states, for the national level and for their prerogatives, but should encourage cooperation on joint projects and global challenges. The sovereignty of every state should be respected. The democratic legitimacy of each country must take priority over the current European treaties. A state should have the right to non-application of European directives and decisions that are regressive in terms of social and democratic gains and the people’s rights.2 European laws should be drawn up jointly by the European Parliament and the national parliaments. The European Commission should not have the right to initiate legislation, which should be the joint preserve of national parliaments and the European Parliament. The pressure of lobbies should also be prohibited. We want to help governments who seek to move away from the liberal approach and promote the idea of progress in Europe. There must also be a drastic overhaul of the monetary union, for those Member States that want to be part of it. The euro has now become a weapon of war for the ruling classes. We need to break with the idea of the euro as a disciplinary tool. The European currency must be deeply redesigned … the currency must be used in a way that is shared and concerted, and must include mechanisms that take account of economic and social changes in the different eurozone Member States. In any case, no country should be obliged to join the eurozone. A country that makes a democratic decision to leave the euro should be able to do so without being subject to sanctions, pressure or blackmail. The EL is continuing the reflection and debate on the single currency as well as studying the alternatives that would not penalise peoples and would not jeopardise their social and democratic conquests.

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The Congress committed the EL to campaign in the period 2016–19 on the basis of ten keynote policies: • For a Europe that allows people to take control over economic choices: for withdrawal from the fiscal compact, for a European investment plan that favours jobs, public services, and energy and environmental transition, subject to the acceptance of the Member States, for restructuring and renegotiating debt, for fundamental reform and the redirection of injections of capital from the ECB in favour of a development policy that works for everyone. For social harmonization which is the only way to prevent widespread dumping between Member States. This means calling into question the existing European treaties, starting with the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the economic governance mechanisms, the fiscal pact and the European semester. • For the creation of a broad popular and progressive left-wing front to stand against the extreme right and fascism. • Promoting broad unity among the working class and poor through fighting poverty and austerity and promoting solidarity. • For the fight against tax evasion: zero impunity from tax evasion. • For the reduction of working time, a decent income for all and a public policy of investment in favour of employment. • For the rupture with the TTIP, TISA and to impede the CETA ratification. • For equal rights for all: gender equality in every sphere. • For a dignified welcome and a policy of helping migrants and refugees. • For a fundamental change in the Energy system with a drastic reduction of CO2 emissions and a future based on ecologically sustainable energy. • For a Europe that works for peace: for nuclear disarmament, the dismantling of the anti-missile shield, for a peace initiative in the Middle East. The EL supports the pacifist movements and disarmament campaigns.

Finally, we may note an aspect of policy development at the fifth Congress already alluded to in chapter 4, when we considered the evolution of the EL as a networking organisation: the increased recognition that the deepening crisis required ever broader alliances and bolder ways of working. The Congress noted that ‘we have important lessons to learn from the past three years. The coming to power of a government of the left in Greece shows both that victories are possible and that changing the relationships of forces in one single country is not enough. We must open breaches in other countries in order to reverse the relationships of forces in Europe.’ This was an understated way of recognising that Syriza in power had faced international isolation, leading to the retreat from its, and the EL’s, anti-austerity strategy. Congress noted that ‘what holds true for Greece or Portugal will also hold true if, in the coming years, another force of the left is elected to the highest levels of power’. The Congress thus committed the EL to working with the broadest range of social, political and

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cultural forces to overcome any such isolation, including ‘social democrats who refuse to renounce the values of the left and refuse to transmit the neo-liberal offensive’ and ‘ecologist forces that are not resigned to “green capitalism” ’. Much of the sharpening of the EL’s critique of the EU and the broadening of its political horizons can be attributed, as we have argued, to a profound sense of dismay and anger at the blows inflicted on Syriza in government, such as the requirement to implement welfare cuts, reductions in public sector wages and even a ban on strikes in parts of the public sector, and, by extension, on the EL’s own anti-austerity strategy. The period between 2013 and 2018 proved a sharp learning curve for the EL, and the internal debate and dissensions over how to respond to the lessons of recent set-backs continues, of course. Indeed the ability of a TNP such as the EL to influence the behaviour of its components in government was already called into question before Syriza’s ascent to governmental office in January 2015. It is worth reflecting briefly on two examples of government participation by EL member and observer parties, before returning to a brief analysis of Syriza. The cases of Italy and Cyprus: the PRC and AKEL in government Charalambous (2011a and 2013) reflects critically on the governmental experience of the Italian PRC between 2006 and 2008. The PRC was an enthusiastic EL founder member and its secretary, Fausto Bertinotti, served as the first EL President. The party inherited, in large measure, the left pro-Europeanism of the old PCI, shorn of its support for Italian membership of NATO. The PRC participated fully in the elaboration of EL policy in 2005 and 2007, which we have already examined in this chapter. Yet, its third experience of government participation, from 2006 to 2008, saw it become, in effect, the prisoner of the bi-polar dynamics of Italian politics in this period and ultimately of the centre-left majority around Romano Prodi, whose approach to European integration was a lot less critical of neoliberalism than that of the PRC. The PRC was unable to give effect, in government, to any of the radical policies it helped develop alongside its EL partners. As Charalambous puts it, a fully pro-EU programme was presented by Prodi’s alliance during the 2006 electoral campaign, although Rifondazione cannot be assumed to have had any special effect on the foreign policy formulations … the party was bound by a common programme among the prospective governing coalition’s constituent parts … it could not be antagonistic towards the centre-left through the issue of European integration without cancelling out the logic of a second cooperation with Prodi, given that its own intentions were not only to

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support the centre-left, but also to participate in government during a period when European integration, just like in the late 1990s, would naturally act as a constraint on domestic policy-making. (Charalambous, 2013: 144–5)

The result was that the PRC was forced to give much less salience to European policy issues during its years in government, and even to behave in downright contradictory ways that ultimately did much damage to the party. Its two flagship policies were social justice and anti-militarism. On the first, it found itself voting in favour of the 2007 Finance Law which imposed budget cuts to bring Italy into line with the criteria laid down in the Stability and Growth Pact (which it and the EL opposed), while struggling unsuccessfully inside the government to ameliorate the effects of some of these cuts by having them postponed, and then lending its support to strike action against the very cuts for which it had voted. On the second issue, a ‘soft line’ in government on the expansion of US military bases in Italy and on war credits for the so-called ‘peace mission’ in Afghanistan flatly contradicted PRC/EL policy and once again led to the party organising mass rallies against decisions it had supported. Not surprisingly, perhaps, this total failure to translate EL policy into action in government (and indeed its own national party policy, which was closely aligned with EL policy) did enormous damage to the credibility of the PRC. When it left government in 2008, it entered a crisis marked by splits (often over the issue of government participation and policy failure) and electoral decline that would see it completely marginalised and forced outside the parliamentary institutions until the European elections of 2014. At the time of writing (2019), it remains without any representation in the Italian parliament. It might, of course, be argued that the PRC is a small party, and that it is in the nature of small parties that choose coalition participation that they must expect to pay a price in terms of policy compromise and loss of identity. The PRC’s failure, therefore, does not necessarily ‘prove’ that EL policy is ignored or sidelined at the national level. Our second example, however, is perhaps more damning. AKEL is a major party in Cyprus and, in 2008, it emerged as the biggest party at the head of a coalition government after its leader, Demetris Christofias, won the Cypriot presidential election. Admittedly, AKEL is an EL observer member, rather than a full member. Nevertheless, it might be expected that, as the only radical left party and EL member (full or observer) then leading the government of an EU member state, some evidence of policy transfer from the European or TNP to the national level might be expected, or that, at the very least, AKEL in power might use its EL connections to appeal for solidarity in mounting resistance to neoliberalism.

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In fact, AKEL in power made no serious attempt at all to resist neoliberalism and, for the most part, governed Cyprus exactly as if it were one of the much-criticised social democratic parties that have succumbed to an uncritical embrace of EU-driven neoliberalism (see Charalambous and Ioannou, 2015, and Katsourides, 2016, for critiques of AKEL in power). Christofias in power both ignored EL policy and set aside his own party’s EU policy. For example, he ratified the Lisbon Treaty, offered either no or token resistance to the EU Directive on Working Time and the 2008 Asylum Policy, and agreed to accelerated Eurozone entry. Perhaps most astonishing of all, Christofias voted in favour of the centre-right’s José Manuel Barroso’s candidacy for President of the European Commission in 2009, in flat opposition to both the EL and GUE/NGL group inside the European Parliament. The government also agreed to the EU’s Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (the Fiscal Compact) while AKEL, as a party, formally attacked austerity. In effect, AKEL, as a party, suppressed discussion of EU matters internally in order to minimise the possibility of splits, offering no mobilisation or opposition to EU neoliberal policies (Charalambous, 2013: 108–9). Much of this has been excused on the ground that AKEL has a historic role to play in bringing about the reunification of Cyprus on peaceful and non-sectarian grounds, and that EU support was needed to help bring this about, not least by placing pressure on Turkey. The primacy of the ‘Cypriot question’, then, has functioned as an alibi for the wholesale abandonment of any effective (or even ineffective but remotely coherent) radical left policy in government. ‘The existence of the Cyprus Problem essentially constitutes a permanent ideological excuse to AKEL for avoiding a socially confrontational strategy’ (Charalambous and Ioannou, 2015: 272). AKEL suffered a severe defeat in the 2013 presidential elections in Cyprus and departed government. Charalambous and Ioannou (2015: 267) argue that in the light of its record in government, ‘for perhaps the first time in its history, and only a few years after it first entered office, AKEL is now seen by many as a corrupted party, similar, if not identical in its lack of ideological ethos to the rest of the office-seeking political elite. It can no longer claim convincingly to constitute a force operating on behalf of the common people, and nor can it appear as their genuine defender against daily injustices.’ The failure of both the PRC and AKEL to offer any evidence, during their periods in government, of policy spill-over or policy ‘contamination’ or ‘cross-pollination’ from the pan-European to the national level would seem to urge caution upon us. After all, a TNP such as the EL can spend as much time and effort as it wishes developing detailed policies on the

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crisis facing the EU but if its component parts are unable to implement those policies when in office, or unwilling or uninterested in even attempting to develop a pan-European strategy for a radical left that governs, then one could argue that policy sophistication at TNP level is not in itself evidence of successful Europeanisation. However, there are special circumstances in the cases of both the PRC and AKEL. The PRC was, and is, a very small party, forced to compromise on terrain dictated by larger bloc allies on the centre-left as a price of government participation, and badly divided by that experience. AKEL, though a much bigger party, was never a full member of the EL and therefore might be expected not to be as bound by EL policy as a full member might be; moreover, the story of AKEL’s participation in government is as much a story of wholesale sidelining of its own party policy on European matters as of failure to implement EL policy. And this, in turn, might be seen as affected by the long-standing AKEL tendency to prioritise Cypriot reunification over economic and social issues. The failure of any Syriza-led radical left government in Greece to make a serious effort to implement EL policy would be a much more damning indictment of the policy efficacy of TNPs. Syriza in government: lessons and implications for the EL Syriza won the Greek general election of January 2015, polling 36.3 per cent of the total vote and winning 149 seats in the 300-seat Greek parliament, just short of an overall majority. Surprisingly, the party negotiated a coalition government with the small, right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL) party. Initially, there were cautious grounds for optimism from an EL perspective. Syriza’s election campaign in January 2015 had echoed EL calls for a politics of radical change and for the triumph of hope over fear. The campaign had brought numerous delegations from EL member parties, including Die Linke and the PCF, as well as other important components of the broad European left, such as Spain’s Podemos, to Athens to appear on stage alongside Syriza leaders (Nikolakakis, 2017a: 307–8). However, the initial optimism soon gave way to growing concern as in February the EU sought to force Syriza to implement austerity cuts. The new Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, toured European capital cities, seeking to rally support for his government’s right to stand up to austerity but soon found himself isolated and under constant pressure to capitulate and implement austerity policies – a process he documents in his political memoirs (Varoufakis, 2017). In June, Greece’s Troika of creditors – the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission – delivered what he describes as their ‘final

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onslaught’ (Varoufakis, 2017: 430). A programme of austerity measures was demanded in exchange for continuing support for the Greek banking system from the ECB. Otherwise, the Troika would effectively close Greek banks and put in place capital controls. The Syriza government faced a bleak and stark choice between capitulation to austerity or continuing the fight even if this meant taking Greece out of the Eurozone – or even, as some in the EU allegedly threatened, out of the EU itself. According to Varoufakis (2017: 433), Tsipras and the majority of Syriza were unwilling to even contemplate life outside the Eurozone and the decision to capitulate was in effect taken as early as 20 June. However, for tactical reasons Tsipras decided to call a popular referendum and put the Troika’s demands to the Greek people – a referendum which the leadership of Syriza expected to lose (Varoufakis, 2017: 443). The referendum was held on 5 July and to many people’s amazement an overwhelming majority of the Greek people backed the Syriza government’s official call to reject the Troika ultimatum – 61.3 per cent voted ‘no’. If some in Syriza had secretly hoped to lose the referendum, thereby tactically avoiding political responsibility for the inevitable surrender to the EU and shifting it on to the Greek people, they now faced the huge embarrassment of having secured an overwhelming popular mandate for a struggle which they no longer believed they could win – at least, not without risking life outside the Eurozone. Despite the referendum victory, at an EU summit held just six days later, the EU leaders appeared to threaten Greece with just such an outcome. Varoufakis records that he now witnessed ‘Alexis [Tsipras]’s surrender evolve at breath-taking speed’ (Varoufakis, 2017: 473). In August, the government – from which Varoufakis had by now resigned – agreed to implement wide-reaching measures including huge tax rises, cuts to pensions and privatisation of all remaining state assets. These were, in short, exactly the sort of policies to which Syriza and the EL had always been most strongly opposed. It was against this background that Syriza suffered a damaging split in August when twenty-five MPs from the party’s Left Platform broke away in protest at what they saw as a failure to offer sufficient resistance to EUimposed austerity and formed a new Popular Unity party. In September, in snap elections called by Tsipras, Syriza polled 35.5 per cent and won 144 seats and returned to power, again in coalition with ANEL. Popular Unity failed to cross the 3 per cent electoral threshold and lost all of its seats. In the period since then, Syriza in government, stripped of its radical Left Platform, has continued to implement cuts demanded by the EU while attempting to ameliorate the worst aspects of these. One of the Left Platform intellectuals, Stathis Kouvelakis, who is now a fierce critic of the

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Syriza government, has argued that the party suffered from a severe lack of experience and of political imagination, and a paralysing inability to understand the power of the forces ranged against it – and of the measures necessary to fight back: ‘it’s the state of mind of a left which has already accepted a subaltern position … they lacked not just the perception of class antagonism but the elementary realism that any political figure needs in order to survive’ (Kouvelakis, 2016: 54). Others, such as the Syriza member of parliament Costas Douzinas, offer a more charitable explanation for the turn of events: ‘the choice was between a continuation of catastrophic austerity and Grexit, a prospect that would destroy the living standards of a people who had already seen their income halved. It was not a choice between good and bad, but between the worse and the worst. Whatever the people chose, they and Syriza would be punished’ (Douzinas, 2017: 159). In other words, the harsh realities of trying to lead a progressive government in an EU dominated by the logic of austerity meant that Syriza in power had no option but to choose amelioration over revolution, and retreat in the hope of living to fight another day. For the EL, as we have already argued, events in Greece have posited a number of existential questions centre-stage. Before coming to government office, Syriza appeared to see the EL as playing a critical and central role, both in its policy evolution and the development and articulation of its strategy for government. It, in turn, had played a central role in developing EL policy and that role seemed likely to expand and grow in the years ahead. Tsipras personally had represented the hopes of the EL for a different vision of how the EU might develop during the 2014 EP elections. The advent to power of a democratically elected government led by a radical left EL member party seemed to hold out the possibility that EL’s policy-making and policy-influencing roles might expand beyond what has been the main task until now – that is, articulating a manifesto for European elections every five years. Not everyone within the EL agrees that this should be the case, of course. Moreover, the existing ‘tortuous’ policy-making procedures within the EL may not facilitate an increasingly proactive role. The emphasis that the EL has placed on recruiting as many parties as possible from diverse policy and ideological backgrounds, rather than concentrating on those that share a more pro-Europeanist orientation, may militate against the EL working alongside its national components as a policy generator, let alone supplanting them as the main source of European policy and strategy inspiration. And, in the event, the extremely difficult trajectory that Syriza has faced casts doubt upon the practical possibilities for any EL member party in government being able to implement EL policy without a dramatic shift in the balance of political forces in Europe. We have seen

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how this has led to heightened policy elaboration within the EL, and an increasingly acerbic appraisal of the EU’s framework, procedures and direction of travel, including a willingness to discuss possible scenarios – such as Eurozone exit – that Syriza felt completely unable to contemplate in isolation; as well as a belief in the need to build ever broader and more inclusive alliances, if future battles against Troika-imposed austerity are not to be lost. Doubtless, the sharpened focus evident at the fifth EL Congress also reflects a belief that Brexit has contributed to greater fragility of the EU. Writing in late 2015, Kouvelakis (2016: 70), claimed that ‘not everyone [on the European radical left] draws the same conclusions [as Syriza in power]. [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon has organised discussions in Paris about the need for a Plan B – I think he has drawn more correct conclusions from the Greek case, and denounced Tsipras’s capitulation. He is now talking openly about the necessity for all parties of the European radical left to make alternative plans which do include the option of leaving the euro and preparation for full-scale confrontation.’ In 2018, these divergent views exploded into the open when Mélenchon’s French allies called for the expulsion of Syriza from the EL. We conclude this discussion of policy evolution within the EL with a look at how this development poses threats to the EL that seem to be leading it to prioritise maximum organisational unity over policy coherence in the run-up to the 2019 European Parliament elections. Conclusion: Divisions within the EL after the Greek experience In February 2018, it was reported that Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s PG, a core component of his FI electoral coalition and a member party of the EL, was calling for the expulsion of Syriza from EL membership. A statement from the PG accused Syriza of implementing more savage austerity cuts than the preceding centre-right Greek government, of having betrayed the workers and the poor of Greece and of even approving EU demands to restrict the right to strike. ‘For the [PG] as undoubtedly for other parties of the European Left, it has become impossible to be associated in the same movement with Alexis Tsipras’s SYRIZA’, declared the French party, heralding the prospect of a split within the EL. The PG accused Tsipras of promoting ‘the logic of austerity to the point of restricting the right to strike, thus responding in an increasingly submissive way to the orders of the European Commission’ and Greece’s international lenders. The leader of Syriza’s group of MPs in the European Parliament, Dimitris Papadimoulis, described Mélenchon’s demand as ‘anti-democratic, provocative and divisive’ but did not dispute its accuracy.3

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The EL party President, Gregor Gysi, responded to the PG’s call in the following terms: To criticize SYRIZA’s governance in Greece is legitimate and opinions on that differ among the European Left as well. But the government policy of SYRIZA is to a great extent marked by the blackmailing of the troika and the German government. This includes measures as the restriction of the right to strike, of which I am very critical myself. Yet, these measures are imposed by the creditors. At the same time one may not forget the extent, the degree of indebtedness and the fact that the Greek government was pretty much left alone within the EU. It is easy to give advice from outside when one is not responsible for the country and the whole population. SYRIZA tries to make use of any leeway they can gain in favour of the poorest of society – as can be seen in the parallel programme which becomes more and more apparent. Their party manifesto shows that they are anchored politically within the democratic and socialist camp. The strength of the EL is to organise itself in the broadest possible way, to allow any conflict, to promote debates, and not expulsions. Would this road be chosen the European Left would not fare better but clearly worse during European elections in 2019. I am relatively sure that a motion on repulsion would not succeed in the Council of Chairpersons of the EL.4

Such calls raise profound issues for the EL. Can it continue to hone its radicalism and its critique of neoliberalism while one of its key components implements contrary policies in government? How far can a party in government stray from EL fundamental principles and policies or compromise in the face of EU pressure and still be considered a member of the radical left family, or, more specifically, the EL family? What responsibility has the EL to engage in self-critique if it is unable to offer sufficient solidarity and support to beleaguered comrades in government who feel forced to retreat in the face of overwhelming isolation on the EU stage? How much should pragmatic considerations, such as the electoral significance of a member party, count against the consideration of ideological and policy coherence? How can the EL hope to reach out to an ever wider and broader range of progressive forces if those already assembled within its ranks can no longer agree to work together, or even agree on what still constitutes a ‘progressive’ political force? At the time of writing, these questions still lack any clear answers, and debate is likely to continue for some time. But a consideration of such issues must take account of wider divergence within the EL. The EL Executive Board, meeting in Vienna in March 2018, gave the party’s immediate response to the PG’s proposal to expel Syriza: an emphatic ‘no’.5 With the PG absenting itself from the meeting, twenty-two

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of the twenty-three parties present voted against the proposal (the one abstention was due to a feeling that the party in question had not had sufficient time to discuss the issue). A split in the EL was avoided, although the PG (now largely subsumed within Mélenchon’s FI movement) left the EL in July 2018; Mélenchon was by now widely assumed to have made up his mind to field his own Europe-wide ‘Plan B’ list of candidates for the 2019 European elections in the hope of forming an anti-EU group, separate from the GUE/NGL Confederal group, in the EP. Those voting against the proposal to expel Syriza included several that might have had a considerable measure of sympathy with the ‘Plan B’ agenda – such as the Danish RGA, the Luxembourg’s Déi Lénk and the Portuguese BE – as well as many parties that shared the concerns over Syriza’s performance in government. However, Gregor Gysi carried the day with his emphasis on avoiding expulsions or excommunications and on building an inclusive EL that was at the centre of the broadest possible alliance against austerity and neoliberalism. The corollary of this approach, of course, is that the emphasis is now on what all of the EL member parties have in common – the rejection of austerity and a sympathy for those who have fallen victim to the bullying tactics of the Troika – and the issue of whether or not it is possible to change the EU from within or whether it is necessary to leave is likely to be avoided. Unity, therefore, may involve a measure of policy fudge, and certainly of strategic fudge. In conclusion, the sharpening of the EL’s critique of the EU, in response to the deepening European crisis and the crushing of the left’s dreams in Greece, may have achieved a rebalancing of the Europeanist/sovereigntist axis within the EL that satisfies the sovereigntists that the party is increasingly radical in its critique of the EU while reassuring the Europeanists that it has achieved this while remaining loyal to its vision of what an alternative, and better, united Europe should be – and not by a retreat into nationalism. However, contradictions and problems remain. Policy coherence may be undermined by the likelihood that, in order to keep parties such as the RGA ‘on board’, they will be simply permitted to opt out of already watered down policies, platforms or campaigns with which they disagree. The Syriza dilemma shows all too clearly that the difficult balancing act always risks a loss of coherence and of radicalism – and a possible loss of important members. Notes 1 For a discussion of how Greece had experienced unprecedented levels of poverty and wealth inequality, partly as a result of the austerity programme, see Matsaganis and Leventi (2014).

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2 Of course, there is a big problem with enshrining such a provision in any legally binding agreement. What would count as ‘regressive’ and who would decide which ‘European directives and decisions’ count as such? Once the principle of ‘opting out’ is conceded, isn’t it likely that many right-wing and/or populist EU governments would assert the right to opt out of the more progressive European directives and decisions? 3 This summary is based on a report in the National Herald online, www. thenationalherald.com/189290/french-leftists-want-tsipras-syriza-bootedeuropean-left/, accessed 8 March 2018. 4 www.european-left.org/regarding-resolution-parti-de-gauche-submit-motionexpulsion-syriza-el-president-european-left, accessed 8 March 2018. 5 This paragraph is based on off-the-record conversations with members of the EL Executive Board which one of the authors had in Vienna in March 2018.

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The EL as the ‘nexus of networks’? Developing relations with the movements and broader European radical left Introduction It was intrinsic to the EL’s founding ethos that it was a bottom-up ‘networking party’ – aiming for the ‘integration of working groups and actors of all kinds’ in order to ‘open politics to citizens, and to carry through common demands by coordinated action’ (European Left, 2010b). This networking identity was a natural result of the inclinations of EL founder parties such as the PRC and Synaspismós, which were central participants in the global justice movement via the European Social Forums; after all, this movement can be conceptualised as a ‘movement of movements’ using internet and communications technologies to become a ‘network of networks’ (della Porta and Mosca, 2005). Simultaneously, this network nature allowed EL to aspire to encompass a broader range of political and social actors who might not (yet) commit themselves to being full EL members; hence for example the role of observer members, individual members and ‘friendship circles’ shown in previous chapters. The degree to which the EL has been successful in furthering its ambition to be a central nexus of European radical left networks is the focus of this chapter. We look first at its attempts to become a key actor among the social movements, including via ancillary organisations such as trade unions. Secondly, we look at the EL’s ongoing relationships with those parties that originally declined to become full members, asking both why these parties failed to join and whether the EL has managed to overcome their objections and attain a fuller encapsulation of the key RLPs than it achieved on its foundation. The EL’s rather problematic relationship with the GUE/NGL group in the European Parliament is a critical issue in such a discussion, and accordingly we shall again focus on this in depth. It is giving little away to indicate that the EL has at best been only partially successful in these directions; more interesting is investigating why its performance has been less than stellar.

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The EL and the movements: from counter-society to counter-power? The fundamental problem that the EL faces in networking with organisations outside its core structures is that the contre-sociétés (countersocieties) that Annie Kriegel (1972) once noted in her analysis of the French PCF are now a thing of the past. The larger Western communist parties were deeply embedded in local communities, which they provided with a wide variety of ‘womb to tomb’ material and psychological services. This inter-dependency was achieved via a structured network of affiliated trade unions, and youth and social organisations. For example, the Italian PCI was intertwined with the Italian Cultural and Recreational Association (ARCI), which had millions of members and affiliates from ARCI-Gay to ARCI-Sport and ARCI-Cacciatore (hunters). This network ran the local casa del popolo, typically containing a bar, a cafe, leisure facilities and the PCI party branch. Thousands of these case del popolo existed throughout Italy, with a heavy concentration in the ‘red belt’ regions of Tuscany, EmiliaRomagna, Umbria and Le Marche. But today, this communist ‘social cosmos’ is much debilitated. Certainly, subcultural elements can still be identified among the electorate of communist parties, many of which still maintain higher-than-average support in traditional areas like Setúbal (Portugal), Creuse and Corrèze (France) and Piraeus, Samos and Lesvos (Greece). But the progressive and accelerating decomposition of communist links to civil society, from their declining and ageing mass membership and weakening trade union links to their dwindling cultural network, was one of the most visible symptoms of the crisis of West European communism evident long before the fall of the Wall (Lazar, 1988). Broadly speaking, such a crisis was intimately bound up with the move from industrialism to post-industrialism, with the decline of traditional industries and the classical industrial proletariat, the emergence of new post-materialist and individual identities, as well as the ideological offensive of neoliberalism that explicitly attacked traditional labour collectivism (Sassoon, 2010). Consequently, the vast majority of today’s RLPs do not have strong ties to affiliated organisations. Only the Cypriot AKEL now maintains the wide range of social, recreational and cultural activities in every ‘nook and cranny’ of society once common to many communist parties (Tsakatika and Lisi, 2013: 13). This party is to a considerable degree unique: it has preserved its ties to a militant proletarian subculture, in part due to the comparatively large Cypriot working class and AKEL’s long periods of social activism in the anti-colonial struggle that was only resolved with Cypriot independence in 1960 (Charalambous, 2007; Dunphy and Bale,

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2007). Other communist and ex-communist parties (e.g. the Finnish VAS) still have strong links to trade union activists, but ‘communist’ trade unions as such no longer exist (except in Portugal and Cyprus). Most indicative of this are the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), which now have a semi-detached relationship with the communist parties in each country. In France, although most of the CGT’s national leadership remain PCF members, the formal links are declining, and in 1999 Bernard Thibault became the first CGT General Secretary not to hold a leadership position in the PCF. In Italy, although the first two leaders of the PRC (Sergio Garavini and Fausto Bertinotti) were CGIL activists, by the 2000s only some 20 per cent of CGIL members were communists (Andalfatto, 2008). There is some evidence of RLP links to trade unions (and other civil society groups and NGOs) strengthening, without as yet looking likely to recapture former levels of inter-dependence. For example, RLPs have become increasingly attractive to trade unionists disaffected with social democratic parties. When the German Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative merged with Die Linke.PDS to form Die Linke in 2005, this was the most obvious example of trade union activists joining an RLP en masse. Moreover, the main trade unions in several countries (especially in the Nordic countries) have looked on the RLPs’ governmental ambitions increasingly favourably, supporting ‘left–left’ coalitions (between the radical and centre-left) wherever possible. Nevertheless, given that social democratic parties are generally larger, with more governmental possibilities and stronger lobbying opportunities, there is little likelihood of trade unions gravitating towards the radical left on a more permanent basis. The fracturing of the counter-society has evident implications for the EL. Clearly, the party is very unlikely to develop strong and institutionalised relationships with labour and civil society organisations if the vast majority of its component members are themselves fundamentally unable to do so. On the other hand, its networking structure offers the possibility of broader, if necessarily less stable and more tenuous, links with organisations that have eschewed links with established political parties. It is helped by the increasing emergence of a new ‘social-movement unionism’ (e.g. Moody, 2005; Mason, 2007), whereby trade unions have from the late 1990s broadened their focus from their traditionally parochial spheres (such as sectoral wage demands and national political bargaining) to transnational questions of global justice, and increasingly co-ordinate their demonstrations, issues and campaigns with the GJM. In Europe, this ‘social-movement unionism’ has been most evident in the increasing coordination of global justice activists and trade unionists in protests at EU

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summits in the name of promoting an alternative ‘social Europe’ (e.g. Mathers, 2007). Moreover, trade unionists increasingly co-operated with Attac (the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens), which was the prime mover behind the World and European Social Forums, the central organisational nodes for the GJM in the early/ mid-2000s. Indicative is the gradual radicalisation of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which represents eighty-nine national Trade Union Confederations at EU level. Although prior to 2008 it supported EU integration and distanced itself from the GJM (Gajewska, 2009), it has since made increasingly radical statements opposing ‘casino capitalism’ (ETUC, 2009). It organised a pan-European day of action in September 2010, and in 2011–12 increasingly vocally opposed the EU’s austerity policies as outlined in the December 2011 proposed treaty on strengthening budget discipline (ETUC, 2012). The EL, for its part, was aware of this and sought to co-ordinate actions with the ETUC (Gau, 2011). This resulted in the ETUC President addressing the EL’s fifth Congress in Madrid in 2013 (European Left, 2013b). The ETUC remains a pressure group without much authority over national unions or workers; therefore it is not a force with which employers or governments have to reckon (Sassoon, 2010: xvi). Nevertheless, it indicates that ‘mainstream’ labour sentiments are increasingly in symphony with the EL’s long-held proposals. The EL’s ‘working groups’ and networks have indeed helped it to broaden its links with the GJM in general and trade unions and other NGOs in particular. Among the most active in this regard are the Trade Unionists working group and EL FEM (the gender equality network). The former was set up in Berlin in November 2006, and incorporates twenty-six representatives from eleven European countries and fourteen political parties (European Left, n. d.(b)). Notably, it includes participants from parties not in the European Left Party, such as the Danish SF and the Norwegian SV. The driving force was originally the German Die Linke, and in particular Sabine Wils, a Left Party MEP and one of the co-founders of the group.1 The working group aimed to exchange information and experience in order to strengthen European trade union co-operation with a particular focus on defending public services against privatisation and deregulation, furthering the equal treatment of foreign workers and fighting ‘precarity’ (precariousness: labour insecurity caused by casualisation of working practices and unequal opportunities for women). The Trade Unionists group held eleven meetings up to May 2012 on themes such as the re-regulation of the European transport system and defending minimal social standards (including a minimum wage, maximum thirty-five-hour working week and statutory retirement age of sixty) and

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supporting strikers in Greece and Estonia. Its May 2012 meeting in Vienna proposed organising a pan-European strike in order to combat the policies of austerity in place across much of the EU and promoted a European Action Day organised by EL parties and trade unions, as a means for ‘an effective coordination of the struggle across our continent’ (European Left, 2012c). However, given its small size, the working group has inadequate resources directly to enable such aspirations. The most it might hope for is to be a force-multiplier, which increases the co-ordination and shared aspirations of constituent groups, which in turn can transmit its proposals to their members and affiliates. However, after 2012, its site on the EL webpage was seldom updated and the group became less visible. EL FEM is the EL’s longest-established network. It was formed at the EL’s Founding Congress in Rome in May 2004; the EL wanted to show from the outset that women had played an active and integral role in its foundation (European Left, n. d.(a)). Like the other working groups, EL FEM sees itself as an inclusive network ‘open to all women’s and feminist structures and militant supporters’, and like the Trade Unionists, its main role is to share experiences and strengthen pan-European co-operation. The network is large, including over a hundred women from twelve European countries. It has an ambitious platform, including producing a feminist manifesto for Marxist feminists in Europe and the EL, and opposing women’s precarity. EL FEM has spoken out regularly on issues such as violence against women and defence of abortion rights. It has made concrete demands, for example for new European laws ending violence against women and their children, limiting ownership of weapons and supporting rights of residency for victims of trafficking (European Left, 2011). Relative to the Trade Unionists, EL FEM members have been more widely represented in international conferences and social movement events. Moreover, elements of their proposals have been integrated into EL working practices, above all its commitment to feminism and equal gender representation. However, such achievements do fall short of EL FEM’s aspirations to fully integrate itself into EL activity, for example by gaining the exclusive right to initiate EL policy relating to women’s topics acknowledged in its statutes (European Left, 2005b). Indeed, at the EL’s 2010 Paris Congress, EL FEM members were publicly critical that their concerns were not given more emphasis in both plenary debates and Congress organisation.2 Although, as these examples show, the EL has partially intensified its links with certain sectoral groups, it has proved somewhat harder for it to develop stronger links with the GJM in general. Initially at least, this was because one of the GJM’s most vocal elements was an antiinstitutionalist ‘radical strand’ inspired by anarchist/autonomist ideologies and suspicious of political parties (Rootes and Sotirakopoulos, 2013). This

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strand was central to some of the early mobilisations (e.g. Seattle 1999 and Genoa 2001). Whereas this tendency was weaker in northern Europe (where many social movements prefer lobbying activities directed at mainstream social democratic parties), it remains strong in southern Europe, for example in Spain, Greece and Italy (Flesher Fominaya, 2014). Although the GJM developed a nominal form of leadership structure via the Social Forum process, the WSF and ESF deliberately excluded political parties from their organisational structures and rejected any notion of forming a global left party, in part as a nod towards counter-cultural ideals, in part as a pragmatic response to the predatory ‘entryist’ strategies of Trotskyist groups (Bello, 2002). Indeed, in countries such as the UK and France, such parties’ hegemonic aspirations provide an additional obstacle, not just for social movements, but for the parliamentary radical left itself (Pleyers, 2013: 74). In sum, whereas in principle the GJM might have provided a huge extraparliamentary ‘counter-power’ for the EL, in practice it had minimal potential to replace the structured interactions with extra-parliamentary groups that communist parties lost two decades ago. (As a small but enlightening example of this, one might consider the case of the city of Ferrara in the traditionally communist Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. The city, its politics dominated by the PCI from 1945 until dissolution in the early 1990s, once boasted numerous case del popolo, linking the PCI and the population through numerous cultural, sporting and recreational activities. Today, there is just one casa del popolo (though no longer known as such) remaining within the city walls, and it is run by GJM and anarchist activists who enjoy a guarded and somewhat suspicious relationship with the local Rifondazione.3) Nevertheless, the EL (and its member parties) did manage to develop close ties with the Social Forum process at its mid-2000s peak, building on the links parties such as the PRC and Synaspismós developed from the first ESF in Florence in 2002. Despite the Social Forums’ ban on formal party representation, it was evident that RLP representatives made a central contribution to them as activists, organisers and decision-makers (Andretta and Reiter, 2009). For instance, at the Athens Social Forum (2006), members of EL FEM contributed to the Women’s Assembly, and numerous seminars (such as ‘Women and the Bolkestein Directive’) (European Left, 2006). Undoubtedly though, the biggest interweaving of the EL and the wider social movements has been achieved via the Transform! Europe network (see also chapter 4). Transform! was set up in 2001 during the WSF in Porto Alegre (Brazil) by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (affiliated to the

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German Die Linke) and several other radical left think-tanks (including Espaces Marx, France and transform!italia) expressly to co-ordinate dialogue between activists participating in the Social Forums.4 In 2007, in response to the EP’s increasing TNP regulation, Transform! became the official Foundation of the EL. As such, it receives an increasingly sizeable European parliamentary grant (€0.95 million in 2016) and has increasingly developed joint initiatives with the EL. Transform! has an explicit Left Europeanist focus and has therefore developed its ambitions towards forming a ‘new and common political culture of the left in Europe’ and the ‘repoliticisation of the left by searching for common strategies’ (Holzinger, 2012: 6). Similarly, it claims that ‘[t]he role of civil and social organizations has to be strengthened in order to be strong pillars of the construct of a pan-European Union’ (Transform!, n. d). Transform! now includes seventeen members and eleven observers from twenty countries. Whereas some are affiliated to EL member parties (e.g. the Left Forum linked to the Finnish VAS), many are non-party, such as Transform! Moldova. Some members are from countries without EL members, such as the Foundation Naprzód (Forward) from Poland, or the Center for Marxist Social Studies, affiliated to the Swedish Left Party.5 Together with the EL, Transform! has organised an increasing number of seminars, conferences and initiatives about European political, economic and cultural issues, principally (as discussed in chapter 4), the eponymous website and yearbook, co-sponsorship of the EL’s summer university, and organisation of joint programmes for the ESF. It has also regularly contributed to other radical left events such as the Humanité Festival (the annual French music, cultural and political festival that attracts over 500,000 participants and raises funds for the PCF paper L’Humanité). By 2007, however, the Social Forum process was in decline, with the WSF and ESF allegedly becoming over-complex, fragmented and ineffective (Harvey, 2007). The ESF in particular had declining visibility and participation (just 3,000 attended the ESF in Istanbul in 2010). Whereas it raised the ‘left political culture of debate’, the ESF had little sustained social impact even prior to the Great Recession (Dellheim, 2010). The Great Recession in turn subsumed more generalistic global justice concerns to the need to combat the incipient ‘Age of Austerity’. This process presented opportunities and risks for the radical left. One the one hand, some post-crisis manifestations, especially Occupy, replicated the anti-institutional ethos of the early GJM, being deliberately ‘a leaderless movement’, and sharing its rhyzomatic, ‘swarm’ type of fluid non-hierarchical organisation (Gandel, 2011; Funke, 2012). This was even evident among the Spanish/Greek ‘indignants’. For instance, one Greek

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protester claimed: ‘[i]n Syntagma square the people didn’t want to hear about political parties, even left ones’ (Nunns, 2012: 18). On the other hand, a new feature of the emerging anti-austerity movement was parties (such as Syriza and, eventually, Podemos), which were able to present themselves as movementist ‘newer anti-austerity RLPs’ that were ‘better able to position themselves as genuine electoral representatives of the antiausterity movement’ (Bailey, 2016: 64–5). Opposition to neoliberalism had become a mass concern. In this context, there was increasing scope for the EL and Transform! Their first major initiative was the ‘Alter Summit’ process, which recognised the need to break from the ESF: ‘To the extent that the European Social Forums have faded because of being unable to find a form of renewal that could meet the challenge of this major European crisis, there is an urgent need for the creation of new areas of cooperation’ (Baier and Gauthier, 2012). Accordingly, in March 2012 the EL and Transform! co-hosted the ‘Alternative European Summit: Against austerity, for a social, democratic and ecologic Europe’, which brought together members of the German and French national parliaments, MEPs from the GUE/NGL group, and various networks such as the Joint Social Conference, which incorporates radical left trade unionist groups like VER.DI (Germany), Solidaires (France) and the Coalition of Resistance (UK), as well as EuroMémorandum (a network uniting over two hundred economists). The discussion aspired to create a ‘common political area’ at the European level (Baier and Gauthier, 2012: 118). Concluding the summit, then EL Chair Pierre Laurent argued that such efforts were necessary to ‘systematize … initiatives and give them strength and political visibility’ and were an important way of connecting national parliamentarians, the EL and the GUE/NGL group in the European Parliament. This would promote ‘joint working of all the forces that are resisting and want a different Europe [and would help] convergences and to build alternatives’ (Laurent, 2012). The process resulted in the first Alter Summit in Athens in June 2013. Approximately two hundred organisations participated in the process, including the EL, GUE/NGL, individual Green and social democrat politicians, and parts of the ETUC. According to the late Elizabeth Gauthier, Director of Espaces Marx and one of the Summit’s prime movers, it was envisaged as being a ‘permanent process’ like the ESF, but one with a more binding focus on ‘common political action and demands’ and seeking dialogue with political actors (Gauthier, 2013). Pan-European participation was patchy, but the Summit process certainly initiated networking and information-sharing between social movements, helping build momentum behind campaigns against such issues as TTIP, the privatisation of health

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care and the Troika’s austerity policies (particularly as implemented in Greece) (Alter Summit, 2016). Other initiatives in which the EL was intimately involved have included the May 2015 anti-austerity ‘Forum of Alternatives’ held in Paris in solidarity with Syriza in Greece6 and support for the German ‘Blockupy’ movement, which has protested the ECB’s austerity policies in Frankfurt since May 2012 (European Left, 2012b). However, given the apparently inexorable resilience of austerity, whether such mechanisms might compensate for the decline of the ESF is doubtful, not least because the EL itself recognises problems in both participation and follow-through of existing initiatives. The EL’s 2016 Congress therefore proposed, starting in Marseille in autumn 2017, ‘a new political space at European level, which could, initially, be an annual European political forum’ (European Left, 2016a). This would be based on the São Paulo Forum, an annual conference of left-wing parties and movements of Latin America and the Caribbean held since 1990. In the EL’s view this would be both pluralistic (e.g. open to Greens and social democrats) and focused on a specific programme of tasks. Such processes at least show increasing initiatives among diverse party and movement actors recognising the necessity of intensifying common European activity to oppose the crisis, an intensification from which the EL can clearly benefit. Nevertheless, to come full circle, a fundamental problem will remain the lack of size and social penetration of many constituent actors. In addition, a number of similar initiatives have emerged, among which the EL may struggle to gain much visibility. To name just two, there are the ‘Plan B in Europe’ and DiEM25 initiatives, both of which emerged in early 2016. The former, endorsed by several MEPs from EL parties as well as such luminaries as Oskar Lafontaine, Yanis Varoufakis and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, proposed a ‘Plan A’ (working towards renegotiation of the EU treaties) and a ‘Plan B’ (the democratisation of the European currency system).7 Whereas ‘Plan B’ initially faded from sight until being resurrected by Mélenchon in the course of his 2017 presidential election campaign, DiEM25 now claims ‘64,000 members in more than 246 countries and territories’ around the vision of promoting a democratic constitution for the EU.8 DiEM25 certainly incorporated a number of prominent leftist intellectuals and activists, including Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek, Ken Loach, Julian Assange and Yanis Varoufakis. This is a controversial project, which aims to build a transnational democracy via direct citizen participation against the EU institutions and bypass political parties (Fazi, 2016). Although Transform!’s co-ordinator Walter Baier does sit on its advisory panel, the EL has largely ignored DiEM25 to date. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the EL’s own divisions over unadulterated transnationalism, and Syriza’s own fraught relationship with Varoufakis.

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The EL and the broader European left: a pole of attraction or repulsion? It’s one thing to attempt to integrate the movements, but to what degree is this even possible if the EL cannot even encapsulate the full range of European RLPs? We saw in chapter 3 that there were significant gaps in the EL’s reach from the outset, and that many of the missing parties were among Europe’s largest and most electorally successful. This can be seen clearly from Table 6.1: although the EL contains a number of important parties, these are offset by a large number of microparties. Both EL observer parties and non-EL parties are on average more electorally successful than EL member parties. New adherents Certainly, the EL has not remained static, and it has managed to attract a number of new members and observers since its founding in 2004. These are detailed in Table 6.2. Again, it can be seen that the majority of these parties are relatively small. Their adhesion is unsurprising: it is arguably the smallest parties which are most in need of the external legitimacy, coordination and socialisation functions provided by TNPs: in this way TNPs act as an external lifeline, compensating (to some degree) for such parties’ domestic weaknesses. This is particularly the case for smaller Eastern European parties – the benefits of an external lifeline are still greater for parties in political systems where communism and socialism are still regarded as anathema. This is recognised by the EL: the smaller parties regard the party as a ‘badge of legitimacy’, and, although according to European legislation TNPs cannot help out member parties directly, the EL (driven by the German Die Linke above all) aims to act as a ‘bridge to East-Central Europe’ (Scholz, 2010). In addition, the adhesion of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) to the EL in January 2007 helped the EL develop a magnetic attraction to some Eastern European parties. The PCRM, at least until a debilitating split in 2011–12, was the most electorally successful pan-European RLP and so its behaviour had a demonstration effect on less stellar performers who were simply interested in why the PCRM was so successful (Petrenco, 2010). Its adherence to the EL made it the first party in the Former Soviet Union to join the EL and even attracted the increasing interest in the EL of the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) and (to a lesser extent) the KPRF. These parties (and particularly the latter, which polled 13.3 per cent in parliamentary elections in September 2016) have been (relatively) important actors in their party systems and so their



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Table 6.1  Electoral performance: EL members, observers and non-members compared

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Party EL member party Communist Party of Austria Belarusian Party of the Left (Fair World) Communist Party (Wallonia-Brussels) Bulgarian Left Party of Democratic Socialism (Czech Republic) Red–Green Alliance (Denmark) Estonian United Left Party (Estonia) Communist Party of Finland Left Alliance (Finland) Party of the Left (France) French Communist Party Left Party (Germany) Syriza (Greece) Workers’ Party of Hungary 2006 Communist Refoundation Party (Italy) The Left (Luxembourg) Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova Left Bloc (Portugal) Romanian Socialist Party Communist Refoundation of San Marino Party for Eco-Socialism and Sustainable Development of Slovenia Initiative for Democratic Socialism (Slovenia) United and Alternative Left (Catalunya) United Left (Spain) Communist Party of Spain Labour Party of Switzerland Freedom and Solidarity Party (Turkey) Average vote – all EL members EL observer VEGA (Rouge et Verts) (Belgium) Progressive Party of Working People (Cyprus) New Cyprus Party (North Cyprus) United Cyprus Party (North Cyprus) Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia L’Altra Europa con Tsipras Italian Left Communist Party of Slovakia Left Unity (UK) Average vote – all EL observers

Most recent national vote (%) 1.03 (1.40) (1) n/a 0.08 (2) 0.0 (3) 7.8 0.1 0.25 7.13 n/a (4) 1.73 8.6 35.5 0.0 2.25 (5) 4.9 17.5 10.2 0.47 12.1 (6) 6.0 (7) n/a (7) n/a (8) 3.7 (9) n/a (8) 0.60 0.15 5.22 n/a (10) 25.7 n/a 3.15 14.9 n/a 3.2 (11) 0.62 0.0 5.28

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Table 6.1  Electoral performance: EL members, observers and non-members compared (Continued) Party

Most recent national vote (%)

Major EL non-member Labour Party of Belgium La France Insoumise Communist Party of Greece Popular Unity (Greece) Hungarian Workers’ Party Left–Green Movement (Iceland) Anti-Austerity Alliance – People Before Profit (Ireland) Socialist Party of Latvia Communist Party of Luxembourg Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova Socialist Party (Netherlands) Socialist Left Party (Norway) Portuguese Communist Party Communist Party of the Russian Federation Podemos (Spain) Left Party (Sweden) Communist Party of Ukraine Average vote – EL non-members

3.7 11.0 5.6 2.9 0.56 15.9 3.9 n/a (12) 1.6 20.5 9.1 4.1 8.3 (13) 13.3 20.7 (14) 5.7 3.9 7.69

Notes: (1) Belarus is an unambiguously authoritarian state, and therefore results are discounted; (2) in coalition with Green Party of Bulgaria (2017) national election; (3) participates with KSČM or does not participate; (4) previously in coalition with PCF as ‘Left Front’; supported FI in 2017; (5) in Rivoluzione Civile (Civil Revolution) coalition in 2013; (6) listed as such on EL website, but now part of United Left, in turn part of Socialist Democratic Left coalition; (7) as part of United Left coalition; (8) as part of United Left Coalition; (9) figure for last election IU ran independently (2015); (10) founded 2013 and did not contest 2014 national elections; (11) founded 2017; as Left Ecology Freedom in 2013; (12) competes on lists of Social Democratic party ‘Harmony’; (13) as part of Unitary Democratic Coalition; (14) figure for last election where Podemos ran independently (2015). Source: www.parties-and-elections.eu, national electoral commissions, accessed 1 August 2017. Table correct to 1 August 2017.



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Table 6.2  New adherents to the EL after the Founding Congress Party

Country

Date

Status

Communist Party (Wallonia) A.K.O.A. Renovative Communist and Ecological Left Left Bloc The Left Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova Freedom and Solidarity Party Alternative Left European Left Young Socialists Communist Party (Flanders) Communist Party of Finland Left Alliance Workers’ Party of Hungary 2006 Belarusian Party of the Left ‘Fair World’ New Cyprus Party Red–Green Alliance Left Party Bulgarian Left United Cyprus Party United Left Left Unity Party for Eco-Socialism and Sustainable Development of Slovenia Initiative for Democratic Socialism (Slovenia) VEGA (Rouge et Verts) L’Altra Europa con Tsipras Der Wandel (Transformation) Ensemble (Together) Left Party Italian Left

Belgium Greece

2005 2005

Observer to member Observer

Portugal Luxembourg Moldova

2005 2005 2007

Observer to member Observer to member Member

Turkey Belgium Italy Poland Belgium Finland Finland Hungary Belarus

2007 2007 2007 2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009

Observer to member Observer Observer Observer Member Observer to member Member Member Member

Cyprus Denmark France Bulgaria Cyprus France UK Slovenia

2009 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2014 2016

Observer Observer to member Member Member Observer Member Observer Member

Slovenia

2016

Member

Belgium Italy Austria France Hungary Italy

2016 2016 2016 2016 2016 2017

Observer Observer Partner (1) Partner Partner Observer

Source: Developed from Calossi (2016: 181), authors’ interviews, www. european-left.org/about-el/member-parties, accessed 1 August 2017. Those in italics are parties that are now defunct or have merged with others. (1) This new category includes newer groups with which the EL wishes to consolidate relations.

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interest in the EL is significant. However, they are parties which, if not neo-Stalinist, are at least profoundly Stalinoid (in terms of demonstrating uncritical sympathy towards ‘really existing socialism’), and the EL statutes’ strictures against ‘undemocratic, Stalinist practices’ prevent them developing any closer relationship with the EL. EL officials stress that this stricture is non-negotiable, and that their relations with parties like the KPRF are not close, although they keep lines of communication open (Karatsioubanis 2010a). Of the parties which have joined the EL since 2004, the most significant are the PCRM, Danish RGA, French PG, Finnish VAS and the two parties that are part of the Slovenian United Left. It’s worth dwelling on why such parties saw the EL as attractive. What is seldom apparent is any specific intervention from the EL itself. EL officials do have an ‘enlargement policy’ involving increasing contacts with prospective member parties but this is not an interventionist policy; resource issues and the need to observe EU legislation and to respect the internal differences among the left mean that the EL does not actively recruit members (Hilário, 2010). The EL can only attempt to build up good relations with potential candidates, try to further common approaches and wait until their domestic interests align with those of the EL (Herberg, 2010; Karatsioubanis, 2010b; Portas, 2010). Nevertheless, hints of a more proactive policy are often in evidence – the simplest way is usually to invite prospective members to conferences or the meetings of the EL Executive Board. Moreover, the election of Grigore Petrenco (Executive Board member from the Moldovan PCRM) as EL Deputy Chair in 2010–13 indicated that relations with the East would be given a new priority. Above all, perhaps, the EL has adopted a very inclusive approach to membership, with the quantity of its members occasionally appearing more important than the quality, despite the aforementioned assurances given with respect to the KPRF and KPU. For example, although as a first step to membership all aspiring members have to agree with the EL’s statutes, it is doubtful that either the Romanian PSR or the Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party (MKMP) have ever fully agreed with these statutes’ opposition to Stalinism. After all, the former party tried to change its name to the Ceauşescu-era name ‘Romanian Communist Party’ in 2010 (this attempt was struck down by the Bucharest courts).9 The latter (since 2013 the Hungarian Workers’ Party (MMP) because of a legal change banning names associated with the communist regime) is the ‘true ideological successor of the former ruling party’ and was ‘trying to move toward a more open, modernised model while being pulled back by lateKadar reform-communist perceptions’ (Racz 1998: 4, 52). The MKMP saw entry into the EL largely as a pragmatic way of increasing its own visibility with minimal impact on its own identity (HlouŠek and Kopeček, 2010: 61).

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Without exception, the reasons for other parties joining the EL are also strongly rooted in domestic political and/or internal party calculations. These are a combination of wishing to alliance-build, improve domestic legitimacy and to reaffirm ideological identity. The Moldovan PCRM is a paradigmatic case of these motivations coinciding. It was first invited to speak at the EL’s Athens Congress in 2005. Its accession to full EL membership in January 2007 came after a period of internal programmatic evolution as the party in office moved from a more traditional Sovietophile Marxist-Leninism to more pragmatic pro-European positions. The party felt that joining the EL served several functions. Overall, it was a ‘symbol of our direction’ (Petrenco, 2010). In particular, it allowed the PCRM to say that it was a ‘normal, modern’ communist party just like those in Western Europe and not a throwback to the past. For the PCRM, it was important that the EL criticise Stalin – this was seen as a symbol of modernisation. Ideologically, the EL was akin, because the PCRM saw itself as pro-European and not Eurosceptic. The EL provided an organic link to other parties which ‘want a different Europe’ (Petrenco, 2010). Finally, the EL made up for the party’s lack of allies – it regarded communist international organisations such as the SKP-KPSS and IMCWP (see chapter 3) as retrograde and ineffective. Indeed, the party’s new 2008 party programme (PCRM, 2008) indicated the direct influence of the EL. The PCRM defined itself as a ‘European Left Party’, criticised the ‘totalitarian’ past and added Gramsci and Bukharin to its ideological pantheon (it had not acknowledged either previously). The party saw its mission as ‘actively reclaiming the whole ideological heritage and political experience of European communism and socialism’ (PCRM, 2008), a sentiment which could easily have been espoused by the EL. The Danish RGA is also an interesting case, because, as we have noted, it hardly shares the EL’s Europeanist views. Indeed, it espouses the antiintegrationist EACL position (it was a member of this group until its demise). Moreover, being in the EL does not appear to have changed its outlook significantly: it remains ‘opposed to the construction of the European Union, which we see as a vehicle of European capitalism, and especially to the building of a European state and the establishment of a European army’ (Enhedslisten, 2012). Nevertheless, the party regards itself as a pluralist and inclusive organisation that aims to be present in as many networks as possible (Johansen, 2011), and as a participant in the NELF, EACL and Social Forums it clearly has had experience of co-operating with EL member parties. It sent a delegation to the first EL Congress in Athens in 2005, although it was markedly sceptical that common positions were possible, and it thereafter remained an observer (Enhedslisten, 2005). Its representatives admitted that being present in the EL as an observer was

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a learning and trust-building exercise.10 One issue preventing any inclination to become a full member was the EL’s support for the Prodi government in Italy (2006–8), when EL Chair Faustino Bertinotti was also President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies; the RGA criticised this government, inter alia, for extending the military presence in Afghanistan and generally leading a ‘neoliberal’ economic policy (Enhedslisten, 2007). Nevertheless, by 2010 the RGA regarded co-operation via the EL as satisfactory, and saw improving the unity of the left as urgent enough to upgrade its participation to full membership. The rationale for the French Left Party (and United Left) to join the EL was more obviously related directly to electoral incentives. In 2009, these parties (the former a split from the social democratic Socialist Party, the latter an offshoot of the post-Trotskyist New Anticapitalist Party) joined a domestic alliance with the PCF under the aegis of the Left Front. The PG’s former co-leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, saw it (like the German Die Linke) as a pluralist bridge between the former communist, Trotskyist and disaffected social democratic left (Mélenchon 2011: 88). That the three components of the Left Front should all become EL members was seen as an important symbol of their new unity: as United Left representative Patrick Auzende said: ‘nous y voyons comme un encouragement à poursuivre la dynamique du front de gauche en France’ (‘we see this [membership of the EL] as encouragement to continue the momentum of the Left Front in France’) (Gauche Unitaire, 2010). However, these hopes sundered amid continuing tensions within the Front. Mélenchon left the PG’s leadership in 2014, and in 2016 founded his new movement La France Insoumise to contest the 2017 presidential elections. While the PG continued to support the new movement, relations with the PCF were more complex, made particularly evident by the respective entities’ inability to agree joint lists for the 2017 legislative elections and decision thereafter to form separate National Assembly groups. In 2015, United Left joined the PCF to limit division on the left and hence dissolved itself (Laurent, 2015). Therefore, the EL’s French representation remained limited to a debilitated PCF, a constituent group of FI (PG) and partnership with one of FI’s fellow travellers (Ensemble!), with the unitarian momentum at an apparent ebb. In July 2018, citing profound disagreement with the policies of the Syriza government in Greece, the PG left the EL altogether. The accession of the Finnish VAS in 2009 was arguably partly motivated by internal changes, in particular the strengthening of a younger, more radical wing under then new leader Paavo Arhinmäki (leader from 2009–16) who were more open to co-operation with the social movements and more critical of the EU than the previous leadership (Herberg, 2010;

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Karatsioubanis, 2010b). The EL also had good links with the VAS youth wing for several years prior to accession. It was also not incidental that VAS joined the EL after a disastrous European election performance in June 2009, when the party lost its sole MEP. VAS looked at the improved election results for some EL parties, including the Portuguese BE (which increased its MEPs from one to three) and began to view it as being more constructive to work together with such parties ‘to try to find a Europewide leftist solution to problems’ (Lepola, 2010). In addition, the Finnish Communist Party’s (SKP’s) decision to join the EL as a full member at the same time had a chastening effect. VAS decided that it could not let the SKP – a party which harked back in name and ideology to the Sovietera party that had been dissolved into VAS in 1990 – appear as a more advanced ‘voice of the Finnish left’ (Lepola, 2010). The final case shows the EL acting explicitly as the aforementioned badge of legitimacy and bridge to Europe’s East. The Party for Eco-Socialism and Sustainable Development of Slovenia and Initiative for Democratic Socialism represented two components of the United Left (ZL) coalition formed in March 2014 (the other two components being the Democratic Labour Party and autonomous civil society activists) (Toplišek, 2017). ZL represents another newer anti-austerity insurgency formed in close synchrony with the social movements. Just four months after its founding, it made a breakthrough into the Slovenian parliament, with 5.97 per cent of the vote and six seats. The EL was involved with the group from the start, with Alexis Tsipras, then EL Vice-President and its candidate for the EU Commission presidency, co-signing its founding document (European Left, 2014c). The new coalition had a Europeanist bent from the outset, explicitly competing for the 2014 European elections under the ‘European Left’ banner. This accords with a political position that eschews the ‘Eurosceptic’ label and seeks ‘adamant internationalism’ (Korsika, 2014). The parties’ links with the EL were strengthened by participation in initiatives of Transform! and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Their decision finally to join the EL is part of a unificatory process that saw them transformed into The Left (Levica) in June 2017. A good result in the 2018 Slovene general election saw the party rise to 9.3 per cent of the vote and win nine seats in parliament. The hesitant consolidators So much for the (relatively) few larger parties that have joined the EL since its foundation. But the number of those that have declined to join is significant. Admittedly, the largest parties (AKEL and the KSČM) are ‘hesitant consolidators’ who preserve good if distant relations with the EL but

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have preferred to remain as observer members. AKEL’s decision to remain aloof is better explained by practical and strategic incentives than ideological ones. After all, AKEL is one of the most pro-European and strategically moderate of all European RLPs and thus should have few principled objections to the EL: it recognises that Europe is the ‘Europe of capital’ but sees no alternative to working within it (Dunphy and Bale, 2007: 298). Nevertheless, it has never indicated any wish to upgrade its ties. This decision appears to be based above all on traditional fraternal loyalty: the wish to preserve its good relations with other parties in the IMCWP, above all the Greek KKE, which, as is apparent by now, is the most critical of the EL of all (Herberg, 2010; Karatsioubanis, 2010b). The KSČM found the EL somewhat more objectionable. Its concerns were primarily ideological: it sent a letter in late 2004 to the EL leadership complaining about the allegedly blanket anti-Stalinism of EL’s statutes on the grounds that this term was too narrow and geographically/historically limited: the KSČM preferred to condemn all ‘anti-democratic’ abuses (European Left, 2005a). The party raised practical issues too, arguing that the EL created new dividing lines in Europe by excluding large Eastern allies such as the Russian communists. It opposed the EL’s individual membership on the grounds that this could lead to interference in member parties’ internal affairs. This letter was the culmination of a long period where the KSČM had appeared conflicted and highly ambivalent about becoming an EL member. For example, in the EL’s pre-formation period, the KSČM had raised many issues that indicated it supported the views of critics of the EL like the KKE and was intending to oppose the EL (Biggs, 2004). In late 2003, it had argued against the formation of the EL on the grounds that it would split the GUE/NGL, and argued for increased bilateral and multilateral co-operation based on that grouping (which, not coincidentally, included ‘resisters’ like the KKE and PCP). It opposed the creation of a party reliant on EU funding. In January 2004, party leader Miroslav Grebenicek argued that ‘[t]he European party will develop its activities in the interest of the European Union’s institutions’ (quoted in Biggs, 2004). Further gripes on the KSČM’s side were distrust of the PRC’s leader Bertinotti, the claim that the KSČM was being sidelined in the discussion process, and the complaint that the EL (and the German PDS in particular) favoured the SDS, a tiny split from the former Czech Communist Party that, indeed, did become an EL founding member in 2004 (Hanley, 2008: 150). For its part, the KSČM became an EL observer member at its founding Congress, and despite the EL leadership rejecting its objections, it did not follow the logic of its own positions and withdraw from the EL altogether. This decision appears motivated by internal reasons. Although the KSČM

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has a powerful ‘conservative’ wing who see their natural allies as the Greek, Portuguese, Russian and even Chinese communists and regard the EU as a ‘neoliberal plot’, the ‘neo-communist’ wing have good relations with the German Die Linke and oriented themselves towards ‘Europeanist’ positions (Handl, 2005). The KSČM’s Vice-Chair responsible for international relations, the late Miloslav Ransdorf, was a prominent member of the ‘neo-communist’ wing who allegedly ignored the party’s own directives by signing a statement at the end of the January 2004 Berlin meeting in support of the founding of the EL that April (Biggs, 2004). The party leader Grebenicek was a staunch conservative, but was replaced by the more pragmatic Vojtěch Filip in 2005. Furthermore, the holding of the EL’s second Congress in Prague in 2007 and continued dialogue have helped weaken mutual suspicions. However, although some intra-party constituencies might support full EL membership, there has been little indication of any formal upgrade of status. The KSČM’s positions were echoed by the Slovakian KSS, which moved from being a founder member to observer after the 2004 founding Congress. However, for the KSS upgrading its membership is a non-starter. In part this is because of traditional links to the KSČM (after all, both parties have their origins in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia), as well as to the Greek KKE and Russian KPRF. However, the Slovakian party is still more traditionalist than the KSČM, and although its weaker domestic position might theoretically incline it towards the EL, it has a still stronger party wing that regards the EL as ‘revisionist’(Blaha, 2011). Those parties that have resisted joining the EL have a diverse range of motives. We can identify two newer parties who seem largely indifferent, and a larger group who are far more consistently critical towards the EU and do not share the EL’s ‘Europeanist’ vision. The indifferents This group includes two new ‘left populist’ entities, the FI and Podemos, whose populist identity entails a public image surpassing left–right divisions and traditional forms of radical left organisation. As Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said: ‘The left–right distinction and left–right conceptual tools pose huge problems for the interpretation of the political space that is now opening in a country like Spain’ (Iglesias, 2015: 27). Accordingly, Podemos initially eschewed coalition with the ‘traditional’ left represented by EL member IU. Latterly, however, there have been moves towards a more permanent alliance (Unidos Podemos), and the populist slant has been downgraded in favour of a more traditional leftist identity. At the same time, Podemos has retained cordial relations with EL members via

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the GUE/NGL parliamentary group in which it sits. Future EL observer or full membership for Podemos may jar too much with Podemos’s original conception as a catch-all alternative to the traditional (radical and centre-) left. However, relations are intensifying, with Podemos attending the EL Executive Board for the first time in June 2017 (European Left, 2017e: 9). The FI is a newer project, with its political position still more fluid. It too has adopted a Laclauian populist position addressing the ‘people’ beyond the radical left and therefore has chosen to eschew close relations with the EL. Moreover, the deteriorating relationship with the PCF, which is more intimately bound in with EL structures, proved an additional barrier. The July 2018 departure of the PG (the core of the FI) from the EL seemed to indicate a definitive rupture. However, informal relations are likely to continue, albeit mediated by competition for votes in France. The vocal ‘resisters’ A core group of resisters are the ‘Nordic Green Left’ parties. These are mainly ex-communist parties that even in the Soviet era took on Eurocommunist overtones and sought autonomy from Moscow, developing ‘new left’ policies from the 1960s onwards.11 In addition to strong ‘Cominternaversion’, the NGL parties were (at least until the late 1990s) highly EUcritical if not Euro-rejectionist, a position rooted in traditions of ‘Nordic exceptionalism’ (Browning, 2007). This asserts that Nordic experience, norms and values are models to be copied by others, and implies suspicion of the EU, since ‘Nordic identity is about being better than Europe’ (Waever, 1992: 77). Unsurprisingly, these influences have combined to produce parties which are relatively suspicious of transnational organisations in general and the possibilities of concerted transnational action within the EU in particular (although there are clear differences among the NGL – with VAS and the SF in particular becoming markedly less EU-critical during the 1990s). Although (as noted in chapter 3), the NGL parties formed the NGLA in 2004 as an alternative to the EL, it has never been particularly active and has had little impact on the wider European left. Indeed, the NGLA parties rarely act as a unit and are increasingly divergent, which opens up some prospects for co-operation with the EL. Although the Finnish VAS is the only NGLA member to date to join the EL, relations between the EL and most other NGLA members are good. Indeed, most NGLA member parties, such as the Swedish V, had no principled objection to many of the EL’s aims, but their fundamental opposition to the EU and its proposed constitution precluded them signing any supportive statements (Johansen, 2004). Perhaps above all, the fact that under the 2004/2003 Regulation the

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EL’s statutes would have to be approved by Brussels as a condition of it receiving EU financial backing was anathema to the NGLA parties (Biggs, 2004). Nevertheless, closer relations between the Swedish V, Norwegian SV and the EL are fully feasible. Both parties already co-operate with EL members via the GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament (V has one MEP, and the SV is an associate member of the GUE/NGL, since Norway is not in the EU and has no MEPs). The SV was interested in the EL from its foundation but preferred to take a cautious approach, co-ordinating its positions with its NGLA sister parties.12 Members of V, the SV and the Icelandic VG are regular participants in both the Transform! network and the EL’s working groups, and the German Die Linke in particular preserves good relations with all of them (Herberg, 2010; Hilário, 2010; Karatsioubanis, 2010b; Scholz, 2010). Perhaps most interesting from the EL’s perspective has been the prospect of co-operation with the VG. Iceland opened accession talks on EU membership in 2010. This offered the prospect of bringing the EL and VG closer together. However, with public opinion increasingly opposed to EU membership, the negotiations were suspended by the new government in June 2013 after the incumbent Social Democrat–VG coalition (which took office in 2009) was defeated. VG is one of the strongest RLPs electorally, and so closer relations would be a considerable fillip for the EL. Indeed, the EL made increasing efforts to intensify relations with the VG, including inviting it to the EL summer university in 2010 and several Transform! events thereafter. Nevertheless, it is difficult to envisage the SV, V or VG joining the EL even as observers without significant moderation of their scepticism towards the EU and/or internal leadership changes (Lepola, 2010). Since the SV and VG oppose membership of the EU outright (despite the latter’s one-time support for accession talks), and V takes a resolutely anti-integrationist position, there are limits to the degree to which they wish to be integrated in any EU-level structure. According to former EL central office official Giorgos Karatsioubanis, these parties’ opposition to the EU is a ‘real problem. We can’t artificially create a unity that isn’t there’ (Herberg, 2010; Karatsioubanis, 2010b). One NGLA member whom the EL now has virtually no prospects of attracting is the Danish SF, which has increasingly deradicalised, while becoming a more mainstream Green party. Having sat alongside the radical left in the EP from 1979–94 and 1999–2003, the SF has since 2004 sat in the Greens–EFA group. It became an observer in the Green TNP, the European Green Party, before joining as a full member in 2014, after which it cannot realistically be classified as a radical left party. This decision was originally motivated by the personal inclinations of its MEP Margrete

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Auken, who strongly opposed some of the GUE/NGL parties (March, 2011). This was a controversial step that caused a lot of intra-party debate, since it was not agreed in advance with the SF leadership, but eventually the party agreed to forge ahead with the Greens. This decision makes sense in ideological terms: given the gradual moderation of the SF’s position (it is no longer particularly critical of the EU or even NATO), it no longer shares many of the EL’s views. Although the EL has co-operated with the SF youth wing and trade unionists via its working groups, at leadership level the links are negligible. In particular, the SF has long had few links with most European parliamentary parties comprising the GUE/NGL (Lundy, 2011; O’Donnell, 2011). The most significant non-communist resister outside the EL has been the Dutch SP. This party, which has long had a strongly ‘populist’ Eurocritical position, generally shares NGLA positions and opposes greater co-ordination of EU elections or the funding of EU-wide political parties, arguing that parties should be created bottom-up, not via state regulation (Biggs, 2004; Socialist Party, 2007a). Accordingly, it doubts the very usefulness of a transnational party, particularly one that, in its view, contains too many electorally insignificant microparties (van Heijningen, 2005). Of these microparties, the SP regards communists’ presence in the EL the most objectionable – since association with communists can prove an electoral liability for the SP in the Netherlands. In addition, the SP views the prospect of a TNP manifesto directing national party policies (as is the case, for example, in the EGP) with horror (de Jong, 2011). If anything, its scepticism about the EL has only grown over time. Although the SP maintains strong relations with the German Die Linke, one of the primary instigators of the EL, it prefers to promote its own informal forums for inter-party co-operation including parties such as the NGL, AKEL and Die Linke which share experiences on strategy towards social democrats and government participation (Socialist Party, 2007b). The party regards such informal networks as sufficient for its needs and the only thing worth investing in. From the EL’s perspective, since the SP did not participate in the European Social Forum, and seems largely focused on Dutch issues, there are few points of contact by which to increase co-operation (Hilário, 2010). It is also significant that the new and youthful Polish left formation, Razem has chosen to align itself with Varoufakis’s DiEM-25 movement, which campaigns for a radical transformation of the EU from within (a position close to that of many Left Europeanists) rather than with the EL. This, surely, is exactly the sort of new left party that the EL must attract to its ranks.

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More vocal, albeit inconsistent, criticism has also been voiced by the Trotskyist left. For instance, François Vercammen, member of the Executive Board of the (Reunified) Fourth International and someone closely involved in setting up the EACL, criticised the EL for the following sins: remaining (allegedly) too dependent on traditional communist parties; being too ‘reformist’ in its apparent aim to ‘hide and dilute concepts and theoretical formulae’; being unwilling to criticise capitalism or outline the nature of socialism; wanting to enter governments of the ‘social-liberal centre-left’ and therefore accepting the ‘neoliberal policies of social democracy’; and finally, not daring to ‘challenge the construction and the institutions of the current EU’ (Vercammen, 2004). Therefore he concluded that the EL ‘is not our party. Its centre of gravity, such as it is, is more to the right than one would have predicted 18 months ago when the problem of the “European party” was on the agenda.’ This is in essence a distillation of traditional Trotskyist views towards all mainstream communist parties, whether they be labelled Stalinist, Eurocommunist or otherwise. However, much of the Trotskyist left did not subscribe to its traditional position and was far less critical. For example, some noted the ‘spirit of openness’ of the EL’s first Congress in Athens in October 2005 (Villetin, 2005). Moreover, even the traditionally sectarian UK Socialist Workers’ Party (on one of the rare occasions it actually acknowledged the EL) was relatively positive – while criticising EL members’ apparent willingness to join centre-left governments, the first Congress was still ‘an important step in creating left unity across Europe’ (Bambery, 2005). Indeed, and a further indication that Trotskyism is losing its former ideological rigidity, many members of the EACL seemed to agree that the EL was an attractive proposition. For instance, the Portugese BE was a guest at the founding Congress, but its desire for membership was vetoed by the PCF and PCE on the grounds that BE was Trotskyist, and with a view to encouraging the Portuguese PCP to join (Portas, 2010). Ironically, the PCP eventually refused to join the EL (see below) and this allowed the BE to become an observer in its stead. The BE’s improving election results meant that it was endorsed as a full member by the first full EL Congress in Athens in October 2005. The British Respect also attended the Athens 2005 Congress as a guest. BE pushed for Respect’s inclusion in the EL, which was resisted by the PCF on the grounds that Respect was communitarian and Trotskyist. In 2007, the BE finally managed to persuade the EL to accept Respect’s membership, but then the party split.13 Similarly, the Scottish Socialist Party voted in 2006 to join both the GUE/NGL and EL in order to support left unity projects and influence other left parties

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(Stott, 2006), but the party sundered in two soon afterwards, and, as with Respect, the prospect of joining the EL was lost. Finally, when the French United Left joined the EL in 2010, it became the first avowedly Fourth International party to do so, and saw this both as strengthening the EL’s anti-Stalinist tendencies and encouraging other like-minded parties to follow (Gauche Unitaire, 2010). The EL’s attractiveness to the present and former Trotskyist left is a significant indication that it has at least partially succeeded in its founding intentions to bridge the gap between communist and non-communist traditions. Ironically however, in so demonstrating its break with the past, it left itself prone to criticism from several more traditionalist communist parties whose iconoclasm was far less obvious. These were parties that remained faithful to Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism and ‘national roads to socialism’. Their criticism of the EL was the most trenchant of all, and is worth reflecting on in detail. Undoubtedly the harshest criticism of the proposal to build the EL has come from the KKE. In a statement originally published in the party paper, Rizospastis on 15 February 2004, the KKE claimed that the thinking behind the proposal involved accepting ‘the patently neo-liberal European Union’ and accused Synaspismós and the other forces involved of seeking to ‘keep open the prospect of collaboration in center-left co-management governments’ (KKE, 2004). Such views were remarkably similar to those of the Trotskyist left, but for good measure the KKE added that the parties that formed the ‘hard core’ of the EL project were intent on ‘a well-thought-out operation of division on all levels’, exerting pressure and ‘blackmail’ on minor parties, ‘violating parties’ independence and equality’, seeking to ‘trisect’ the GUE/NGL EP group into the Nordic parties, the EL and ‘the rest’, and creating internal divisions within parties. The reason for this nefarious operation was allegedly to benefit from EU financing. Like the NGLA and SP, albeit with far more vehemence, the KKE claimed that EU regulations meant that the EL was, in effect, an EU puppet. Citing the rules governing the funding of European political parties, whereby parties have to show their commitment to ‘the principles on which the European Union is founded’ and submit a statement of their accounts for inspection by the EP, the KKE argued that this implied the EL had abandoned from the outset all fundamental criticism of European integration processes (such as the EU Constitutional Treaty).14 The KKE argued that criticism of EU policy towards countries such as Cuba would be abandoned and that the EL would be bound by loyalty ‘to the imperialist centre of the EU’, dissolving sovereign national parties, disarming any independent opposition to the EU and bolstering the status quo. Finally, in a direct repudiation of the Europeanist position, the EL was accused of

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promoting the ‘dissolution and liquidation’ of sovereign national parties and their replacement with ‘currents at the European level’. The PCP, which had participated as an observer in the EL founding meeting but not yet become a full member, used similar arguments (albeit more diplomatically) to reject the invitation to attend as observer EL’s first Congress in Athens in 2005. Although it stressed its desire to ‘maintain and strengthen our existing bilateral and multilateral’ relations with EL member parties, the PCP insisted that it could not snub the KKE by attending the Congress. It expressed ‘serious reservations and disagreements’ with the EL’s work methods and ideological/political content, and believed that ‘a structured “European Party”, with a federalist prospect and a supranational vocation, restricted to just one part of Europe and conditioned by impositions from the European Union … eluded and delayed progress towards an effective and united cooperation’ among communist and other left-wing forces (Portuguese Communist Party, 2005). Finally, the only two parties so far to have left the EL by design (rather than by disbanding or merging with other formations like the PG into the FI) invoked very similar reasons for their decisions. The MKMP (an EL founder member) left in April 2009. It denounced the EL’s condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 (which the Kadarist MKMP continued to defend), and accused the EL of being ‘a party of the European Union’ which concentrated on Western European issues (Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party, 2009). It accused the EL of inviting into its ranks non-communists and even ‘enemies of communism’. It alleged that the EL’s political line was decided by parties with representation in the EP and that since the second EL Congress this line had increasingly promoted a ‘common European culture’. The EL was a ‘reformist’ party, allegedly aimed at strengthening the democratic image of the EU (and the capitalist system generally).15 Similarly, the German Communist Party renounced its observer status in November 2015, arguing that the EL approved the EU system and in particular its military interventions, whereas the EU had been ‘an imperialist entity’ from the beginning (International Communist Press, 2016). It is perhaps tempting to dismiss outright the criticisms of such selfevidently nostalgically pro-Soviet parties. However, they share with the non-communist critics of the EL the view that the ‘Europeanist’ position means that the EL is only capable of being transformed by Europe rather than transforming it. The common thrust of these parties’ allegations is that the EL is a reformist party with a supranational vision, that it acts as a divisive force within the broader left, and that it is essentially a party that is uncritical of – and structurally incapable of mounting serious criticism of – the EU institutions. In short, that it is an ‘EU Left Party’.

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That EL is a reformist party is hardly contentious except to those with an unreconstructed view of the old Marxist-Leninist distinction between ‘reformism’ and ‘revolution’. Its core founders are reform-communist or democratic socialist parties that have criticised the Soviet past. All support extra-parliamentary politics, but are nevertheless wedded to the parliamentary road to socialism. That the EL has a supranational vision is also probably only ‘scandalous’ to those communists with an unreconstructed commitment to ‘national roads to socialism’. Whether it is the EL or more dogmatic communist parties such as the KKE and PCP that promote division within the broader radical left is a matter of political viewpoint. Moreover, the allegation that the EL, by virtue of being constituted as a European TNP regulated by EU legislation is de facto a party of the EU establishment, is barely justified. The 2004/2003 regulations do have political implications for the EL since the size of the operating grant (that can cover up to 85 per cent of party expenditure) is determined chiefly by how many MEPs the party won at the most recent EP elections. This explains why the party is anxious to retain as observers parties with MEPs such as the Cypriot AKEL and the Czech KSČM, which have reservations about joining the EL as full members. However, the critics exaggerate considerably the extent to which funding rules determine party character and ideology. EU legislation may recognise that parties formed at EU level promote European awareness and express the will of EU citizens. But this scarcely ties them to any particular vision of how the EU should develop. Indeed, this could also be said about avowedly right-wing Euro-rejectionist parties – which are not, indeed, excluded from funding. A commitment to ‘the principles on which the European Union is founded’ – to which the KKE took such exception – is defined as a commitment to ‘liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law’. The KKE’s case, that this is a particular interpretation of ‘liberty, democracy … etc’ 16 that might rule out solidarity with a one-party socialist state such as Cuba, has hardly occurred (the EL has repeatedly demanded an end to the US-imposed embargo and the opening of EU–Cuba dialogue ‘in the political, economical and cultural fields’) (European Left, 2007). Nevertheless, as the above range of ‘resister’ views indicate, Lenin’s concerns about ‘parliamentary cretinism’ certainly continue to inform, however indirectly, certain communist parties’ trepidation about having their radicalism compromised by absorption in the politics of the EU. The GUE/NGL group: not the EL in public office! Many of the aforementioned tensions and divergences are played out in the GUE/NGL group in the European Parliament. As noted in previous

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chapters, the GUE/NGL group is emphatically not the parliamentary group of the EL and attempts to consolidate the presence of the EL therein have so far proved abortive. This is a major weakness of the EL as a coordinating nexus. In theory, the parliamentary groups might act as the parliamentary wings of the European TNPs, able to translate their European manifesto pledges into legislative action and thereby to increase their visibility in the EU body politic. In practice, this relationship is not nearly so institutionalised – thus all EP groups fall far short of the party in public office model that some analysts have attributed to them (e.g. Bardi, 2005; Calossi, 2011). The main reason is that the EP has no direct executive function: no EU government relies on the parties in the EP and EP influence on the EU Commission is indirect; accordingly, TNP manifestos rarely commit parties to a specific, detailed list of legislative proposals in advance. Moreover, deprived of this executive function, the EP lacks the cut-and-thrust of more empowered parliaments and tends to rely on consensus principles, whereby negotiation and compromise, rather than rigid adherence to programmatic doctrine, are the order of the day (Ladrech, 1996). Moreover, since no one party group has ever managed a majority in the EP, cross-group coalitions (particularly ‘grand coalitions’ between centre-left S&D and centre-right EPP) are the necessary mechanism for legislative adoption. That said, EP party groups remain important actors – the primary conduit for the parliamentary agenda, appointment allocation, and with sizeable staff and budgets. They are a vital channel of communication between corresponding parties in different countries and also between EU and national politics (Corbett, Jacobs and Shackleton, 2011: 78, 118). Thus in institutional terms, they remain more important and visible actors than the TNPs, above all because parliamentary groups are the principals that have generally taken the lead, alongside national parties, in developing the TNPs as their ‘agents’ – there has been no case where the reverse is true, with greater co-ordination being successfully imposed by a TNP against the wishes of national parties or the EP group (Hanley, 2008: 153). This remains the case notwithstanding the greater legislative and financial autonomy granted to the TNPs since 2003. So, the EL’s relationship with the GUE/NGL group matters. And the very best that can be said about this relationship is that it’s complicated. On the one hand, consistent with other TNPs, GUE/NGL’s staff (75) and annual budget (€5.6 million in 2015) dwarf those of the EL, with a full-time staff of just four and a 2017 budget of €1.6 million.17 The parliamentary group is a primary focus for receiving and sending delegations and organising events and conferences. These regularly involve EL members, and are often organised alongside EL affiliates like Transform!, but the mere fact

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that they occur under the aegis of the GUE/NGL is a further diminution of the EL’s visibility which, as we saw in chapter 4, is already undermined by the unwillingness of the EL leadership to risk increased dissent within the GUE/NGL by assuming a higher profile. On the other hand, the GUE/ NGL itself is a very small group within the EP, one which has been generally marginal to policy-making. The main reason for marginality is simply a lack of electoral strength. The GUE/NGL achieved a strong result in 2014, increasing its share to 52 of 751 MEPs (6.9 per cent), compared with 35 of 766 (4.8 per cent) in 2009, thereby leapfrogging the Greens to become the fifth largest EP group. This result was largely the product of stellar results for Syriza (+5 MEPs), Podemos (+5) and the Spanish IU (+4) (Chiocchetti, 2014). The performance overturned the disappointing results of 2009, where internal divisions in parties in Greece, Spain and Italy compounded a poor post-crisis trajectory (Pappas, 2009). However, even the 2014 ‘success’ barely matched the GUE/NGL’s highpoint at the end of the 1999–2004 Parliament, when it contained 49 of 626 MEPs (7.8 per cent) and was the fourth largest EP group. The GUE/NGL’s inability to grow more consistently has various explanations: in addition to parties’ internal problems, most significant is the radical left’s weakness in East-Central Europe, which significantly weakened its percentage representation in the EP after the 2004 and 2007 Eastern enlargements. One should also add the left’s overall underwhelming performance after the Great Recession, which can perhaps be traced to the right’s emphasis on security and stability and the left’s inability to adopt a more coherent modern electoral narrative (e.g. Gamble, 2009; Karatsioubanis, 2010b). This numerical weakness has had an obvious, direct effect on the GUE/ NGL’s influence. Ex officio the GUE/NGL President and Vice-President sit on the EP’s steering groups (Conference of Presidents and Bureau). However, parliamentary committee and leadership positions are distributed proportionally. In the 2014–19 Parliament, that left the GUE/NGL with one of the fourteen powerful vice-presidential positions, just one of twenty committee Chairs (the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs) and none of the five Quaestors (responsible for administrative and financial matters). Numerical weakness in the EP might be partially offset if the GUE/NGL had two further qualities– the ability to make broader alliances, and a particular cohesiveness and dynamism as a group. However, neither of these elements is strong. Analysts have noted a strong left–right policy cleavage over socio-economic issues as one of the driving policy dimensions of the EP (e.g Hix and Lord, 1997: 136–9; Hix, Noury and Roland, 2005). Voting data do show that the GUE/NGL co-operates most of all

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with the Greens–EFA and the S&D (formerly PES) groups (on 69.58 and 58.86 per cent of votes respectively in the 2009–14 Parliament), particularly over civil liberties issues (VoteWatch.eu, 2012c). Yet, since these groups combined have never come close to a majority of seats, it is not as if a left-leaning agenda can be consistently promoted. Indeed, in the 2009–14 Parliament the GUE/NGL group was the group least likely to be included in the winning majority (just 51.11 per cent of the time, just behind the EFD and ECR groups), although the group was one of the most successful at winning votes on gender issues (VoteWatch.eu 2012b). On the one hand, this might be cited as evidence of the GUE/NGL performing its role effectively as an oppositional force fighting the neoliberal consensus; on the other, it is a sign that its policy agenda often struggles to get purchase beyond the confines of the parliamentary group. Moreover, although we have already alluded to the GUE/NGL’s role in fostering a tentative policy consensus among its member parties, it clearly falls short of its potential in doing so. An indication of this is that, although the group is relatively cohesive in its voting patterns, such cohesion is approximately the same as the Communists and Allies group attained in the 1980s. In addition, other groups’ cohesion has also increased and the GUE/NGL has generally been the least cohesive of any EP group bar the very disparate and divided right-wing anti-Europeans (see Table 6.3). It is unsurprising that this should be so, since apart from the NGL subgroup, who do co-ordinate their voting positions in advance, there is no attempt to ‘whip’ the group to a pre-decided line; rather, reflecting its confederal ethos, each national party is entirely free to vote as it wishes (Lepola, 2010). What’s more, there are strong internal divisions within the GUE/NGL. In addition to the dominant left–right cleavage in the EP, there is a secondary fissure on a pro-/anti-EU axis (McElroy and Benoit, 2007). Previous analysis has argued that the GUE/NGL group is one of the most ideologically compact, but most fissiparous on the EU issue of any in the Parliament (Almeida, 2012). Table 6.4 partially supports this – the group ranges from 0.7 to 2.9 on the left–right scale with a standard deviation of 0.62 and ranges from 0.1 to 7.1 on a pro/anti-EU scale with a standard deviation of 2.0 (where 0 is maximum opposition to the EU and 10 the maximum support). Table 6.4 also shows that both EL members and EL observers are significantly more pro-EU than the group average and non-EL members significantly less. This reinforces our view of still-salient divisions between the Europeanists within the EL and the sovereigntists outside it. Nevertheless, the pro/anti-EU division does not capture all divergences within the group. The most significant other cleavage has been between the Northern and Southern European parties over such issues as the budget and agriculture: southern European parties such as the BE, the PCP

Group Social democrats (PES/S&D) Christian democrats (EPP) Liberals (ELDR/ALDE) Radical left (COM, UL, GUE, GUE/NGL) Gaullists (PD, EDA, UFE, UEN) Greens (RB(84), Greens, G/EFA) Regionalists (RB(89), EFA) Conservatives (ED, ECR) Extreme right (ER, ITS) Anti-Europeans (EN, I-EN, EDD, ID, EFD)

1979–84

1984–89

1989–94

1994–99

1999–2004

2004–9

2009–14

.76 .90 .85

.87 .93 .85

.90 .91 .85

.90 .90 .86

.90 .87 .91

.91 .88 .89

.94 .93 .90

.81

.87

.86

.80

.76

.85

.84

.80

.84 .81

.76 .91

.96

.92 .93

.79 .91 .91

.72 .92

.89

.85 .85 .87 .89 .88

.67

.50

.87 .47

.49

Note: ‘Vote cohesion’ is defined using an ‘Agreement Index’ (AI). The AI equals 1 when all group members vote together and 0 when the members of the group are equally divided between the possible voting options (‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘abstain’). For more on the AI see Hix, Noury and Roland 2005: 215–16. Source: Hix, Noury and Roland, 2005: 218; VoteWatch.eu, 2012d; Calossi, 2016: 33.

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Table 6.3  Voting cohesion of European parliamentary groups



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Table 6.4  Ideological cohesion of GUE/NGL group, 2014–19 Parliament

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Member state EL members Finland France Germany Greece Portugal Spain Average: EL member parties EL observers Czech Republic Cyprus Italy Average: EL observer parties EL non-members Denmark Greece Ireland Netherlands Netherlands Spain Spain Sweden Portugal Average: EL non-member parties Average: All GUE/NGL Standard deviation

Left–right score (1)

Anti/pro-EU score (2)

Left Alliance Left Front (3) Left Party Syriza Left Bloc Plural Left (4)

2.2 1.4 1.2 2.9 1.6 2.0 1.9

5.2 2.4 4.4 7.1 3.7 5.2 4.7

KSČM AKEL L’Altra Europa (5)

0.7 1.1 1.0 0.9

2.5 6.2 3.4 4.0

People’s Movement against EU (6) Popular Unity Sinn Féin Party of the Animals SP EH-Bildu Podemos Left Party PCP

1.8

0.1

1.2 2.8 n/a 1.2 n/a 1.2 1.5 2.2 1.5

3.3 3.3 n/a 2.5 n/a 3.3 1.2 2.0 2.2

1.6 0.62

3.5 2.0

National party

Key: (1) Measured on 0–10 scale where 0 is ‘extreme left’ and 10 is ‘extreme right’; (2) Measured on 0–10 scale where 0 indicates complete opposition to EU, 10 indicates complete support for EU; (3) Left Front results unavailable: PCF results are used instead; (4) List formed by IU; results given are for IU; (5) Results unavailable: results quoted are average of PRC and SEL; (6) Independent list supported by Danish RGA; although the RGA is an EL member the list is part of the Europeans United for Democracy TNP. Source: Composite scales from www.parlgov.org/data/table/view_party/, accessed 8 August 2017.

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and Syriza have tended to support increases in the European budget to fund social projects and agricultural Subsidies; Northern parties such as V and the SP generally want their states to contribute less to EU financial ‘federalism’ (Lepola, 2010; de Jong, 2011). What’s more, Northern parties tend to put more emphasis on gender and environmental issues than Southern ones. In addition, parties like the BE generally support measures designed to increase the EU’s receptivity to migration, whereas the SP supports restrictive measures on immigrants (de Jong, 2011; Hilário, 2011). All these tendencies are shown in group voting. Group cohesion (i.e. when parties in the same EP group vote together) is counted on a 0–1 scale, with 1 most cohesive, and 0 least. The GUE/NGL’s lowest cohesion rates in the 2009–14 Parliament were achieved in the issue areas of ‘Internal regulations of the EP’ (0.55), ‘Constitutional and inter-institutional affairs’ (0.68), ‘Industry, research & energy’ (0.71) and ‘Internal market & consumer protection’ (0.71) and ‘Budget’ (0.72). All these were areas where divergences over how much pan-European regulation and funding is permissible would play out. The North–South divide was particularly evident in voting on the budget, with V, the SP and the Danish People’s Movement having cohesion rates of less than 70 per cent, and the BE and Spanish IU having rates of over 90 per cent (VoteWatch.eu, 2012a). Nevertheless, on such issues EL parties have themselves often been divided. For instance, the official EL position supports an increase in the EU budget, but the German Die Linke supported this line far more consistently than the French PCF; Left Party MEPs’ voting cohesion rates were as high as those of Bloco and the United Left, and the French Left Front’s cohesion rates as low as those of the Dutch and Nordic group members. EL MEPs near-unanimously regarded the Greek KKE, which was a GUE/NGL member until leaving in July 2014, as the most significant dissenter from the general consensus – since the KKE rejects Europe altogether, it tended to vote in a deliberately non-constructive way. Indeed the KKE was far and away the most disloyal party, voting with the GUE/NGL group just 63.84 of the time in the 2009–14 Parliament (VoteWatch.eu 2012a). Only seven parties in the entire EP voted with their group less than the KKE. From the EL’s perspective, the GUE/NGL’s overall lack of cohesiveness is an unavoidable reflection of its confederal origins, the disparate positions of its constituent parties and the intransigent positions of parties like the KKE that are not susceptible to negotiation. The EL argued that ‘there is not much we can do with the KKE’ given its ideological hostility to both the EU and EL, and most of the GUE/NGL simply ignored this party (Hilário, 2010). Moreover, the absence of a visible EL group and the absence of a priori legislative co-ordination between member parties is, apparently, offset by the fact that EL MEPs’ ‘constant informal exchanges



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of views and experiences’ via the EL tend to mean that their positions naturally coincide (Bisky, 2010). Indeed, we can see that the EL parties’ MEPs have become generally significantly more cohesive in their voting positions than the non-EL parties within the GUE/NGL as a whole (see Table 6.5). As an indirect confirmation of this consolidation of an EL ‘core’ within the GUE/NGL, we can cite the KKE’s protestations, when leaving Table 6.5  Loyalty of member parties to the GUE/NGL group, 2009–12 Member state EL members Germany Spain Portugal Greece France France Average loyalty: EL member MEPs EL observers Czech Republic Cyprus Average loyalty: EL observer MEPs EL non-members Latvia Ireland UK Sweden Portugal Netherlands Denmark Netherlands Greece Average loyalty: EL non-member MEPs

National party Left Party United Left Left Bloc Syriza Left Front Overseas Alliance (2)

KSČM AKEL–Left-New Forces

Harmony Centre Socialist Party Sinn Féin Left Party PCP Independent People’s Movement against EU SP KKE

Number MEPs

Loyalty (1) (%)

8 1 2 1 4 1 17

95.94 95.10 93.53 93.14 89.65 80.66 91.33

4 2

89.26 89.11

6

89.21

1 1 1 1 2 1 1

93.05 88.81 88.21 87.74 87.38 86.91 85.23

1 2 11

83.28 63.84 84.94

Key: (1) Measures the extent to which each national party voted with the rest of the group; (2) Overseas list supported by Left Front. Source: VoteWatch.eu (2012a). Data correct at 7 June 2012.

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the group, that the ‘confederal character of GUE/NGL has been altered, as the [EL] parties operate with a single line, grouped together, and speak in the committees and sessions on the basis of a common platform, promoting the political positions of the [EL] as positions of GUE/NGL’ (Transform!, 2014). This viewpoint is of course heavily ideologised, as befits the KKE’s aforementioned narrative of the EL as an ‘EU Left Party’, but it does have a kernel of veracity. Nevertheless, the potential consolidation of the EL parties is weakened by their sheer lack of numbers within the GUE/NGL. Few EP group memberships map exactly onto the affiliated TNP: for example, the S&D group is a combination of the PES parties and the MEPs of the Italian Democratic Party, which is not a PES member; the Greens–EFA group combines members of the European Green Party and the regionalist European Free Alliance. But again, the comparative perspective does not favour the EL. Just twenty-nine of fifty-two MEPs in the GUE/NGL group in 2014–19 were EL affiliates (including EL observers). The proportion of group members that are EL members has decreased over time, giving the GUE/ NGL the lowest TNP affiliation of any EP group except the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (see Table 6.6). Overall, the weaknesses of the EL in the European Parliament and the GUE/NGL group to which it belongs combine to give a sense of stalled momentum. Certainly, members of the GUE/NGL group agree that the group is generally very marginal. Others have indicated that dissatisfaction within the group has been high (de Jong, 2011): divisions between communists and non-communists, and Northern and Southern parties, when combined with an overall lack of influence, appear to have led to a drop in group morale, at least in the 2009–14 EP when the group was at its smallest. An increase in numbers after the 2014 EP elections has not decreased the group’s heterogeneity (Chiocchetti, 2014). Nor is the GUE/NGL’s weakness compensated elsewhere in the EU party system. The radical left’s general lack of representation in national government has given it very limited executive power in the EU. It has seldom had any representation in the Council of the European Union (former Council of Ministers), and its sole representatives to date in the European Council (the collective body for European heads of government) have been former AKEL leader Demetris Christofias, President of Cyprus from 2008–13, and Alexis Tsipras, Syriza leader and Greek Prime Minister, from 2015 to July 2019. This lack of executive role has given the radical left little chance of affecting the election of Commission President (proposed by the European Council to the European Parliament, albeit after 2009 taking into account the EP election results) or getting representation on the European Commission (chosen by the European Council and Commission President and then ratified by the EP).



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Table 6.6  The TNP affiliation of the European parliamentary groups

Group

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EPP

TNP/ Subgroup

Percentage of group Seats Seats affiliated to 2009–14 2014–19 TNP 2009–14

Percentage of group affiliated to TNP 2014–19

EPP Stand-alone

270 269 1

221 211 10

99.6

95.5

PES Stand-alone

189 166 23

191 182 9

87.8

95.3

ELDR EDP Stand-alone

84 74 10 -

67 49 8 10

88.1 11.9

73.1 11.9

GREENS– EFA EGP EFA  Stand-alone

55 46 6 3

50 36 6 10

83.6 10.9

72.0 12.0

ECR (formed 2009)

AECR ECPM Stand-alone

56 54 1 1

69 44 2 23

96.4 1.8

63.8 2.9

EL EUD Stand-alone

36 23 1 12

52 29 1 23

63.9 2.8

55.8 1.9

32 18 14

48 26 22

56.3

54.2

-

40 31 9

S&D ALDE

GUE/NGL

EFD

ENF

ADDE MELD Stand-alone MENF Stand-alone

77.5

Source: www.parties-and-elections.eu, accessed 8 August 2017. Data correct at 8 August 2017.

There is currently little prospect of a successor to Altiero Spinelli as a left figure of pan-European influence. Christofias’s election did not change this one bit: he concentrated his European efforts on addressing the Cyprus issue, rather than advocating socialist policies. Indicatively, he voted for the EPP’s José Barroso as Commission President in 2009 (GUE/NGL and

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indeed AKEL MEPs opposed Barroso).18 As is better known, Tsipras’s ascent to power saw the Syriza’s government’s anti-austerity stance utterly isolated among European leaders. Despite some private moral support from leading social democrats such as Sigmar Gabriel, then leader of the SPD, they publicly showed little solidarity with the beleaguered government, which capitulated completely to a renewed austerity programme in July 2015 (Varoufakis, 2017). Conclusion It is apparent that the EL has significant weaknesses in its relationships with the wider European left. Its most obvious failures are in the EU institutions, especially the European Parliament. The EL suffers a ‘triple whammy’ in policy terms: it has only partial representation in the GUE/ NGL group; in turn this group is mostly marginal within the wider EU policy process; furthermore the low visibility of the European institutions among the European public in general removes any likelihood that the EL might use its parliamentary group and EU institutional presence as a ‘tribune’ to enhance the radical left’s status across Europe. The situation is obviously not all bleak: at the very least the EL has increased its European representation numerically, even if its proportional weight within the GUE/NGL has declined. Moreover, it would be asking too much of any small transnational party to effect a radical shift in its European fortunes not much over a decade since its foundation. In addition, for all its faults, the radical left at European level does remain more cohesive than in the 1990s, if not necessarily more influential. Yet this is rather scant comfort given the aims that the EL has set itself. Outside the EU institutions, the situation is marginally better. The EL still suffers from the disinterest (and in some cases outright hostility) of a number of key European radical left parties. However, whereas the nonadherence of relatively successful parties like most of the NGLA and the Dutch SP is disappointing, the EL has managed to attract a number of larger parties and to maintain good relations with a number of non-joiners. Moreover, the (perhaps surprising) integrationist sentiments shown by some ex-Trotskyist parties do give the EL some grounds for optimism about its future prospects. Meanwhile, the non-accession of larger parties like the KKE, PCP and the Ukrainian and Russian communists is arguably a blessing in disguise given their nostalgic neo-Sovietism and (particularly in the case of the KKE) integral sectarianism. Even if they were somehow to agree with the EL’s critique of Stalin, these parties would hardly help the EL attract newer supporters and would be as likely to drive away existing ones.

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Where the EL has had greater success (particularly via its working groups and Transform!) is acting as a co-ordination nexus for a wide range of NGOs and social movements and seeking to consolidate policy positions among the global justice movement. Admittedly, it is one of many such networks and some of its activity is duplicated by the GUE/NGL group. By its very nature, a direct effect of such broad networking activity cannot be easily identified; moreover, the very disparate and often antiparty nature of the GJM provides definite limits to such activity. So, is the EL a nexus of the networks? Hardly. But a nexus among the networks? Definitely. This is not an insignificant role, and the EL’s increasing extraparliamentary co-ordination efforts at least offer the opportunity to bridge some of the policy, ideology and trust divisions that have plagued the radical left’s activities for decades. However, whether they can in any way help overcome the weakness of the radical left’s influence in the European institutions within the medium term is much more doubtful. Notes 1 The co-ordinators, according to the EL website on 1 August 2017, are Gerald Kemski (The Left Party, Germany) and Nuria Lozano-Montoya (United and Alternative Left, Catalonia). 2 Authors’ observation. 3 Based on authors’ conversations with both anarchist and Rifondazione activists, and personal observations, Ferrara, April 2012. 4 For transform!europe see www.transform-network.net/, accessed 31 July 2017. 5 Information from www.transform-network.net/network/organizations/, accessed 31 July 2017. 6 www.forum-des-alternatives.eu/en/node/9), accessed 31July 2017. 7 www.euro-planb.eu/?page_id=96&lang=en, accessed 1 August 2017. 8 https://internal.diem25.org/members?locale=en, accessed 1 August 2017. 9 According to Miguel Portas (2010), one of the main motivations for including the Socialist Alliance (as it was then called) was simply to ensure that the EL had enough member parties to get legal registration. He regarded the party as basically ‘Stalinist’. 10 Authors’ observations from speeches of EL representatives at EL Congress, Paris, 3–5 December 2010. 11 An exception is the Norwegian SV, which grew out of the left of the Labour Party; and a partial exception is the Danish SF, which had outgrown its communist origins and become a ‘new left’ party long before Eurocommunism. 12 Conversation with former member of SV central board, Dag Seierstad, Berlin, 22 May 2011. 13 Interview, Brussels, 10 February 2011. 14 Incidentally, a similar criticism has been voiced by the Trotskyist left. For instance, Klaus Engert, member of the German section of the Fourth

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International, views the EL as being created ‘to obtain subsidies from the European parliament’ (Engert 2011: 106). 15 The MKMP had already split prior to its decision to leave the EL, and it is arguable that the decision to leave was largely an attempt to consolidate its ranks (Karatsioubanis, 2010a). An offshoot of the MKMP, the Workers’ Party-2006, was accepted into the EL in 2010. 16 www.europarl.europa.eu/contracts-and-grants/en/20150201PVL00101/Politicalparties-and-foundations; http://www.europarl.europa.eu/groups/accounts_en. htm, accessed 8 August 2017. 17 Information from www.europarl.europa.eu/contracts-and-grants/en/201502 01PVL00101/Political-parties-and-foundations; http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ groups/accounts_en.htm, accessed 8 August 2017. 18 Interviews in Brussels, 9 February 2011.

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7

The EL in comparative context: organisational and programmatic developments among left-of-centre TNPs To what degree are developments within the EL unique, and to what degree does its trajectory (with all its problems and opportunities) mirror those of other European TNPs? To some extent, we have alluded to the comparative context throughout (for instance, in discussion of the institutional–legal context for TNPs in chapter 1). This chapter brings the comparative dimension into more explicit focus. Here, the Party of European Socialists and European Green Party are used as the primary TNPs for comparison. This chapter focuses on two distinct (but related) areas. First is the institutional development of these parties as TNPs: the similarities/ differences in their structure, process and performance, and relationship to and influence within European institutions. The second issue is the emergence of coherent TNP programmatic positions. While space precludes detailed discussion of party stances, emphasis will be put on the degree to which these parties share ideological and policy proclivities with the EL and the prospects (if any) for policy co-operation and convergence between these three (broadly speaking) ‘left’ TNPs. There is a clear rationale for comparing the EL with these two TNPs. Whereas the EPP made the early running in TNP development and has since 1999 been the most electorally successful, the PES has traditionally been the most stable and cohesive, with the closest proximity to linear development, and is the only TNP represented in all EU member states (Hix and Lord, 1997: 96). Accordingly, the PES was traditionally seen as a ‘model’ TNP that might be used as a benchmark for others (Hix and Lord, 1998: 86). The Greens share certain key similarities with the EL, at least in terms of their small size and potentially reduced policy impact. Like the EL, the Greens are late developers on the European stage, producing only an incoherent response to the EU in the mid-1990s and emerging as a fully-fledged TNP only in 2004. Both TNPs provide a useful additional point of contrast with the EL: like the EL each (in their time) has expressed significant misgivings about

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the neoliberal EU, yet both appear (in different formats and different times) to have reached relative unanimity over the virtues of TNPs in furthering their policy aims within the EU – certainly, far greater unanimity than the EL has so far achieved. So, do their trajectories offer any insights for the EL’s present or future development? To what degree are the EL’s constraints and opportunities sui generis, and to what degree are they shared with other party families? Moreover, since the left–right cleavage is acknowledged as a primary policy cleavage within the EP, study of policy differences and similarities among the centre- and radical left is not an idle topic, but helps illustrate the EL’s potential in making allies and participating in future coalitions that can affect European policy-making, as well as the prospect of any future ‘left’ alternative to the EU, particularly after the Great Recession. These TNPs are regarded by the EL as at least potential political allies. For example, the EL has invited their members to participate in the Marseille and Bilbao forums. At this point, it should be noted that, although the Greens traditionally regarded themselves as ‘neither left nor right but ahead’, we follow a number of authors as considering them as on the left, by virtue of the egalitarianism of their ideology and the left-wing selfplacement of many of their supporters (cf. Richardson and Rootes, 1994; Doherty, 2002; Dunphy, 2004). Our comparison will highlight many similarities between these TNPs: for instance, they struggle with similar conflicts between intergovernmentalism and federalism, similar hesitations over the development of true transnational parties, and similar constraints over their ability to develop genuinely ‘European’ policies and to influence European politics effectively. The Greens in particular have many similarities with the EL in terms of having expressed aspirations to defend their radical, outsider credentials, and not to be absorbed within the EU mainstream. However, each TNP has resolved these tensions in different ways. The chief difference between the PES, EGP and EL is that in the former two, these conflicts have gradually diminished and a broad consensus over party goals has been reached, allowing a marked consolidation of the TNP. This cannot yet be said of the EL. While the prospect that the EL is merely a ‘late developer’ and will follow the trajectories of the EGP and PES into a more cohesive organisation with a few years’ time-lag is possible, the prospect that entrenched internal disagreements will continue to vitiate the EL’s functioning is as likely, if not more so. Moreover, the chapter demonstrates that, despite their very different organisational pedigrees, a marked policy consensus has emerged between the three left-of-centre TNPs in the wake of the Great Recession. All three now claim to oppose neoliberalism, and aspire to more socially

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just and ecological alternatives, with several similar proposals. Nevertheless, superficial uniformity in general aspirations has so far provided few concrete results and goes little beyond a lowest-common-denominator anti-neoliberalism that does not entail a detailed symphony of legislative positions. Deeply held differences between and among the left-of-centre TNPs remain strong, above all reflected in the radical left’s radicalism (i.e. its commitment to structural change of the EU, the precise form of which, as we have shown throughout, is contested among the EL parties). Accordingly, this chapter places in stark relief one of the key weaknesses of the broader left’s policy response to the Great Recession – the failure to set out a coherent vision universally shared among its adherents. The PES: pragmatic intergovernmentalism In contrast to the European Greens, the Liberals (ALDE) and the EL, which have tended to have diffuse organisations, the EPP and the PES were centralised, top-down organisations from the outset (Attina 1998: 25). The PES has its origins in the Liaison Bureau of the Socialist Parties of the European Community (established in 1957 to co-ordinate Socialist International member parties operating within the EEC member states), and later the CSPEC, formed in 1974 to foster greater co-operation in advance of the first direct EP elections in 1979. Both of these organisations had cadre-like tendencies: they were able to promote relatively high programmatic unity among the half-dozen core member parties, but had little ability to influence the broader programmes of non-aligned parties, including the British Labour Party, which initially did not join the CSPEC as a full member (Hix and Lesse, 2002; Hanley, 2008: 66). Indeed, despite a very general manifesto being produced for the 1979 elections, the CSPEC had a largely ephemeral existence: the great ideological variance of European social democratic parties prevented aspirations towards a common European project in the 1980s, and many parties opted out or simply ignored its activity (Ladrech, 2000: 93). Europe was one of the key divisions among social democratic parties to be sure, but, unlike the radical left, it cannot be said that the social democrats put forward consistent ideological critiques of the EEC. For one thing, despite criticism of neoliberalism, since the 1950s no social democratic party can be regarded as substantively anti-capitalist (Sassoon, 2010: 243). Moreover, the ideological logic of post-war democratic socialism argued for a progressive internationalism that was at least implicitly compatible with greater European transnational co-operation (Featherstone, 1988: 1). Most social democrats’ ambivalence about Europe stemmed from their traditional national focus – an emphasis on Keynesian economic

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dirigisme via the institutions of the nation-state. Ignazio Silone argued that ‘there is nothing the Socialists nationalize as quickly as socialism’ (quoted in Ladrech, 2003: 114). This may be an exaggeration; but from 1914 until the present, social democrats have often prioritised the national to the international, and this ethos, as we shall see, has deeply imbued the conduct of the PES. Be that as it may, approaches to Europe varied widely, with British Labour, the Danish Social Democrats and Greek PASOK being the most sceptical (Labour’s notorious 1983 manifesto even advocated withdrawal from the EEC), and the Dutch, Belgian, French and German parties being most favourable towards common policies. Moreover, there has consistently tended to be a North–South pro-/anti-EU cleavage, with the Northern social democrats (especially the Nordic countries) markedly less keen (Almeida, 2012: 58). The PES’s formation in 1992 was, typically, less a product of a proactive embrace of transnationalism than a pragmatic response to incentives – once more, a case of the EU’s ‘top-down institutionalisation’ and political spill-over (Lightfoot, 2005: 35). The social democrats perceived that coordination via the EPP allowed Christian democrats far greater policy effectiveness, not least through their party leaders’ summits in advance of European Council meetings. This was a policy effectiveness they wished to emulate (Ladrech, 2000: 95; 2003). At the same time, policy differences over Europe had narrowed significantly and a consensus over integration emerged. The failure of the socialist/communist coalition government in France in 1981–84 and the ideological onslaught of Thatcherite neoliberalism fundamentally dented social democrats’ confidence that Keynesian policies at national level were compatible with a globalised economy. Indeed, Mitterrand filled the vacuum left by his abandonment of radicalism with a renewed enthusiasm for an accelerated European integration. On the one hand, this coalescence of views was accelerated by the social democrats’ inability to articulate any coherent alternative to the really existing Europe – somewhat unhappily and grudgingly they began to accept the European Community as a fact (e.g. Hanley, 2008: 70). On the other hand, many parties began to hope that economic dirigisme at a European level could compensate for the lacunae in their vision. Therefore, many social democrats began to embrace a ‘Eurokeynesianism’, which would ‘temper free market policies ex ante via regulation rather than ex post via [national-level] regulation’ (Aust, 2004; Almeida, 2012: 54). Such EU-level interventionist socio-economic policies would nevertheless emphatically not be accompanied by political federalism (Ladrech, 2000: 145). Overall, it proved relatively easy to ‘transfer the notion of an interventionist state from the national to the supranational level’ (Ladrech, 2003: 125).

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This core consensus allowed the rapid consolidation of the PES as a far more relevant actor than the CSPEC. Although there were (and still are) significant differences over the scope of this European ‘party’, there was agreement that, at a minimum, it would help policy formulation and reduce transaction costs in order to foster more effective and cohesive policy interventions at EU level. Moreover, reflecting the social democrats’ statecentrism, there was agreement that the primary purpose of the PES was to translate and aggregate national party priorities, but in no way to limit national party prerogatives. The very name of the PES indicates this – in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, it is translated differently in each language – for instance in the Nordic countries it is the ‘European Social Democratic party’ and in Germany simply the ‘Social Democratic Party of Europe’. Overall, this was a ‘party of parties’ with weak integrative structures rather than an integrated, transnational ‘Europarty’ (Moschonas, 2004: 130). Hanley notes that there are remarkable similarities among TNPs as organisations, reflecting their essence as the agents of national principals (Hanley, 2008: 66). Accordingly, in each TNP the fundamental institutions alongside the party Congress and secretariat are intergovernmental ones, representing the interests of national party leaders. After all, in the EL, there is the Council of Chairpersons alongside the Executive Board (formed in any case from national party representatives), and since 2017 the General Assembly, which primarily comprises members of the Council and Executive Board anyway. The Greens are less intergovernmental, with a Council formed by delegates of member parties and a smaller Committee elected by the Council (European Green Party, 2017b). However, the PES arguably takes this intergovernmentalism the furthest, with no less than three intergovernmental organisations: the Council (which ‘contribute(s) to the shaping of the PES policy’ and ‘serve(s) as a platform for strategic discussions’ (Art. 29.1)); the Presidency (the ‘highest organ’ for day-to-day administration and implementing decisions of Council and Congress (Art. 33.1/2)) and the Leaders’ Conference, convoked by the President and held at least twice a year (usually in advance of a meeting of the European Council). This latter is undoubtedly the pre-eminent strategic body, since it can make resolutions and recommendations to the Presidency, Congress and EP group, while respecting that the Congress is the ‘supreme organ of the PES’ (Party of European Socialists, 2015: Art. 38). Internally, the leadership bodies of both PES and EGP operate according to complicated formulae of qualified majority voting, although the principle of consensus is stressed. PES leadership bodies aim to combine centralisation with representation: with each institution overlapping and interwoven. For example, the

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Presidency is a collective body including one representative from each full member party and organisation, the head of the PES EU parliamentary group and the PES General Secretary. Similarly, the Council includes member party representatives, representatives of the EP group and all members of the Presidency. In addition, the President, Vice-President and General Secretary sit in the Leaders’ Conference. Whereas analysts have conceived the PES as primarily a policy-seeking organisation (e.g. Ladrech, 2000; Lightfoot, 2005), its structure reveals it as also a strongly officeseeking organisation (i.e. one concerned with maximising its executive capacities). For instance, PES members in high office (such as PES members of the European Commission, and the Presidents of the European Parliament and the European Council, if they are PES members) are given ex officio membership of the Council, and send representatives to the Presidency and Leaders’ Conference (a PES President of the EP would sit on all three) (Party of European Socialists, 2015: Arts 30.4, 34.3, 39.1). The PES parliamentary group’s integration in the PES structure is a dramatic contrast to that of the EL; the PES group (since 2009 called the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament) is seen as the parliamentary arm of the PES; all PES member parties are expected to join it. This does not mean that the relationship is devoid of tension or conflict, however (Lightfoot, 2005: 49). The PES is also quite hierarchical in membership structure. Only parties in EU member states (or those with accession treaties) can be full members. Parties in EU candidate states or the EFTA states can be associate members, while parties in European Neighbourhood Policy states without candidate status or the EU Customs Union ‘with close links with the PES’ may become observer parties (Party of European Socialists, 2015: Art. 9.5). Unlike the EL and the Greens, the PES is not a networking organisation – relations with trade unions and non-party organisations are managed by the Presidency, and although organisations as well as parties may become PES members, these are invariably those already closely intertwined with the PES (for instance, the S&D group and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies). Overall, membership is collective (via parties and groups), and there is no individual membership (although members of political groups which are full members of the PES but who are not themselves members of a PES party can become ‘individual observer members’). There was brief but abortive discussion of individual membership in a ‘European Socialist Party’ in the early 1990s. Although the name was unpopular, one key problem (as in other party families) was that individual members threatened the prerogatives of national parties (Lightfoot, 2005: 36–7). Nevertheless, in 2005 the PES instituted an ‘activists’ network’. Members of PES member parties are automatically ‘activists’

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and are permitted to organise horizontally, for example via ‘city groups’. This process has allowed greater member input into the PES manifesto but also has not been without controversies – the SPD for example initially felt that the network was forming a parallel organisation (Gagatek, 2009: 40; Hertner, 2011). Nevertheless, in 2010 the PES granted its activists the right to make proposals direct to the PES Presidency (Party of European Socialists, 2010a). As the PES has institutionalised, it has developed a limited but fairly effective ‘think-tank’ function, allowed freedom in policy development and a limited amount of ideological co-ordination, so long as it does not infringe the prerogatives of national parties (Hanley, 2008: 70). Its secretariat develops policy initiatives in a number of key areas (such as an ‘Initiative on energy and climate change’ and a ‘European Employment and Social Progress Pact for fair growth’) and this policy-making function is one that constituent parties consider extremely useful. Moreover, the PES can be regarded as ‘Europeanising’ the social democrats, by helping coordinate their activity at European level and by mellowing their opposition towards Europe (Ladrech, 2000). However, although the PES has facilitated policy convergence and effectiveness to a far greater degree than the CSPEC, there are still significant differences of view among member parties over its role. Parties like the British Labour Party invest little in the PES and see it mainly as a ‘networking arrangement’ (Hanley, 2008: 74). At the other end of the spectrum, the Belgian and Dutch socialists are ‘entrepreneurs’, supporting a more federal structure, while the French PS and German SPD wish to consolidate and develop the organisation, without it becoming a super-party. In terms of policy effectiveness, the PES is seen as playing a critical role in getting the Employment Chapter inserted into the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty and developing the 1999 European Employment Pact, although it has had less visible influence since, particularly over the Treaty of Nice (2001) and Convention for the Future of Europe (2001–3), which drew up the first EU draft Constitution (Johansson, 1999; Ladrech, 2000; Lightfoot, 2005). Its EP parliamentary group has become both stable and cohesive, with vote cohesion of 91.54 per cent in the 2009–14 Parliament, the third most disciplined group (VoteWatch.eu, 2015a). Nevertheless, more direct policy impact is difficult to demonstrate. The first EP manifesto to which all PES members signed up was achieved only as late as 1999, although far from all parties actually used it in their campaigns (Almeida, 2012: 49). However, even in the 2009 EP elections, while parties such as the French PS adopted the PES manifesto in its entirety, others like the German SPD barely referenced it and British Labour ignored it altogether (Hertner, 2011). Even during the so-called ‘social democratic

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moment’ in 1997–2002 (Ladrech, 2013: 88), the zenith of recent European social democratic influence when they held office in thirteen of the thenfifteen EU member states, a unity of purpose was conspicuously absent. Social democrats were split between traditional Eurokeynesianism (as espoused by the French PS) and the new ‘third way’ politics that was much more supportive of neoliberalism, globalisation and EU integration (Therborn, 2000). No unified social democratic response was evident over key events like the Iraq War: parties such as the PS and SPD were in the ‘anti’ camp, whereas British Labour was joined by some East-Central European parties like the Polish Democratic Left Alliance in uncritical support for the conflict. Europarties ‘matter (more) when they are in numerical ascendance’ (Johansson, 2015: 8). However, this ascendance was squandered, and since 1999 the PES has lost first-party status in the EP to the EPP, followed by a steady electoral decline. After 2008, particularly after heavy defeats for British Labour and the SPD, the economic crisis is regarded as having definitively ended the ‘third way’ period in social democracy, and the PES has reflected this by moving towards a far stronger critique of neoliberalism in an attempt to re-engage with its traditional electorate and values. Its policy proposals (outlined further below) aspire to ‘a substantive process of supranational re-social democratisation’ (Bailey, 2013: 52). The tone has moved from consensus to confrontation, with increased criticism of the ‘conservative’ EPP for its inability to address the economic crisis (Gagatek, 2009: 49–50). Allegedly, this ‘has strengthened the social democratic approach to Europe’ – and the ability of the PES to look left to the Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups rather than to rely on a ‘grand coalition’ with the EPP (Holmes and Lightfoot, 2013: 96). The problems with this view will be illustrated further below. Suffice it to say now that past practice indicates that any increased consensus at EU level will continue to co-exist with significantly anomalous policies promoted by PES member parties nationally. The most obvious example is the participation of PES member parties in the most stringent austerity programmes in Greece, Spain and Portugal in 2009–12. The European Greens: incremental transnationalism? The European Green Party (also known simply as the ‘European Greens’) was founded in 2004. It was the first European political party registered under the 2004/2003 party regulation, and now sees itself as a frontrunner in the development of European political parties (Emmott, 2012). In 2004, the EGP claimed to be running the first European election campaign that featured common motifs and slogans in all EU countries (European Green Party, 2008). Since 2004, the EGP has rapidly moved towards increasing

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institutionalisation and integration, and far more than the PES and EL (although still with qualifications) it can be said to aspire towards genuine transnationalism. For instance, Green parties accept far greater intervention of the TNP in their policy-making. This includes EP party manifestos that explicitly mention the EGP and have common policies (e.g. the ‘Green New Deal’ in 2009 and 2014). In 2012, the EGP started an audit of member parties, including checking their membership and financial status, and confirming that their programmes and statutes accord with the EGP’s own (Emmott, 2012). In addition, the EGP is capable of applying disciplinary measures to parties that ‘fail to meet the specified membership criteria or other obligations’ (European Green Party, 2017b: Art. 4.49). Such a level of central intervention is impossible to envisage in either of the other TNPs. This self-proclaimed frontrunner status is difficult to square with the Greens’ early origins. When they first emerged on the European stage, they were a small and disorganised force, unable to form a common manifesto or even gain seats in the 1979 EP elections. The Green Radical and European Link (GRAEL) group was formed in the EP in 1984 and contained a number of Green and independent radical parties. It had a loose and often tense relationship with European Green Coordination, set up in autumn 1983 in recognition that a more structured international organisation would raise awareness of global environmental issues and help strengthen the visibility of the Greens internationally (Dietz, 2002). Yet, like Green national parties at the time, GRAEL was fundamentally split between Realos (pragmatic cadres who saw compromise within political institutions as necessary for policy effectiveness) and Fundis (who wanted to stay true to their movement origins, sought policy purity and distrusted political institutions). This ‘strategic dilemma’ between purity and participation led to some parties rotating their MEPs in order to avoid contamination by mainstream politics, and to significant intra-party and intra-group conflict when many MEPs refused to do this (Bomberg, 1998; Hines, 2003). By 1989, GRAEL had no ‘agreed collective goals to be pursued in Europe’ and ‘had made no firm decision for or against parliamentarisation’ (Bomberg, 1998: 109). However, by the late 1990s the Greens were becoming an increasingly effective and integrated force. In 1993 European Green Coordination became the European Federation of Green Parties and its links with the European parliamentary Greens were increased. The Greens mustered sufficient MEPs to form their own group in 1989. In 1999 their group merged with a number of left-leaning regionalist parties to form the Greens/EFA group without any loss of cohesion. By the 2000s the Greens had become among the most disciplined of the EP groups. For example, in the 2009–14 Parliament, the Greens/EFA cohesion rate was 94.68 per

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cent (first place) (VoteWatch.eu, 2015a). Green/EFA cohesion is achieved by consensual deliberative processes and leadership that integrates the main groups and focuses on discipline (Brack and Kelbel, 2016) (whereas the GUE/NGL has the former, the latter it distinctly lacks). Of course, since the EL does not have its own European parliamentary group, a direct comparison is not possible. Such a dramatic turnaround contrasts with the steady trajectory of the PES and the very slow integration of the radical left, and demands explanation. After all, the radical left has itself also historically suffered from a ‘strategic dilemma’ between Bernsteinian reformism and Leninist revolutionism. The essentially non-co-operative policies of parties like the KKE and PCP within the EP can be regarded as a continuation of Lenin’s policies of ‘the worse, the better’ – that is, using the Parliament as a tribune and refusing any significant compromises that might imply they accepted the legitimacy of the EU institutions. The first factor in the Greens’ greater adaptability towards the EU has been ideology. From the outset, the Greens were almost universally in favour of transnationalism in parallel to developing national policies – after all, contemporary environmental challenges do not respect state borders (Hanley, 2008: 171). The Greens expressed this as ‘thinking globally and acting locally’ (European Green Party, 2012a: 8). This certainly contrasts with the ‘socialism in one country’ espoused by the KKE and PCP, which sees the nation-state as the building block of true internationalism. Moreover, even the most ardent ‘Left Europeanism’, it should not be forgotten, is a strategic reaction to the perceived failure of such nationstate-centred visions. Secondly, a related factor was that the Greens, while fundamentally divided in the 1980s on their attitudes to the ‘really existing EU’ among federalists, confederalists and those favouring withdrawal, failed to develop a consistent ideological opposition to integration. This is because they shared a general consensus that state sovereignty needed to be transferred from the nation-state both to regional and European levels in order to solve environmental problems – even if they disagreed on whether this ‘European level’ was best addressed via the EU institutions or others (such as the Council of Europe) (Dietz, 2002: 133). Moreover, for most parties the EU had relatively low salience. Indeed, until the early 1990s their concept of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ remained ill-developed and many parties focused on local campaigns, effectively ignoring the EU as an issue (Bomberg, 1998: 70). Overall, then, Europe has never become politicised as an identity marker among the Greens to the degree it has within the radical left. A third factor was domestic incentives – national divisions between Realos and Fundis resulted in divided parties that performed poorly at the

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end of the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the Realos had won the internal conflicts in many parties and increasingly oriented their parties towards policy pragmatism, involving more hierarchical and ‘professional’ party organisations (Burchell, 2001). Domestic incentives were buttressed by the incentives of the EU itself. Hines notes how the EU’s rules of procedure forced the Greens to learn the skills of consensus and compromise, which helped strengthen the hand of the Realos within the party organisations (Hines, 2003). Combined with a wish not to repeat the GRAEL group’s negative experience, and a sustained increase in numbers during the 1990s, this enhanced the Greens’ wish to strengthen their organisational structures and decision-making in order to be more visible internationally (Hanley, 2008: 169). Therefore it was a logical culmination that the Greens produced their first EP manifesto in 1999. In sum, relative to the radical left, the Greens were newer parties more susceptible to the institutional incentives of the EP, with less ideological animus against European integration and with less hesitancy about transnationalism, all of which pushed them towards a more rapid adaptation to the incentives provided by European integration. According to Bomberg, by the 2000s the Greens in Europe had become thoroughly Europeanised – their structures were more professionalised and their radical policies (including their attitudes to Europe) had ‘mellowed’ and moderated significantly (Bomberg, 2002). Structurally, the EGP still reflects the Greens’ collectivist origins to a degree. There is no formal party President, and the chief party body (the Council) is a large one, with the forty-four member, candidate and associate member parties sending several delegates each. However, as Dietz notes, the original consensus principles were seen as too ineffective and unwieldy, so now a form of QMV operates, with votes and delegates allocated according to parties’ most recent European or national election results (Dietz, 2000; European Green Party, 2017a). Moreover, the Greens’ second most important body (the Committee, which is responsible for carrying out the Council’s decisions) is a genuinely transnational one. Unlike the PES and EL, it is not comprised largely of delegates from national parties. It is elected by the Council, and with just nine members to represent thirty-seven full members, must to some degree act in the collective TNP interest rather than that of individual party components. Unlike the PES but like the EL, the Greens’ original ambivalence towards the EU is reflected in its membership criteria, since it does not restrict full membership to parties from EU member states but defines Europe according to the criteria of the Council of Europe. Also like the EL, the Greens are a networking party, with a number of regional networks such as LGBTIQ and the Balkan Network. These are networks of parties, rather

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than individuals. However, the EGP does allow working groups formed of persons nominated by the parties to address specific policy issues (European Green Party, 2017a: Art. 33.8). Nevertheless, in other respects the EGP replicates the PES’s institutionalisation and focus on office-seeking. The EP group is seen as an integral part of the TNP and Green MEPs are granted Special Category Membership therein (European Green Party, 2017b: Art. 5). The Greens have also had a similar debate to the EL over individual membership. This is likewise regarded as a controversial issue, and furthering it has foundered both over the national parties’ fears of being undermined, and the difficulty of finding an institutional form that can bridge individual and party membership (Emmott, 2012). However, unlike the EL the Greens have not (so far) decided to institutionalise individual membership as such. Instead, there is an ‘individual supporters network’, set up in 2009 with the aim of creating ‘an open, flexible and non-hierarchical structure linking individuals, groups and networks from all Green parties, in which all initiatives for cross border participation are welcome and will be encouraged, to help to build a common political space for Greens from all over Europe’ (European Green Party, 2017a: Art. 34.3). Unlike EL individual members, the network is open only to members of EGP parties, not non-party individuals. However, as noted in chapter 4, relative to still rather rudimentary EL individual membership structures, this has been (at least until 2015 when it became apparently inactive) a structured network answerable to the EGP council, with a co-ordination team, a regular meeting programme and social media presence. According to some commentators, the Greens have found it ‘no easier’ than any other party to implement ‘real transnational action’ (Hanley, 2008: 171). Certainly, despite the mellowing of their ideological radicalism, there are still considerable policy differences between parties. As with other party families, there are significant divergences over views of the EU and the related question of how much primacy to award the TNP. The Swedish Green Party and the Green Party of England and Wales have usually been more EU-critical (although the latter far less so since 2010), whereas the German Greens are traditionally more Europeanist and federalist. Generally, Hanley argues that the largest (and not coincidentally, more established) parties tend to be more in favour of the TNP than the smaller ones (which are more dependent on their links with social movements) (Hanley, 2008: 172–5). There have been the usual tensions over how much integration to promote and how much emphasis to put on organisation via the EU institutions versus how much to work through extra-parliamentary initiatives. Moreover, there has been a constant cleavage between the ‘red-green’ or ‘rainbow-green’ parties (such as the German, Scottish and

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English–Welsh Greens) which emphasise social questions, egalitarianism and are more critical of neoliberalism and the ‘green-greens’ (such as the French and Irish Greens), which tend to be less socially oriented (Bomberg, 1998: 24). Finally, the accession of East–Central European Green parties (such as those in the Czech Republic or Estonia) has complicated matters, bringing in parties which are both more in favour of the TNP as a source of experience and logistical help, and which tend to be more neoliberal in orientation (similar developments have happened with the expansion of the PES to the East). That said, overall the Greens since 2004 seem to have developed a relatively impressive level of policy consensus. Moreover, there appears to be a genuine agreement that the TNP is a useful instrument as a service provider, force multiplier and networking organisation whose effectiveness needs to be developed (Emmott, 2012). Given the Greens’ generally weak numerical strength, they can be regarded as punching above their weight in this regard. In addition, the Greens appear to have maximised their influence on the EU policy agenda. In this, they have been helped by an increasingly united Green movement able to exert extra-parliamentary pressure, and the genuine salience of environmental issues among European public opinion, which has given them greater leverage than their meagre numbers might imply. For example, their pressure during debates over the Maastricht Treaty is seen as instrumental in the formation of the EU’s advisory Committee of the Regions (Hines, 2003). Moreover, they have had success in promoting the idea of a Green Europe, managing to channel public pressure into an arguably more radical EU environmental agenda that would otherwise have been possible, all of which has ‘enabled them to place certain issues on the European agenda and given them a limited ability to change the trajectory of integration’ (Hines, 2003: 322). Nevertheless, like the EL, they have had weak representation in the EU institutions, meaning few chances to co-ordinate their policy intentions before EU Council summits. Moreover, the Greens have had even worse results in the new Eastern EU member states since 2004 than the EL – they have ‘benefited less electorally than any other [EP group] from the Eastern enlargement’ (Brack and Kelbel, 2016: 220). This changed partially in 2014, with one MEP each from Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia, and two from Hungary. Nevertheless, unlike the GUE/NGL until its stellar result in 2014, the Greens have generally managed a stable EP group representation. In 2009 the Greens/EFA group reached a high point of fifty-five seats (7.5 per cent of the total), a result arguably helped by innovative policies such as the ‘Green New Deal’ and a reinforced emphasis on social issues in the wake

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of the 2008 crisis. In 2014 this fell back marginally behind the GUE/NGL to fifty seats (6.7 per cent), in part because of Green participation in proausterity governments (Brustier, Deloy and Escalona, 2014).

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Comparing TNP institutionalisation As noted in chapter 1, a commonly used method of analysis for comparing the organisational development of TNPs is using Oskar Niedermayer’s model (Niedermayer, 1983; see also Dietz, 2000; Sandstrom, 2004). This model traces the development of TNPs from loosely formed networks towards more integrated political parties. To recap, at the contact stage of integration, parties meet on an ad hoc basis without any permanent transnational organisation being formed. At the co-operation stage, parties begin to work multilaterally on a regular basis and form permanent transnational organisations. At the integration stage, national party sovereignty is transferred to a transnational organisation. At least some sovereignty transfer is needed to count as a European political party. In addition, Niedermayer proposes a number of indices with which to differentiate the degree of interaction within these stages. These indices, highlighted in the first column of Table 7.1 (permanent communication, permanent organisation and the formulation of common policies) focus on the extent to which national party autonomy has been circumscribed in favour of the TNP. Table 7.1 reveals that, as of 2018, each of the three parties examined has reached at least the co-operation stage and begun to develop integrative tendencies in various spheres, integration being defined as having a degree of interaction whereby the prerogatives of the national party are permanently curtailed in the interests of the TNP. Focusing first on the similarities, each party has gone beyond permanent communication to found permanent organisations which are structured and complex institutions with a number of subunits. As of the 2004/2003 party regulation, each TNP possesses its own independent financial means (although we have noted that these are dwarfed by those of the EP parliamentary group). Each aspires to its own common policy formulation (largely through the promulgation of its manifesto, although with aspirations towards more permanent policy advocacy, particularly in the PES). However, in each party the emergence of true integration remains limited. This has been noted most explicitly in the case of individual membership, which would allow the TNP to transcend its party-network nature and have a truer connection with grass-roots activists: neither the PES nor the EGP has developed this, whereas in the EL, as previously outlined, it remains largely ineffective. In other spheres, there are contradictory

Table 7.1  The degree of TNP interaction: the PES, Greens and EL compared

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- Council/Council/Council of Chairpersons - Committee/Executive Board

EL

Yes Yes No Yes Yes

Yes Yes No Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes (but ineffective) Yes Yes

Restricted Proportionality + ex officio Restricted Proportionality + ex officio n/a

Restricted Proportionality + ex officio Restricted proportionality + ex officio Party election

Equality

Equality + ex officio Ex officio

n/a n/a

Equality (with gender parity) Equality + ex officio n/a

Unanimity/QMV Unanimity/QMV

QMV QMV

Unanimity/Majority Unanimity

n/a Majority Unanimity Explicitly restricted To limited extent Yes Yes, common manifesto and policy

Unanimity/Majority n/a n/a Unrestricted Yes, to some extent Yes Yes, common manifesto and policy

Unanimity Unanimity n/a Explicitly restricted Yes, to some extent Yes Yes, common manifesto and (some) policy

Source: Developed from Dietz (2000) and Sandstrom (2004).

Equality

207

- Presidency - Pre-EU Council Leaders’ meeting e. Decision-making in: - Congress - Council/Council/Council of Chairpersons - Committee/Executive Board - Presidency - Pre-EU Council Leaders’ meeting f. TNP area of competence g. Use of common symbols h. Own financial means 3. Common policy formulation

EGP

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Interactive features: 1. Permanent communication 2. Permanent organisation a. Possibility of individual membership b. Existence of subunits c. Incorporation of subunits into decision-making d. Composition of: - Congress

PES



Party (2018)

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impulses. For example, both the PES and EGP (unlike the EL) have moved at least partially away from equality of status of member parties in their decision-making bodies and strict unanimity principles in decision-making (although both commit to consensus as a preferred principle). This goes furthest in the PES, with most leading bodies being formed on a proportionality basis (albeit restricted proportionality, because seats are allocated on the basis of both country size and EP election performance, and proportionality is further diluted by a number of co-opted and ex officio members). However, even in the EGP the Council is formed by a combination of proportionality and ex officio membership (the European parliamentary group and Federation of Young European Greens send delegates). All three parties operate on the principle of gender balance. In terms of decision-making, votes in the leading bodies of both the PES and EGP are generally taken by a qualified majority (two thirds or three quarters of members, with voting rights allocated differentially). QMV principles and majority voting are seen as necessary for entering the integration stage, because they involve explicit curtailment of national party privileges (Dietz, 2000: 203). Nevertheless, even in these cases a large number of votes are still taken by consensus and there remains a large number of opt-outs from decisions (Hanley, 2008: 67, 174). In the EL in contrast, as we have often mentioned, the norm is strict equality of representation for member parties (irrespective of size) and consensus-based decisions without any qualified majority – not even this minimal form of transnationalism has occurred. As discussed above, the PES is the most centralised and integrated structure, with its subunits (such as the EP parliamentary group) being the most obviously formally incorporated in party decision-making. Whereas this centralisation could in principle be used to further the interests of the TNP organisation vis-à-vis member parties, the composition of the leading bodies, the power of the presidency and the sheer number of ex officio positions merely reinforce the position of national party elites. This is borne out in the PES statutes. Those of 2015, relative to those of 2009, do give more scope to the TNP ‘to contribute to forming a European awareness and to expressing the political will of the citizens of the Union’, ‘to lead the European election campaign for our movement with a common strategy and visibility, a common Manifesto and a common candidate to the European Commission Presidency’ and ‘to define common policies for the European Union and to influence the decisions of the European institutions’ (Party of European Socialists, 2015: Art. 3.4). However, they also continue to stress intergovernmentalism: the PES’s main roles include ‘support[ing] each other to win national, regional and local

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elections’, ‘provid[ing] a platform for member parties and organisations’ and ‘develop[ing] close working relationships between … member parties and organisations’. Whereas explicit restrictions on the role of the PES vis-à-vis member parties have disappeared, these statutes still describe a TNP not conceived as separate from its member parties. The PES still limits itself to the think-tank and network-party function – the ‘spider in the web’ of broader EU relationships, as Lightfoot describes it (Lightfoot, 2005: 43). The restrictions on transnationalism and commitments to intergovernmentalism are more explicit still in the EL statutes, which describe it as a ‘flexible, decentralised association of independent and sovereign European left-wing parties and political organizations’ (European Left 2017a: Art. 1) and assert that ‘all decisions concerning choices and attitudes of EL member parties or political organizations in their own countries remain strictly under the sovereignty of national parties’ (EL 2017a: Art. 4). Only in the Greens is the role of the TNP described in transnational terms: the EGP aims to ‘accomplish a common green political agenda … to ensure close and permanent co-operation among all its Members’, ‘[contribute] … to forming European awareness and … to express the political will of the citizens of the European Union’ (European Green Party, 2017b: Art. 3.5). The EGP’s rule book further asserts that (while regarding its members’ diversity as a strength): ‘[i]t is essential that Members of the European Green Party recognise their rights and fulfill their responsibilities as an integral part of the European Green Party’ (European Green Party, 2017a: 3). In no party is the use of common symbols fully accepted among member parties. Their use goes furthest among the European Greens (EGP rules explicitly encourage member parties to use its symbols). The EGP’s sunflower logo is used in modified form by a number of parties, including the German, French and Swedish Greens. The PES rejected common symbols and membership cards in the early 1990s, and only a few parties (e.g. the German SPD Social Democratic Party of Austria) have logos much resembling that of the PES (conversely, many social democratic parties use modifications of the Socialist International’s red rose). In the EL, certain smaller parties (such as the Estonian United Left Party) have adopted the EL’s red and white star wholesale, but for most it has made little impression. The EL does require full and associate members and partner parties and organisations to display its symbol on their websites and in their literature but this requirement does not appear to be enforced with any zeal. It is symptomatic that few parties from any of the three party families reference the TNP in their campaigning (during elections or otherwise).

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For instance, the French PCF and German Die Linke do reference the EL prominently on their party homepages but many EL members do not. However, EL members are not necessarily worse than any other party family in this regard – Green parties such as the Germans and English/ Welsh do not reference the EGP prominently on their homepages, and only about half of PES members reference it. During elections, the Greens (as noted) have gone the furthest in using common slogans and posters and referencing the common manifesto (Gagatek 2009: 46, 48). In contrast, key PES parties have generally hardly mentioned their manifesto (Hertner, 2011). As for the EL, even such a prominent ‘entrepreneur’ as the German Die Linke barely referred to the EL in 2009 campaigning, despite holding the EL presidency at the time (Brunsbach, John and Werner, 2010: 92). Of course, the use of Spitzenkandidaten in the 2014 EP election did bring the role of the TNP far more to the fore, as we saw in chapter 5 with the case of Alexis Tsipras. Finally, each party’s policy development has increased apace. The PES goes furthest in having a number of subdivisions of its secretariat that explicitly develop policies in different areas, but the Greens’ website also promotes a plethora of common policies and action plans in addition to its common manifesto. The EL is undoubtedly weakest in policy formulation: almost all its policy documents including the manifesto are developed for its Congresses, and between Congresses policy as such is largely limited to Executive Board statements. Overall, this comparative perspective on party institutionalisation reveals the limitations present in all TNPs: they have chosen to integrate only in restricted spheres and in each the national party remains dominant. This is most evident in the PES, where there is limited integration in decision-making procedures and deeper integration in the policy-making realm, but intergovernmentalism prevails elsewhere. By its party structure, declared ideology and the cohesion of its parliamentary practice, the EGP is clearly the most transnational TNP, although as yet still falling somewhat short of being a genuine pan-European party. The EL is somewhat of a ‘mixed bag’. It has a proclaimed commitment to transnationalism, but the weak implementation of individual membership, its still nascent policymaking function and the untrammelled intergovernmentalism of its decision-making bodies and statutes mean that it is certainly the least institutionalised TNP of the three: combined with the ideological/policy divergences that we have highlighted throughout this volume, this arguably means that the EL has the worst of all worlds. Whereas both the PES and Greens have achieved a certain level of strategic stability, the PES as a limited but cohesive intergovernmental structure and the Greens as a more ambitious but less centralised transnational party, the EL is both more



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organisationally inchoate and strategically divided. Moreover, as noted repeatedly, it lacks its own EP parliamentary group.

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The scope for policy convergence among the broader left The previous sections reveal TNP institutional models that (despite acknowledged common discussion between TNP leaders and structural similarities) have largely followed autonomous development paths to reflect the wishes of their constituent member parties. But to what degree can the three left-of-centre TNPs overcome their autonomous paths to forge a common policy consensus? The fact that each TNP (and particularly the EL) has internal disagreements not just about policy but about the very scope of action at EU level does indicate that a broader cross-party policy consensus may be heavily circumscribed ab initio. However, this is far from a naïve question – the European institutions (including the EP) are widely acknowledged as possessing a largely a-political character that depoliticises ideological conflicts and incentivises consensus and compromise in decision-making (e.g. Mair, 2005). Moreover, as already mentioned, the three party families’ voting patterns do already coincide significantly in the EP: in the 2009–14 EP the GUE/NGL’s position matched the Greens/EFA and S&D on 69.9 per cent and 59.7 per cent of votes respectively (VoteWatch.eu, 2015b). Although again it is worth adding that the GUE/NGL is not the EL group, it does indicate some evident cooperation across the broader left in the EP. However, it should also be noted that the Greens/EFA position is itself closer to the S&D (75 per cent of votes matching), while the S&D (in part because of its pivotal position in forming parliamentary coalitions) coincides with ALDE most of all, followed by the Greens, EPP and only then the GUE/NGL group. The strong coincidence of policy positions between the three EP groups is shown in Figure 7.1. Not unexpectedly, all three groups coalesce towards the top left of the diagram, emphasising expanding the welfare state, environmental protection and liberal social values rather than neoliberal economics and emphases on law and order and restricting immigration. Dunphy (2004) has analysed the general ideological basis for cooperation between the radical left, social democrats and Greens in greater detail, and argues that the picture is complex, with multiple areas for both compromise and contention. With the social democrats, the main common ground can be found over state-centric solutions for overcoming economic and social inequalities, promoting growth and employment within a broadly Keynesian framework with the role of trade unions and the ETUC as core actors in protecting an employment agenda. This framework can support European integration, providing it supports ‘social Europe’ that

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Figure 7.1  Policy position of the EP groups on seven-point policy scale Note: The seven policy dimensions are: ‘Lib Soc’ – liberal society; ‘Eco Lib’ – economic liberalisation; ‘Financial’ – restrictive financial policy (low taxation and spending); ‘Law’ – law and order; ‘Immigration’ – restrictive immigration policy; ‘Envi’ – environmental protection; and ‘Wel’ – expanded welfare state. The higher the value on a dimension, the stronger the agreement of the group on the policies expressed by the specified dimension. Source: Adapted from Bardi et al. (2010).

seeks to mitigate the market-making and neoliberal emphases of the EU’s economic directives. Whereas contemporary radical left parties usually deny that they are pursuing Keynesian policies as ends in themselves, and maintain an aspiration to ‘transform’ capitalism, they will often agree that current efforts must focus on defending the social democratic state as a bulwark against neoliberalism, including the core institutions of the welfare state (March, 2011). In addition, the contemporary centre- and radical left tend to share a post-materialist consensus over lifestyle issues, supporting gender, sexual and ethnic equality, environmental concerns and general social justice issues. This assertion needs qualification however, because some of the more traditionalist communist parties (such as the KKE and KSČM) have traditionally been regarded as far less post-materialist in their emphasis. On the other hand, the practice of certain social democratic parties in government (particularly their emphasis on national security and more restrictive immigration policies) conflicts with (most) radical left parties’ emphasis on open borders and free movement of peoples.

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The biggest problem in reaching consensus over such issues is internal divisions within the party families themselves. In particular, radical left parties have often been able to count on the sympathies of considerable numbers of activists within social democratic parties who have helped them with a strategy of acting as the ‘conscience of the left’ and pressuring social democratic parties in a leftwards direction against neoliberalism. However, particularly under the influence of ‘third way’ ideas, social democratic party leaderships have been more prone to promote neoliberal policies of privatisation, market deregulation and welfare-state retrenchment (reaching their apogee in the Agenda 2010 cuts to welfare in Germany in 2003–5 that were initiated by the SPD/Green government). Even nominally ‘Eurokeynesian’ parties such as the French PS have demonstrated a very chequered record in government – for example, the PS-led Jospin government of 1997–2002 undertook more privatisations than the previous six governments combined (Dunphy, 2004: 102), a significant factor in Jospin’s disastrous electoral performance in 2002 and in the electoral collapse of the PCF which had participated fully in that government right until the end of its term in office. There are still a large number of radical left parties, and significant numbers of activists within them, ready to use such records to argue that social democrats are untrustworthy partners and irredeemable defenders of the bourgeois state – and that the mistakes of previous experiences of governmental participation must not be repeated. Foreign policy differences (including different attitudes to European integration) also continue to divide the centre- and radical left. Broadly speaking, the centre-left remains Atlanticist while the radical left, while no longer being overtly Russophile, remains deeply opposed to the EuroAtlantic political and economic institutions (NATO, the IMF and World Bank). Certainly, common attitudes are found between radical left parties and social democratic activists over individual issues such as Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the Iraq War. However, generally a gulf remains between the party families on international military and economic issues. The radical left position generally supports the dissolution of NATO, opposition to military intervention and the abolition of nuclear weapons and is strongly inclined towards pacifism; while simultaneously promoting the fundamental reform or even abolition of the IMF and the World Bank, all for similar reasons, since these institutions are seen as instruments of neoliberal American hegemony, which thereby interweave globalisation and militarism. The social democratic position, at least at the official level, is largely uncritical of these existing institutional structures. Similarly, social democrats’ own occasional misgivings about EU integration have rarely translated into demands for fundamental changes to the EU as such.

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Indeed, the radical left’s perception that social democrats often uncritically support EU-backed neoliberalism has reinforced its tendency to see its own opposition to the existing EU model as a fundamental identity marker (Moschonas, 2009). Between the Greens and the radical left, in contrast, there is arguably more common ideological ground. Many Greens criticise capitalism for its wasteful, growth-centric policies (although they often criticise Soviet-style state socialism for the same reasons) and seek alternative economic models which could maximise democracy, local decision-making and social justice, all aims which the radical left can share. Although most Green parties’ opposition to capitalism can no longer be regarded as radical (March and Mudde, 2005), this is less true of their activists, many of whom co-operate with the GJM alongside the activists of left-wing parties (Doherty, 2002; Rüdig and Sajuria, 2018). A large number of radical left parties (including several in the EL such as the Portuguese BE, Danish RGA and Finnish VAS) are explicitly left-libertarian parties which have sought to address environmental, feminist and minority rights concerns alongside more traditional labour-focused issues. Nevertheless, as Dunphy (2004) points out, there is much that still divides the Greens and radical left. Above all is the attitude to the nationstate. Whereas both party families espouse localism and local democracy, express hesitation about engaging with the compromises of ‘mainstream’ politics and have an emphasis on extra-parliamentary work, in practice many Greens regard the radical left as much more state-centric, centralist and even hierarchical. This is certainly true of traditional communist parties, though far less accurate as a description of the left-libertarian parties already mentioned and even reform communist parties like the Italian Party of Communist Refoundation. Still, engrained Green suspicions of the communists die hard. For instance, Margrete Auken, MEP for the Danish SF since 2004, regarded the traditional communist forms of organisation as constricting individual activity – top-down organisation ‘kills everything’, as she put it (Auken, 2012). She cited such concerns in defence of her decision to sit with the Greens in the European Parliament. In addition, differences in attitude over the balance between materialist and post-materialist issues still divide the radical left and Greens. For instance, while the radical left can find common ground with the ‘redgreens’ over the priority of egalitarianism, green-greens are much more prone to prioritise libertarian over social issues and even to join right-wing neoliberal coalitions (e.g. in Ireland in 2007–11 and the Czech Republic in 2007–9). On the other hand, a number of radical left parties (such as the PCF and KSČM) continue to defend nuclear power as necessary for national development, a position unacceptable to Green parties.

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There are similar convergences and divergences in international policy. Notwithstanding their acceptance of European integration, many Greens remain suspicious of the EU for its neoliberal, statist and growth-oriented policies, and (far more than the social democrats) advocate reform of the EU to address its perceived democratic deficit – all policies which find some resonance among radical left parties. Nevertheless, like the social democrats, the Greens are largely supportive of the existing Euro-Atlantic institutions: while they accept the need for some institutional reform, and are largely anti-militarist – for example, Greens strongly criticise NATO for its lack of emphasis on nuclear disarmament (European Green Party, 2010) – there is no support for the dissolution of NATO nor for radical changes to the Euro-Atlantic financial structures (at least at the European level; this is not true of some national parties like the Irish, Scottish and English/Welsh Greens). Moreover, as Holmes and Lightfoot (2007: 152) argue, ‘the devil is in the detail’: although there is much overlap in general ideological proclivities, there are very divergent policy emphases. Nevertheless, and particularly after the Great Recession, there are several policies that could form the basis for agreement. For example, Table 7.2 compares the manifestos and major policy documents of the PES, EGP and EL in the 2009–14 EP election period, highlighting the main policy proposals. Where there is some agreement between two parties these are marked in italic, and where all three parties have substantial agreement, these are marked in bold. Table 7.2 reinforces that, whatever the specific nuances, there is general agreement on the broad parameters of policy between the three party families: each seeks a socially just, environmentally sustainable economy that invests in public services, with regulation and reform of the financial markets a must, a focus on poverty reduction at home and abroad, protection for minorities and the disadvantaged, and foreign policies that focus on environmental regulation, support for developing countries and conflict resolution. There is a basic level of agreement on the need to reform EU institutions in the interests of greater transparency and popular input (although wide variance on the proposed mechanisms), and even a consensus that international economic organisations need reform (although significant differences on which institutions, and the nature of that reform). In general, there is least consensus in world affairs and most in the intra-EU economic realm. For example, despite commitments to fair trade, poverty reduction and international disarmament, neither the PES nor the Greens propose fundamental reforms to the existing global architecture (and indeed the PES wants augmentation of European defence and anti-terror capabilities). The EL is the only TNP explicitly to oppose the neoliberalism of the WTO, World Bank and IMF (although without

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Table 7.2  Policy priorities of the left-of-centre TNPs, 2009–14 EP elections PES

EGP

EL

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Economics ‘Social Economy’/ Social Union’ Fundamental reform/ regulation of financial markets/ banking system, Banking Union Measures against tax avoidance/tax havens (Youth) employment emphasis and investment in ‘smart green growth’ European Central Bank to focus on growth and employment Financial transaction tax Eurobonds for sustainable debt refinancing Flexible budgets and debt reduction (2014) Limits on financial pay and bonuses European Independent Credit Rating Agency

‘Social Europe’, Greener, sustainable economy Reform of financial markets; EU watchdog needed; European Banking Union Measures against tax avoidance/tax havens Focus on employment and ‘New Green Deal’ ECB to focus on social and ecological development and improving life quality Financial transaction tax Eurobonds for sustainable debt refinancing Debt alleviation of EU indebted countries Limits on financial pay and bonuses Increase progressive income tax and harmonise European taxation Reform Stability and Growth Pact to focus on sustainable growth Break up banking groups, properly size financial sector

‘Social Europe, Europe of Rights’ Changing existing rules of the international economic and financial system Abolish tax havens Employment, social and environmental protection as priorities ECB to focus on social and ecological development and issuing credit Financial transaction tax Eurobonds for sustainable debt refinancing Debt alleviation of EU indebted countries

Creation of European public rating agency Raise income taxes and harmonise European taxation Stability and Growth Pact replaced by new pact of growth, full employment, and social and environmental protection Public and social control over banking system



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Table 7.2  Policy priorities of the left-of-centre TNPs, 2009–14 EP elections (Continued) PES

EGP

EL

Skills and training focus via EU budget Investment in co-ops Completion of EU internal market

Increase EU budget Localisation of economy Non-growth model: GDP and GDP per capita should no longer play predominant role Increase environmental taxes

Social, ecological, anticapitalist economy. Nationalisation of strategic sectors/end to privatisation Raise workers’ wages and incomes Debt abolition, European Debt Conference European public bank of social and solidaritybased development funded by ECB

Social policy ‘New Social Europe’: improved standards in social, health and education policies EU minimum wage

Green New Deal: investment in education, science and research EU minimum wage

Strengthening rights of workers, children and elderly Anti-discrimination legislation Supporting gender equality; European Women’s Rights Charter

Strengthen workers’ rights

Strengthen welfare systems via fair tax policies

Investment in education, health and social care, public transport EU minimum wage/ pension Strengthening workers’ collective rights

Opposing discrimination Supporting gender equality

Opposing discrimination Supporting gender equality

Ending competition in public services Developing EU charter of fundamental rights

Opposing privatisation of public services Developing EU charter of fundamental rights

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Table 7.2  Policy priorities of the left-of-centre TNPs, 2009–14 EP elections (Continued) PES

EGP

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Universal access to public services Fair work–life balance Measures to regulate legal and combat illegal immigration

Co-operation against organised and cross-border crime

Fair migration – opposing Fortress Europe. Frontex border control system to acknowledge International Refugee Conventions and the European Convention on Human Rights

EL Full employment. Rejecting ‘flexicurity’ Maximum 35–40 hour working week Opposing Fortress Europe. Opposing Frontex. Migrants to work in EU without restriction

Opposing EU antiterrorism policy Environmental policy

Sustainable development; EU to achieve global 30% cut in emissions by 2020 Investment in ‘smart green growth’, environmental transport Support for developing countries to fight climate change CAP reform

Sustainable development; EU to achieve global emissions cut of 30% by 2020, 55% by 2030 Green New Deal – new green technologies, sustainable transport Support for emissions reduction in developing countries CAP reform

Monitoring of nuclear power European Common Energy Policy

Opposing GM foods Ending investment in nuclear power Binding international climate agreement

Sustainable development; EU to achieve global emissions cut of 30-40% by 2020 Increase use of renewable energy Technology transfer to developing countries CAP reform (without neoliberalism) Opposing GM foods



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Table 7.2  Policy priorities of the left-of-centre TNPs, 2009–14 EP elections (Continued) PES

EGP

EL

Forming global energy and development forum

European Renewables Community

Rural development policy

Reforming Common Fisheries Policy Creating five million ‘green collar jobs’ Animal protection Policy towards EU institutions

Strengthening transparency of EU institutions; regulating lobbying; democratic control of EU via national parliaments Greater role for EP – legislative, budgetary and control powers Regions and local authorities to have greater role in EU politics Gender-equal EP and EU Council

‘Democratic refoundation’ of Europe; strengthening transparency of EU institutions; regulating lobbying EP to have right of legislative initiative

Popular control of EU institutions

EP to have right of legislative initiative

EU as effective multilevel democracy Referenda on landmark EU decisions More politically integrated Europe via EU-wide referendum Proportion of MEPs to be elected on transnational lists

Referenda on landmark EU decisions

No to Lisbon Treaty Proportional electoral system in EP elections

International policy Millennium development goals Fair trade and poverty reduction

Millennium development goals Fair trade first

Millennium development goals Fair trade and poverty reduction

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Table 7.2  Policy priorities of the left-of-centre TNPs, 2009–14 EP elections (Continued) PES

EGP

EL

Reforming decisionmaking in IMF, World Bank, United Nations International disarmament EU enlargement to Western Balkans, support for Eastern Partnership Raising overseas development aid

Reforming United Nations to achieve multilateral global governance Nuclear disarmament

Conflict resolution based on OSCE and reformed United Nations International disarmament EU enlargement, particularly to Turkey

Supporting developing countries within WTO Strengthening EU Common Foreign and Security Policy European common defence via NATO

Common European anti- terrorism policy

EU enlargement, focused on Mediterranean and Eastern Europe Raising overseas development aid Opposing TTIP in its current form EU to support UN in conflict resolution – create European Civil Peace Corps WTO to transform free trade to fair trade agenda Environmental- and human rights-focused EU foreign policy

Opposing TTIP; no US–EU free market EU to respect international law and strive for political solutions to all conflicts WTO to exclude agriculture and end neoliberal agenda Ending EU military engagement abroad; reviewing military co-operation with USA Dissolving NATO – replacing with new International Cooperative Security System Debt redemption for poorest countries Revising World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programmes Replacing EU Defence agency with disarmament agency Opposing European Missile Defense

Sources: Party of European Socialists (2009, 2010b, 2014); European Green Party (2009, 2012b, 2014); European Left (2009b, 2010a, 2014a).

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advocating clear alternatives) and is the only consistently anti-militarist TNP, completely rejecting NATO, US-led European Missile Defence and EU militarisation. However, a perhaps surprising amount of common ground on economic policy is shown, not just on general aspirations such as overcoming tax havens and tax avoidance, but on more specific proposals such as reform of the European Central Bank, a financial transaction tax and Eurobonds. Furthermore, the EL agrees with the PES on the need to replace the private credit ratings agencies with a more public ratings agency in order to overcome the over-weaning power of American private groups on EU economic policy. The EL and Greens can agree on replacing the European Stability and Growth Pact (with its emphasis on neoliberal economics) with one focused on socially and environmentally sustainable growth. Unlike the other TNPs, the EL’s anti-neoliberalism is often a proxy for anti-capitalism (though this is not always explicit). This is evident in far greater hostility to the existing economic architecture and a preference for greater structural reform, as well as more direct economic dirigisme (e.g. via renationalisation and raising public sector wages). Nevertheless, there is a general level of consensus on moderating market excesses via greater state intervention. In addition, this consensus was clearly accelerated as a result of the Great Recession. In the 2004 EP election, only the EL had much criticism to direct towards neoliberalism (see Table 7.3). By 2009, all three TNPs devoted a considerable part of their EP manifestos to castigating the current economic model for producing the crisis, although only the EL and Greens directly attacked neoliberalism – the PES did so only more implicitly (see Table 7.3). Moreover, the PES’s adoption of a financial transaction tax is significant, since the party has only belatedly and hesitantly embraced it (it was absent in its 2004 manifesto). This brings the PES position much closer to that of the radical left and Greens, who have been advocating such measures since the early 2000s, although in general (and this was particularly marked in 2014), the PES’s positions are much more generalist and less policy-specific, more focused on criticism of austerity than neoliberalism per se, than the other left TNPs’. According to some, the PES’s increasing internal homogeneity, particularly its East– West divisions, have prevented it having a coherent, co-ordinated or even adequate ideological response to the crisis, and the 2014 programme is even a step backwards in this regard (Brustier, Deloy and Escalona, 2014). To what degree does such demonstrable convergence on paper provide the launch pad for a more united common left policy response to the crisis at EU level? Here, the omens are less promising. The aforementioned legislative voting coalitions between the EP groups look far less impressive on more detailed analysis (see Table 7.4). Certainly, the 2009–14 EP session

• Our vision of the European Union is a community based on the principles of the social market economy and mutual cooperation for the benefit of all

2009 EP election PES • European elections are … the choice between our vision of a progressive Europe … Or a conservative, regressive Europe in which the future of our countries and people is left in the hands of the market and of forces beyond democratic control • We must promote better cooperation in Europe to manage globalization for the benefit of everyone. They say adapt to the market. We say shape our future • The global financial crisis has exposed the weaknesses of the unregulated Market • This crisis marks the end of a conservative era of badly-regulated markets. Conservatives believe in a market society and letting the rich get richer, to the detriment of everyone else. We believe in a social market economy that enables everyone in society to make the most of the opportunities globalization offers

2014 EP election • The right wing has created a Europe of fear and austerity … we have fought for a strong, socially just and democratic Europe • Austerity-only policy has harmed our economies and punished those least responsible for causing the crisis • After the end of the Troika missions, another model within the framework of the EU Treaties should be established, which has to be democratic, socially responsible and credible • The right wing has used neoliberal policies to cut provisions that have helped people bounce back after tough times. We will fight for a Europe that leaves no one behind

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Table 7.3  Changing views of neoliberalism from TNP manifestos

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• Neo-liberal deregulation has created financial markets solely driven by short-term greed, resulting in the global financial crisis that is still with us today • The medicine of austerity that has been prescribed to countries in crisis for several years now has increased social division and injustice, jeopardised the well-being of many of our fellow citizens, undermined the capacity of our societies to prosper, and crucially, weakened democracy • We need cooperation within the EU to deal effectively with these issues. The transformation we advocate must go hand in hand with a democratic re-foundation • Instead of socially deaf and environmentally blind austerity, we propose three coherent avenues to sustainability: fighting unemployment, poverty and all forms of social injustice; transforming our economies with innovation and eco-efficient solutions to tackle climate change and environmental degradation; re-regulating the financial industry so it serves the real economy. We call this a European Green New Deal

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EGP • The financial crisis and credit crunch have brought the failings of current economic and social policies sharply into focus. They have exposed a wider systemic failure • The dominant neoliberal ideology in Europe has established a system where the interests of the few come before the general well-being of its citizens • The neoliberal majority in the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission is guilty of bowing to the demands of industry lobbies, putting short-term profits before the general interest



• We want a social Union built on the basic principles of equality and solidarity • We resist the neo-liberal tendency to leave everything to the market • For us Greens, the EU must play an important role in reforming and regulating the presently unfair system of globalization

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• A new vision is inspiring growing numbers of Europeans and uniting them to join in great mobilisations to resist the imposition of a capitalist one-way street that is an attempt to trap humanity in a new social and cultural regression • In Europe … the people are suffering from the policies of globalised capitalism implemented by governments in the interest of big capital and lobbies • We want to build a project for another Europe and to give another content to the EU … alternative to capitalism in its social and political model • We want a Europe free from the antidemocratic and neoliberal policies of WTO and IMF • As political forces of social transformation, we want to contribute to this new dynamic that is resolutely attacking neoliberal policies

EL • We are facing financial, economic and social crises, a crisis of the whole system • The crisis is caused by the globalisation of hazardous neoliberal capitalism, which is … being pushed ahead by irresponsible elites in charge of politics and economics • The crisis is once more demonstrating the failure of neoliberal globalisation, which has, on a global scale, maximised the profits of the financial market’s main players without any state control and intervention • As a result, the neo-liberal foundations of the EU treaties are called into question, particularly in reference to the idea of an ‘open market economy with free competition’: the unchecked free circulation of capital, the liberalisation and privatisation of public services, and the status and mission of the European Central Bank

• The starting point of our proposal is our opposition to the crux of the debt crisis in Europe: neoliberal policy that has minimised the contribution of capital to financial needs, imposed austerity programmes, lead [sic] to the termination of democracy and working rights and to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in a series of EU member-states • The financial crisis was the pretext for going further into ultraliberalism, for imposing barbaric austerity plans, and social and democratic regressions • In country after country, we see the ‘Troika’ landing … With the complicity of our governments, they lower our wages and pensions, slash public services, privatise and plunder. The result is rocketing unemployment and precariousness; life is becoming harder • Stop austerity to prevent human and humanitarian catastrophe • We do not accept the neoliberal criteria of Economic and Monetary Union and demand that employment, social development and democracy be given priority

Sources: Party of European Socialists (2004, 2009, 2014); European Green Party (2003, 2009, 2014); European Left (2004, 2009b, 2014a).

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Table 7.3  Changing views of neoliberalism from TNP manifestos (Continued)

Group

2004–09

Group

PES

Greens/EFA

GUE/NGL

2009–14 S&D

Greens/EFA

GUE/NGL

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 69.83 62.01

69.83 X 74.04

62.01 74.04 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 74.96 59.72

74.96 X 69.93

59.72 69.93 X

Agriculture

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 63.20 49.12

63.20 X 53.12

49.26 53.12 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 69.48 57.52

69.48 X 68.81

57.52 68.81 X

Budget

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 74.94 62.65

74.94 X 68.92

62.65 68.92 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 74.67 66.37

74.67 X 71.26

66.37 71.26 X

Civil liberties, justice and home affairs

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 82.32 73.08

82.32 X 80.35

73.08 80.35 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 84.86 71.10

84.86 X 80.05

71.10 80.05 X

Constitutional and interconstitutional affairs

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 61.65 42.48

61.65 X 61.17

42.48 61.17 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 76.72 38.93

76.72 X 53.82

38.93 53.82 X

Culture and education

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 80.60 64.18

80.60 X 72.39

64.18 72.39 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 90.00 61.25

90.00 X 66.25

61.25 66.25 X

Development

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 92.13 89.89

92.13 X 91.01

89.89 91.01 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 92.52 83.18

92.52 X 88.79

83.18 88.79 X

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All areas

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Issue



Table 7.4  Matching positions between left-of-centre EP groups on key issues

Table 7.4  Matching positions between left-of-centre EP groups on key issues (Continued) 2004–09

Group

2009–14

Economic and monetary affairs

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 74.27 55.58

74.27 X 68.69

55.58 68.69 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 85.49 51.68

85.49 X 53.63

51.68 53.63 X

Employment and social affairs

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 73.88 57.96

73.88 X 73.88

57.96 73.88 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 77.52 51.38

77.52 X 56.65

51.38 56.65 X

Environment and public health

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 73.55 74.81

73.55 X 87.53

74.81 87.53 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 85.66 83.06

85.66 X 89.89

83.06 89.89 X

Foreign and security policy

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 68.88 58.85

68.88 X 65.10

58.85 65.10 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 67.90 41.25

67.90 X 59.15

41.25 59.15 X

Gender equality

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 85.83 86.61

85.83 X 88.19

86.61 88.19 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 91.89 91.51

91.89 X 89.19

91.51 89.19 X

Internal market and consumer protection

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 61.54 66.15

61.54 X 85.38

66.15 85.38 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 80.14 69.50

80.14 X 63.12

69.50 63.12 X

International trade

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 57.14 55.56

57.14 X 85.71

55.56 85.71 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 60.45 53.15

60.45 X 81.36

53.15 81.36 X

Legal affairs

PES Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 78.40 75.93

78.40 X 91.36

75.93 91.36 X

S&D Greens/EFA GUE/NGL

X 74.07 58.80

74.07 X 71.76

58.80 71.76 X

Source: VoteWatch.eu (2009, 2015b).

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Issue

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indicated close co-operation between the GUE/NGL, Greens/EFA and S&D on gender issues (c. 90 per cent vote correspondence) and environmental, development, legal affairs and civil liberties issues (over 80 per cent correspondence), but on economic and monetary affairs and employment and social affairs there was a congruence of only circa 50 per cent. This is markedly less co-operation in these areas than in the 2004–9 Parliament (when GUE/NGL co-operation with the PES was c. 55 per cent and with the Greens/EFA c. 70 per cent). Such statistics need explanation, since they clearly conflict with the increasing economic congruence noted above in the TNP manifestos. On closer analysis, it is clear that the GUE/NGL is the outlier – the Greens/EFA and S&D coincide with each other over 70 per cent of the time in these and other policy realms. Furthermore, their positions in all policy areas align with each other more than in the previous Parliament (75 per cent versus 70 per cent), but with the GUE/NGL less than in the previous Parliament (S&D coalitions with the GUE/NGL fell from 62 to 60 per cent and Green/EFA coalitions with GUE/NGL from 74 to 70 per cent). Again, we should bear in mind that the GUE/NGL is not the EL group, so any consensus between the left-of-centre TNPs on paper may not be borne out directly in that group’s behaviour. What else explains this? It is plausible that whereas the consensus on anti-neoliberalism had pulled the Greens/EFA and S&D closer together, particularly on economic issues, it had coincided with a toughening of positions within the GUE/NGL. This was alluded to in a 2012 remark by GUE/NGL Chair Gabi Zimmer that: a number of parties [in the GUE/NGL] hardly show any great wish for an increase in the European cooperation and integration of the left … Some parties want to view the European Parliament only as a provider of additional resources for their national agendas and political struggles. The heterogeneity of beliefs held by the parties represented in GUE/NGL with regard to the EU and the struggle against the EU crisis are considerable. Behind the different positions and debates there lie deep differences in the assessment of social and political power relations on both the national and the EU level as well as in the conception of ways to transform them. (Zimmer, 2012)

Moreover, it might be argued that the absence of seven Italian MEPs from the 2009–14 Parliament (because of the collapse of the Italian radical left in 2008) deprived the group of some of its more Europeanist members and gave greater emphasis to a more intransigent newer influx (de Jong, 2011). On still closer inspection, the GUE/NGL’s relatively more ideological line is apparent. When the GUE/NGL disagreed with economic and employment initiatives supported by both the S&D and Greens/EFA, the primary reason for dissensus was both the GUE/NGL’s reticence about

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supporting any initiatives that might smack of neoliberalism, and its preference for profound structural reform. For instance, on 13 June 2012 the GUE/NGL opposed a law on ‘Economic and budgetary surveillance of Member States with serious difficulties with respect to their financial stability in the Euro area’ on the basis that it did not change the prevailing preference for ‘undemocratic’ austerity measures. In contrast, the Greens/ EFA and S&D supported it because it entailed support for growth measures, employment and Eurobonds.1 In February 2011, the GUE/NGL opposed the EP resolution on the ‘ECB Annual Report for 2010’.2 The group argued that the ECB was not independent, and was being ‘politically manipulated’ by bankers in such a way as to embed austerity policies within the EU body politic. The ECB needed reform of its statutes and parliamentary control of its activities, in order to focus on full employment, the economy and sustainable growth and not simply budgetary stability. In contrast, despite manifesto demands for reform of the ECB, the Greens and S&D were satisfied with the resolution’s demands for greater ECB transparency and support for policies like Eurobonds. Similarly, among other votes, the GUE/NGL group opposed legislation on employment policy and promoting workers’ mobility on the grounds that it fetishised labour market flexibility over social protection, and promised positive measures that were mere palliatives (the Greens and S&D in contrast argued that labour market flexibility was one of the fundamental freedoms of the EU).3 This voting behaviour reinforces that, for the radical left, antineoliberalism is a proxy for at most anti-capitalism, at least structural transformation of capitalism. This is very different for the Greens and social democrats, who espouse anti-neoliberalism without such a pronounced transformative emphasis. Therefore the extent of programmatic and policy convergence is less than it appears prima facie. Greater consensus is certainly possible over issues not relating directly to socio-economics (e.g. human and minority rights issues); however, in the socio-economic realm, the Greens and S&D appear largely content with ameliorative policies, whereas the GUE/NGL regards amendments of neoliberalism short of major structural change as half-measures. Nevertheless, there have certainly been exploratory attempts to bridge differences beyond the narrow confines of the EP groups. Whereas each TNP’s political foundations largely work in isolation from each other, there have been occasional conferences and workshops discussing pooling policies. One such instance was the forum ‘Another Road for Europe’ in the EP on 28 June 2012 that gathered MEPs from the S&D, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups alongside social movements and civil society organisations to discuss exit routes from the crisis.4 Also indicative was the

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(short-lived) Left Caucus, a cross-party group representing MEPs from the three left EP groups established in 2011 to provoke ‘an ongoing debate and exchange of views among … progressives … in … a much more comprehensive, open-minded, transparent and persuasive way’ (Left Caucus, 2011). A similar, and (so far) longer-lasting initiative has been the Progressive Caucus, created in 2016 as ‘a space of dialogue based on confidencebuilding and open debate [for] analysing differences and building bridges between progressive allies in the European Parliament and across Europe’ (Progressive Caucus 2016). The Caucus has contributed to a number of solidarity events with parties and civil society such as the November 2017 Progressive European Forum in Marseille and the March 2018 Progressive Forum in Athens. More concrete lasting co-operation between left party leaders has been an increasing (but so far unrealised) possibility following the electoral ascent of (certain parties of ) the radical left. One opportunity was presented by the Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the European Union from June–December 2012, which made AKEL’s Demetris Christofias the first communist to head the EU’s agenda-setting body. For sure, the sixmonth presidential period is too short to make a substantive impact (and in any case the presidency is traditionally an impartial body that is supposed to stand for the EU’s general interest). Nevertheless, in January and May 2012, the PES invited Christofias to its pre-Council leaders’ meetings in order to discuss common approaches during the Cypriot presidency (Cyprus News Agency, 2012). The EGP also offered a generally positive assessment of the prospects of the Cypriot presidency (Sakadaki, 2012). Nevertheless, with AKEL losing the Cypriot presidential election in February 2013, the chance of significantly building on this period was lost. More significant still has been Syriza’s period in government in Greece since January 2015. Mirroring the growing anti-austerity emphasis of the PES, some national social democratic parties have begun to reorient towards a growth agenda, distancing themselves from the 2009–12 period of peak austerity in Southern Europe. An emergent anti-austerity tone was first noticeable in François Hollande’s election as President of France in May 2012 (Holmes and Lightfoot, 2013). However, although many other parties (e.g. the Portuguese Socialists and UK Labour) have latterly adopted anti-austerity policies more substantively, the challenge (one which Hollande flunked) remains to avoid a record of concrete policy outcomes that ‘have tended to be either minimal or … antithetical to the redistributive goals pursued’ (Bailey 2013: 56). The Syriza government is a paradigmatic case. According to the ex-Syriza Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, various prominent social democrats, such as the German SPD’s Sigmar Gabriel, combined private expressions of solidarity with Syriza with a resolute

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public loyalty to the Troika’s austerity agenda (Varoufakis, 2017: 217–20). This significantly ratcheted up the pressure under which Syriza eventually buckled in July 2015, signing up to the Third Memorandum of even more stringent austerity measures. Of course, any incipient co-operation initiatives between the left-ofcentre TNPs must be weighed up against the real barriers to more integrated positions. Most obvious is the lack of numerical ascendancy. Despite the GUE/NGL achieving a historical high of fifty-two seats in 2014, even with the S&D and Greens/EFA, the left comprises a minority within the European Parliament and only achieved a marginal increase overall (39 per cent of seats in the 2014–19 EP as opposed to 37 per cent in the 2009–14 session). Moreover, at the time of writing (2019), the broad left is in national office in a minority of EU states (Czechia, Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Greece), and then usually as coalition or minority governments. Only a significantly greater representation in the EP, combined with a greater share of positions in the European Council, might really give the potential for fuller left-wing legislative and executive authority at the EU level. However, the aforementioned failures of the ‘social democratic moment’ in 1997–2002 certainly cast doubt on any such potential, even should the broad left gain better results in future years. Conclusion The comparative perspective of this chapter shows that the EL, even though it is a small force at European level, is punching below its weight. The PES and EGP (albeit with considerable head-starts) are more consolidated and strategically coherent consensual organisations – the PES focusing on becoming an intergovernmental lynchpin, and the EGP moving towards a more institutionalised transnational party. The core social democratic and Green parties see TNPs as a major lever of activity at EU level. With qualifications and limitations to be sure, each has managed a degree of integration between TNP, parliamentary group and representatives in EU institutions (although these latter are fewer and further between in case of the EGP). Also with qualifications, each has developed some policy influence at EU level by using the TNP as a nexus linking activity between European institutions, national parliaments and extra-parliamentary affiliated groups. The comparative perspective shows the EL’s limitations alluded to in previous chapters still more starkly. Relative to these groups, the EL arguably has the worst of all worlds, primarily because the ideological/strategic divisions over the merits of intergovernmental versus federal solutions

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common to most TNPs are combined with a TNP structure that (with the exception of individual membership) is little more than an intergovernmental one. Moreover, the EL’s weaker links to the broader party family in general and the GUE/NGL in particular are made more debilitating by the fact that other TNPs have clearly sought to institutionalise links between the TNP and EP group in order to extend their policy influence and have a far greater reach over their party families as a whole. In particular, the development of the Greens, who have rapidly moved from indifference to the EU and a weak, squabbling network, towards one of the most entrepreneurial TNPs, indicates that the EL’s hesitancy over developing a truly transnational TNP is not merely a case of delayed development, and that the EL will not necessarily soon follow the same template. It is clearer than ever that the primary obstacle to the EL’s further integration is the deeply held ideological scepticism of certain member parties about the very virtues of transnational activity within the EU. Although the EL has succeeded in mellowing this scepticism, it lacks the capacity to transcend it in the short term. Relative to the EL, the PES and Greens appear to lack historical baggage, both of the negative experience of communist internationalism and of a developed and sustained intellectual critique of the EU. This lack of historical baggage has enabled them to respond far more pragmatically to the opportunities and constraints presented by EU integration than has the EL (and the broader European radical left) to date. Prima facie it appears that the EL could learn much from its competitors about the effective consolidation of relatively meagre forces. However, the perennial unanswered question is, given the radical left’s entrenched doubts about the EU and its related institutions: does it really want to make this change? The chapter has also shown that there are basic common grounds for policy co-operation between the left TNPs, which have demonstrably increased since the Great Recession. In particular, there is consensus over the need to find more equitable, socially just and environmentally sustainable alternatives to neoliberalism. However, this anti-neoliberalism is more superficial than deep. It certainly has not amounted to a marked increase of legislative co-operation except perhaps between the S&D and Greens/EFA; rather, the legislative activity of the TNPs shows that ‘antineoliberalism’ is somewhat of a hollow shell, lacking either a generally agreed strategic component or voting prescriptions. Shared understandings of a post-neoliberal model remain absent. For the PES and Greens, the focus is on modest within-system reform, and their voting positions place them as largely accommodationist towards the current direction of the EU. In contrast, despite the Europeanist sentiments of the EL as a whole, the GUE/NGL (or at least significant elements within it) continues to adopt

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rejectionist positions that aim to demonstrate that the EU is structurally flawed and incapable of modest ‘reform’. Moreover, there is little obvious direct policy transfer between parties. There are some exceptions: clearly, the formation of the PES was originally partly motivated by the need to compete with the EPP, and the Greens admit to close observance of how other TNPs respond to relevant party legislation (Emmott, 2012). Moreover, initiatives like the Progressive Caucus have furthered joint policy discussion. Nevertheless, reflecting their roots in national parties, the TNPs are largely content to plough their own furrows in terms of organisation and programmes. Perhaps this is unsurprising. The simple fact that there are three separate ‘plural left’ European TNPs which are more likely to be competitive than collusive shows in organisational form the disaggregation and disintegration of the broad left since its pre-1970s heyday. Competition between the three more often results in the diminution of left strength at European level than a force multiplier effect. In sum, there remain many obstacles to a substantive, rather than just rhetorical, alternative to neoliberalism at EU level. Notes 1 See www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=CRE&reference=20120613 &secondRef=ITEM-010&language=EN&ring=A7-2012-0172#3-310-000, accessed 24 February 2015; link no longer exists. 2 See www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A72011-0361&language=EN, accessed 24 February 2015; link no longer exists. 3 See www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A7-2 011-0258&language=EN, accessed 24 February 2015; link no longer exists. 4 See www.anotherroadforeurope.org/index.php/en (site no longer available).

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Conclusion

The wider context: weakening TNPs and the debilitated left? Although the internal complexities of the EL and its constituent parties have occupied the lion’s share of our analysis, it is clear that the European Left Party cannot be seen in isolation from the (non-)development of other TNPs at European level. For instance, chapter 1 reinforced the view that TNPs as a whole do remain ‘timidly rising actors’ at European level (Bardi, 2004). Although they have developed continuously since the emergence of an elected European Parliament in 1979, and their development has been substantially more than that envisaged by sceptics, they remain somewhat less than fully-fledged ‘Europarties’. Indeed, they are dogs that have continually failed to bark, at least loudly. Such TNPs are far from irrelevant, though. Our own preference was for the term party-networks, to encapsulate organisations that aim to force-multiply EU-level party activity in areas national parties cannot. As such they play (albeit slowly) growing and institutionalising functions in EU party politics. In particular, they offer partisan linkages within and between key EU institutions and thus help (however indirectly) to influence EU policy-making. Nevertheless, their development is driven largely by top-down factors, in particular the legislative spill-over of EU integration, the federalist aspirations of certain EU elites and the organisational logic of the TNPs themselves, which at times have sought deliberately to engineer their own importance within the nascent EU party system. As noted throughout, the barriers to the emergence of such a system remain formidable, not least the scepticism of many national party actors, who remain consistently reluctant to embrace true transnationalism and concerned to preserve a critical function of TNPs as agents of national principals (Hanley, 2008). A further contextual factor that must be borne in mind is the context of the Great Recession, wherein the very concept of EU integration (even the EU itself ) has faced not just electoral but even existential challenges (with

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234 conclusion the emergence of the debt crisis and the Greek tragedy being the most pertinent for the development of the left). In such a context, any further ‘great leap forward’ in TNP development is hardly high on the EU’s already crowded agenda. It has also become much more politically sensitive, being grist to the mill of the several nationalist-populist parties that have flourished after the crisis. The repeated but repeatedly abortive debates over the possible emergence of pan-European party lists have reflected such tensions, with even the possibility of a post-Brexit recalibration of EP seats failing to secure such party lists a role. Moreover, what has been consistently absent from TNP development is any sense of widespread bottom-up social demand. As noted by many, EP elections are pan-European ‘second-order’ national elections, which tend to produce a contrary dynamic; EU-critical parties, particularly of a nationalist bent, tend to flourish while the more obviously transnational forces (such as the EPP and the Greens) endure varying fortunes. Pan-European party lists are put forward as a partial remedy to such tendencies, but it is easy to see them as potentially further contributing towards the centrifugal dynamic. Our study shows how tensions between aspirations for transnationalism and national sovereigntism are particularly pertinent for the left (and not just the radical left). The Great Recession was initially heralded as a ‘socialist moment’, in terms of encouraging critiques of neoliberalism and emphases on growth versus austerity (e.g. Meacham, 2009). As chapter 7 showed, such critiques have definitely increased in salience among the left TNPs (the PES, Greens and EL) since 2009. However, the crisis has more evidently resulted in the emergence of the age of austerity and a nationalist or populist moment as electorates retreat into more isolationist, identitarian and protectionist stances (e.g. Brubaker, 2017). This is a context in which the left as a whole has suffered where it might have flourished. Even when the radical left has partially recovered (as in the 2014 EP elections) it has been in the context of the diminution of the left more widely. Syriza’s period in government since 2015 and its forced surrender to what the left regards as TINA (i.e. There Is No Other Way, the politics of disciplinary neoliberalism) have provided further blows to the idea of a pro-growth alternative. The longer-term outcome of this period remains unclear, but the pressures it places on the idea of pan-European leftist solidarity have been most clearly shown by the July 2018 defection of the PG from the EL, complaining vociferously about Syriza’s record in office. So, the wider context for the development of TNPs shows them important but often relatively marginal actors. Their growth prospects have always been somewhat haphazard but have definitely slowed over the course of the crisis. Moreover, within the universe of TNPs, the left, and

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especially the radical left, has traditionally been a laggard. The main ‘driver’ of TNP federalism has traditionally been the centre-right EPP. As chapter 7 showed, the main centre-left TNP, the PES, has often been driven by the need to emulate and catch up with the EPP (particularly with respect to its policy co-ordination prior to meetings of the European Council). Nevertheless, it has succeeded to such a degree that it is often regarded as a model of TNP development. Still, it remains one in which the sovereigntist impulse remains paramount, with structures and an ethos that reinforce its role as an intergovernmental network-builder. Unlike the PES, which (at least until the crisis) has comprised parties that have traditionally been the dominant left forces in most EU countries, the other left-of-centre TNPs have comprised relatively small, even niche actors, across the EU. The absence of numerical weight is a further contextual factor that always needs to be borne in mind when examining the EL. Simply put, if even the larger TNPs struggle to make much consistent policy impact at EU level, how much more is this the case with actors who are neither present as significant political forces in several EU states, nor have much governmental representation therein, nor (as a result) have any consistent representation in EU policy-making forums, most notably the European Council or as Commissioners? However, the example of the EGP, as chapter 7 illustrated further, shows that smaller does not necessarily always mean weaker. Although the Greens have lacked obvious consistent policy achievements at European level, they represent a relatively consolidated and consistent party family, and a relatively well-functioning and transnationally oriented TNP that makes the most of meagre resources and is committed to furthering change within the EU. Chapter 7 attributed this both to ideological causes (the emphasis on supranational environmentalism and absence of a consistent critique of the EU) and path-dependent institutional causes (e.g. being a new party family prone to being ‘professionalised’ and ‘Europeanised’ by immersion in the practices of the EP and the legacy of the Realo–Fundi debates of the 1980s). In sum, the context in which the EL has emerged and developed has not been an especially propitious one for the consolidation of a generally transnational TNP, let alone a large and influential one. The Great Recession has also offered as many, if not more, challenges, as opportunities. The development of the EL: a glass half-empty or half-full? The broader context helps us understand that many of the challenges facing the EL are far from unique: to wit, the tensions between national parties, the EP group and the transnational party structures, between

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236 conclusion intergovernmentalists and transnationalists within all three arenas, and the broader challenges of implementing consistent policy across European institutions without numerical supremacy or even a European electorate as such. However, our study has also indicated much that is very distinct about the EL’s role, and indeed much that is inseparable from the path-dependent development of the radical left party family. This indicates that the EL is far from just a ‘late developer’ in TNP terms, that is likely to emulate the other TNPs simply with a time-lag, but rather has a very specific trajectory only explicable in the light of its own history. In particular, and to a far greater degree than the other left-of-centre TNPs, debates over Europe and the EU have always been an identity marker for the radical left. That is, as chapter 2 outlines, the usual debates between intergovernmentalists and transnationalists in TNPs have in the EL assumed an ideological/strategic emphasis around the broad cleavage between what we describe as Left national sovereigntists and Left Europeanists. Of course, there are many other cross-cutting cleavages among the radical left. However, this profound and entrenched dichotomy between those hostile towards all things supranational who aspire to versions of ‘socialism in one country’ and those who conversely view nationalism and protectionism as regressive and regard the European institutions as an arena for progressive action should not be underestimated. It both preceded the radical left presence in the EP and has continued to drive (and to a significant degree vitiate) the radical left’s development as an effective actor from its earliest days inside the EP. This division has been historically augmented and intensified by debates between Eurocommunists and orthodox pro-Soviet communists and by national divisions (especially how the EU is seen in national political environments). After the collapse of the USSR, the dichotomy lost some salience with the demise or decline of the chief antagonists (the PCI and PCF, above all), and the emergence of EU integration as the ‘only game in town’, at least from the early 1990s to mid–late 2000s. It was, after all, the emergence of newer, Left Europeanist actors such as Die Linke and the Italian PRC, and the gradual moderation of the PCF’s long-held national sovereigntist positions, that facilitated the groundswell of support for the EL project from 1999 onwards (chapter 3). Nevertheless, this dichotomy did not disappear. Far from it: tensions between those seeing the ideals if not the practice of European integration as embodying prospects for transnational European socialism, and those seeing the EU project as inherently ‘neoliberal’ (i.e. anti-left, pro-market and in hock to international capital) have been replayed among newer configurations of the left. This remains the case not just within national

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parties, but from the formation of the radical left’s chief EU-level manifestations, first the GUE/NGL confederal group in the European Parliament in 1994, and later the EL in 2004. Indeed, such divisions to a large degree explain why these two entities (unlike in the other main TNPs) remain barely integrated with each other to this date, and why within them (and especially the former) the very question of whether effective left-wing action is possible within the EU remains a pertinent one. All of these obstacles and pitfalls so far mentioned would very much suggest a ‘glass half-empty’ view of the EL. Within the already narrow universe of the TNPs, the EL is not just a small actor, but a (perhaps existentially) divided one too. Certainly, as chapter 3 emphasises, we should never exaggerate the significance of the EL’s emergence and existence given these confines (notwithstanding its significance for the actors and activists involved). At its founding, it could only aspire to a lowest-commondenominator form of international networking, and conspicuously failed to encapsulate the full spectrum of the European left, operating from a position of acknowledged ‘strategic defence’. To some degree these weaknesses still remain. Nevertheless, as chapter 3 further indicates, there are grounds for a ‘glass half-full view’ also. Even this limited form of (co-) operation was not to be expected, given both the historical cleavages of the radical left at European level and the debilitation of the radical left as a whole in the earliest post-Soviet years. The emergence of the EL as a significant actor among the European radical left (if not yet beyond it) among an array of competing initiatives was no small feat. The EL’s creation opened up opportunities for bridge-building and a change from negative to positive transnationalism as well as an upgraded, more effective intervention from the Left Europeanist forces at its core. Chapter 4 highlights the increasing institutionalisation of the EL as an organisation, comprising full member parties, observer parties and now (as of 2017) partners, with its increasingly complex internal structure formed round the Congresses, the General Assembly (introduced in 2017), the Executive Board and the Council of Chairpersons. As with other TNPs, some of these changes were driven top-down by legislative spill-over effects. Others reflected the ‘lofty ambitions’ of some of its members. However, given that the loftiest ambitions were invariably held by the Left Europeanists, the actual outcome has been suboptimal. Chapter 7 reinforces that, even compared with the PES, and certainly as compared with the noticeably more effectively transnational EGP, the EL remains a predominantly intergovernmental organisation, where decisions are taken by consensus and not QMV. Chapter 4 highlights the prevalent contradiction within the EL between majoritarianism and equality that in practice means that progress in the direction of a more effective (and certainly

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238 conclusion more federal) TNP is slowed down by the most reluctant, ‘sovereigntist’ or smallest members, and sometimes all three. The EL can certainly be credited with widening its party reach, particularly to some smaller, newer parties in Eastern Europe, and the multiple layers of party and even nonparty membership (most recently, the category of partners, several of which are social and political networks of activists from multiple party and non-party backgrounds) certainly allow differential levels of commitment, as do such forums as the working groups, summer universities and Transform! network. Chapter 6 further stresses the role the EL plays as a co-ordination nexus among various NGOs and movements in the orbit of the wider European left. This role has not been insignificant, although it does not compensate for the EL’s weakness within the EU institutions and party system as a whole. In this way, the EL is true to its aim as a ‘networking party’ and (to a considerable degree effectively) manages to include a range of actors in a way which respects the ‘Comintern-aversion’, national specifics and plurality of the post-Soviet left, which has been called ‘mosaic left’ to reflect its multiple layers and divisions (Candeias, 2010). However, progress in developing a deeper form of transnationalism remains underwhelming. There are several aspects to this. First is the continued absence of some of the larger and more significant RLPs in the European continent. Apart from the inclusion of the Finnish VAS, Danish RGA, Slovenian United Left and Moldovan PCRM (albeit no longer so electorally significant), most of the more recent adherents are smaller parties, while some of the founding members (most notably the PRC) are no longer anything like as relevant. For the most part, the early ‘recalcitrants’ remain so, either the observer members (AKEL, KSČM) or non-members (the Nordic left with the above exceptions, the Dutch SP and, of course, the PCP and KKE). The absence of the KKE in particular (as well as that of much of the former Soviet communist left in Russia and Ukraine) is hardly problematic given its intransigent positions. Moreover, the inclusion of the former would hardly add to the EL’s policy coherence, given their largely sovereigntist positions. However, without them the European Left Party can hardly claim to be speaking for the European left as a whole. It is significant too that Podemos (despite its warm relations with some EL member parties) has felt no necessity to date to intensify or formalise its relationship with the EL. Second is the convoluted issue of individual membership. While the EL’s aspirations in this regard somewhat surpass those of TNPs such as the PES and EGP, its achievements are more meagre. As chapter 4 shows, it was only in 2016–17 – a dozen years after the party’s foundation – that serious consideration began to be bestowed on finding a meaningful role for individual members.

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Third is the (perhaps equally convoluted) question of the relationship between the EL and the GUE/NGL, which we have addressed throughout. Although the latter does not act as the parliamentary arm of the former, which would be the optimal form of relationship for a consolidated TNP, the EL has certainly increased its informal role within the GUE/NGL, not least by prominent Die Linke leaders Lothar Bisky and Gabi Zimmer chairing the latter since 2009. Nevertheless, the EL’s fear of promoting further divisions or dissensions within the GUE/NGL has led to what chapter 4 describes as an ‘almost self-effacing attitude within the EP’, which certainly fundamentally limits its attempts to create a stronger European presence. As chapter 6 reinforces, the EL suffers a ‘triple whammy’ in policy terms: it has only partial representation in the GUE/NGL group; in turn this group is mostly marginal within the wider EU policy process; furthermore the low visibility of the European institutions among the European public in general removes any likelihood that the EL might use its parliamentary group and EU institutional presence as a ‘tribune’ to enhance the radical left’s status across Europe. Chapter 5 asks whether, these multiple constraints and weaknesses notwithstanding, the EL has managed to deepen, as well as (partially) widen, its interaction with the wider European left via the development of policy and wider European strategy. It notes that the evidence is patchy indeed; there is some spill-over from the EL to national level and vice-versa, particularly among the Left Europeanist parties at the EL’s core which have driven the project from the outset, and which would sign up uncritically to most of its key policies, as well as the perceived importance of precisely such a pan-European strategy. In this case the EL reflects the dialectical nature of Europeanisation as noted in chapter 1: that is, parties both seek to shape and are shaped by European integration. However, what is less compelling is the EL’s failure to ‘socialise’ the more sovereigntist members in its ranks (most noticeably the Danish RGA and latterly the French PG). Although, as chapter 5 further notes, the EL has latterly strengthened its critique of the EU in response to the evolution of the crisis, the crisis itself has only exacerbated policy divisions within the EL. Most notable in this regard have been debates about Syriza. In 2012–15 the EL understandably supported Syriza largely uncritically. After all, Syriza (and earlier Synaspismós) was a core founder member of the EL and promoted a largely Left Europeanist strategy. In 2012–15 it was the most electorally successful of all European RLPs, with a prominent leader, Alexis Tsipras, whose role as EL Spitzenkandidat in 2014 had a noticeable demonstration effect, helping the emergence of a new Slovenian left and the integration of the Italian left round the L’Altra Europa coalition. Syriza’s January 2015 electoral success was perceived by many as the first

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240 conclusion weakening in the chains of EU neoliberalism (Prentoulis and Thomassen, 2015). Similarly, Syriza’s victory in the July 2015 ‘Όχι’ (No) referendum against the Troika’s bailout terms was perceived as a catharsis (Bouma, 2016: 139), that is, a psychological reinvigoration and the turning of the historical tide. However, the subsequent capitulation of Syriza to what its former Finance Minister Varoufakis famously called ‘fiscal waterboarding’ risks undermining the very essence of the EL’s Left Europeanist strategy: that the EU is not an intrinsically unreformable, neoliberal structure but permits left-wing forces to implement at least some of their chosen policies despite formidable constraints. If this opportunity is not remotely feasible then whither the very idea of pooling co-operation at EU level? Given the pluralist nature of the EL, and its previous ability to bridge and network between the various competing left traditions, the departure of the PG is unlikely to promote a significant exodus. However, it becomes more difficult than previously to envisage the EL attracting significant newer members any time soon. The really-existing EL: achievements despite limitations At this point, it is worth taking stock of what, concretely, the EL has managed to achieve, and why some (but not all) of the European radical left has continued to invest in it. To do so, we return to our basic criteria for a TNP outlined in chapter 1. Co-ordination and information exchange We can see how the EL plays this most basic function of a TNP as a coordinating nexus and party-network via its main intergovernmental forums (principally the Executive Board and Congress). It allows party leaders to meet, discuss and pool policy positions, especially by means of the frequent Executive Board and Congress declarations and the (less frequent but still substantive) policy documents and EP manifestos. As noted throughout, the radical left has lacked the basic presence in the EU institutions that might incentivise this development in order actively to exert influence at EU level. In Niedermayer’s model, referred to in chapters 1 and 7, the EL is fully at the second (co-operation) stage of TNP development, wherein parties organise multilateral structures and campaigns and form a permanent transnational organisation for this purpose (examples of such campaigns being the EP manifesto, the European Citizens’ Initiative for a public bank



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and the campaign for Tsipras as Spitzenkandidat in 2014). But the party only partially (and to a lesser extent even than the other left TNPs) fulfils the integration stage, in terms of permanently pooling sovereignty and restricting national party prerogatives. As such it still conforms to Bisky’s view of it as a conglomeration of national parties rather than a European party (Bisky, 2010). Nevertheless, even sceptical organisations, such as the Danish RGA, continue to support it as furthering ‘small progressive steps within the EU’ (Johansen, 2013: 48, 50–1). Socialisation The EL has certainly played an important role as a ‘socialisation conduit’ (Lightfoot, 2005: 47) and a ‘decanter’ of party identity (Hanley, 2008). There are limits of course: we have noted how the EL has approached its basic membership criteria occasionally loosely and flexibly. This can involve the inclusion of some (generally smaller) pro-Soviet parties which de facto may flout its insistence on anti-Stalinism. Equally, the Tsipras government’s recent strong support for ‘North Macedonia’s’ possible adherence to the EU and NATO via a name-change referendum might be viewed as vitiating the EL’s basic emphasis on the dissolution of NATO. However, particularly in its early years, and again in the process of Syriza’s rise, the EL did appear to act as a magnet for (albeit generally smaller) forces on the European radical left, with the not-insignificant later adherence of the Moldovan PCRM, Finnish VAS, Danish RGA and Slovenian Left being evidence that (at least some) European RLPs continue to see the EL as a viable forum. Important roles in this process have been played by the EL-affiliated Transform! network, the EL’s summer university and associated organisations such as Die Linke’s Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, all of which have held (often joint) academic and training seminars over the years (e.g. on issues such as radical left governmental participation). These have been deliberately inclusive of non-EL actors and have sought to foster a common culture of transnational networking. The EL has been generally weaker at ‘political engineering’ (provoking organisational and institutional changes in its member parties, as well as policy transfer and emulation) (Johansson, 2002b: 62), although we have noted the limits placed on this function in all TNPs by European legislation. The major example would be the stubborn lack of institutionalised integration between the GUE/NGL and the EL (despite more informal contacts). The major counter-examples would be the emergence of the (albeit short-lived) L’Altra Europa coalition in Italy and the Slovenian Left, which have definitely seen the EL as fulcrum of their unification efforts.

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Legitimacy Linked with the above is the degree to which engagement with the EL is an important badge of legitimacy for member parties. As with other TNPs, this is clearly the case for the many smaller groups, particularly but not exclusively in Eastern Europe (most latterly new partners such as the Hungarian A BAL - Balpárt), and for parties such as the Slovenian Left. The bestowing of legitimacy is intrinsically linked with the organisational and networking advantages brought by further integration with the EL. To this extent, the EL is clearly attractive for newer and more domestically marginal parties (what’s to lose?). However, the extent to which other more established parties may re-engage with the EL to compensate for domestic defeats, a factor noted in the development of other TNPs, is more circumscribed. Certainly, the original founding motives of the EL as a strategic defence can be seen in this light, emerging from frustration at the diminution of radical left forces and networks at European level and the threat of further advances for the right. Moreover, the Italian left (most noticeably by the PRC’s Paulo Ferraro being one of the EL’s Vice-Presidents since December 2016) has used the EL to maintain a European presence, both after losing its influence in the EP in 2009, and when regaining it in 2014. The EL has also been a useful symbol of importance and integrative intent for several organisations trying to promote domestic alliances (for instance, Pierre Laurent’s EL presidency tallied not coincidentally with the PCF’s promotion of the Left Front within France). But what is equally evident is the number of parties for which domestic misfortunes fail to promote a significant re-evaluation of the utility of the EL, for instance the Dutch SP, Swedish V and indeed the observer members KSČM and AKEL. It is clear in these cases (reinforcing points made above) that ideological and strategic reservations about the value of further formalised integration at EU level trump any other advantages that fuller engagement with the EL might bring. Policy-making We have noted how the emergence of an EL manifesto, and the several associated policy documents that the EL has periodically produced, have been a major leap forward from a historical perspective, given that the prospect of pan-European radical left policy co-ordination was anathema to major actors like the PCF in the 1980s. However, the EL’s policymaking functions suffer from the weaknesses evident in the main TNPs (e.g. the limited degree to which national parties engage with them and



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their limited function beyond providing a mere set of guidelines for the EP group). Additionally, we have shown how, despite a formally cohesive Left Europeanist position, the internal divisions within the EL and the lack of direct influence over the GUE/NGL group provide an extra layer of debilitation that the other major party families lack.

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Effecting Europeanisation We noted in chapter 1 that this is a composite category: TNPs use their various functions to act as ‘networks of Europeanisation’ which both facilitate the process of European integration and help national parties formulate their response to it. Via their co-ordination, socialisation, legitimacy and policy-making networks, TNPs expose national parties to European integrative processes, which thereby influence them and can be influenced by them. Within the EL, the clearest evidence is its emergence as a forum for Left Europeanist positions and as somewhat more than the first among equals in the wider universe of radical left pan-European forums. While more Euro-rejectionist Trotskyist and orthodox communist networks have generally declined to relative or absolute marginality, the EL puts forward a (generally) Left Europeanist position which facilitates European integration (by trying to develop a transnational party, its associated foundations and networks on the basis of EU legislation and financing), while attempting to formulate a critically integrative position in defence of ‘Another Europe’. In this way the EL certainly seems to fit Ladrech’s definition of ‘indirect Europeanisation’, emphasising the regularisation of party participation in transnational and supranational forums (Ladrech, 1999). That a product of this indirect Europeanisation is the indirect legitimation of the EU itself as a ‘practical political framework’ was noted in the (albeit heavily ideological) criticism of the EL as an EU puppet from parties like the KKE. Nevertheless, that this Europeanisation remains at best partial is underscored by the limitations on the EL’s activity that we have noted throughout: the Left Europeanist position is not fully hegemonic within the EL, let alone beyond it. Some Left sovereigntist parties (e.g. the PCF) have mellowed their position over time, but more critical voices remain and have even been emboldened by the crisis and the Syriza debacle. Former governing parties like AKEL and the PCRM have taken on more critical positions once losing office. All in all, the EL remains far from a putative tipping point where it is perceived as the only effective forum for radical left European activity, and can therefore exercise influence on all the major actors therein, a point reached by the Greens in the previous decade to their actual emergence as a TNP in 2004.

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Prospects: diversity in diversity Given the evidently mixed record and slow development of the EL to date, is there any prospect of a substantial change in the near future? It must be doubtful. The EL, as many of its adherents realise, cannot impose a greater degree of unity and strategy than exists among its constituent parties. In the absence of significant consensus over the EU among the wider European radical left, the EL’s approach of seeking consensus and multi-level forms of networking has definite merits. (This might be dubbed ‘diversity in diversity’ in homage to the former communist slogan, ‘unity in diversity’.) Besides, even if it were willing, the EL lacks sufficient resources and incentives to rapidly foster integrative tendencies. Any greater impulse in that regard will need to come from other factors, such as further EU legislative incentives towards transnational party building, or an upswing in pro-EU sentiment among European publics. Here again, the evidence is decidedly patchy. Although there is currently little evident appetite among EU policy-makers for enhancing the role of TNPs, there is evidence of recovering post-crisis support towards the EU among electorates (Reuters, 2018). However, given that Euro-critical voters are a significant source of the European radical left’s support (e.g. March and Rommerskirchen, 2015), there is no evidence that declining ‘Euroscepticism’ would directly benefit the radical left. Indeed, it could do so only indirectly, by encouraging EU politicians that a return to more ‘federal’ policies (including augmenting the EU party system) might have greater public support. And of course, although the direct impact of the Great Recession is arguably receding, the EU faces multiple other near-term challenges, such as migration, the rise of the radical right and potential trade wars with the US, before European integration might return to priority. Since the balance of forces on the European radical left (even in European elections) emerges from national electorates, a further external boost to the EL might emerge from future European (national and EP) elections. However, it should be noted that the EL has achieved significant momentum neither from the 2014 EP elections, despite the stellar result for the GUE/NGL, nor from national elections since 2014. Again, the absence of a sustaining ‘virtuous circle’ is evident: the rise of Syriza provided a temporary boost (to the GUE/NGL’s seats, to fraternal parties like Podemos and newer EL member parties like the Slovenian Left), but has failed to sustain itself and has caused newer internal ructions. The radical left has continued to perform well in certain countries, but neither to the scale commensurate with the 2015 performance of Syriza and Podemos (e.g. the Portuguese BE’s 10.2 per cent result in December 2015), nor in a helpful

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context (e.g. the Icelandic VG’s 16.9 per cent of the vote in 2017 does not avail the EL, since VG is a member neither of the EL nor the GUE/ NGL). Indeed, it is arguable that the 2014 EP result may not be repeated in 2019, with the probable decline of Syriza and parties like the KSČM, and the plateauing of parties like Podemos, the SP and Die Linke. The FI may do well, but it is no longer under the aegis of the EL. In January 2019, the EL put forward two leading candidates for the EP elections: Violeta Tomić from the Slovenian EL member party Levica, and he former General Secretary of the Metalworkers’ Union of Belgium,  Nico Cué. With due respect to their qualities, these candidates are less well known beyond the core left electorates than Alexis Tsipras as the EL’s Spitzenkandidat in 2014. Moreover, the EL potentially faces two new challengers in the 2019 EP elections. One, from the Europeanist left, is Yanis Varoufakis’s DiEM25 movement. DiEM25 ‘acts as a transnational counterpublic that aims to connect local movements, progressive parties, and European citizens, and, sometimes, it is organised as a transnational movement whose main organs avoid a national logic’, that is, it is a Left Europeanist project par excellence (Agustín, 2017: 333). In 2018, it announced a ‘European Spring’, the co-ordination of sympathetic candidates and parties in the aim of fostering a pan-European list for the next EP elections. The movement has been implicitly critical of the EL. It considers ‘the model of national parties which form flimsy alliances at the level of the European Parliament to be obsolete’ (DiEM25, 2017), and argues that the EL ‘lack[s] a coherent Plan A, B, C’ (Varoufakis, 2018), but has nevertheless proposed co-operation with it. The EL (along with the EGP) has latterly participated in its actions as an observer. It is relatively easy to imagine some form of co-operation in principle given the open, networking nature of each organisation. However, the detailed practice may prove more problematic, with differing evaluations of developments in Greece (there being of course no love lost between Varoufakis and the Syriza leadership) and the openness of DiEM25 to other political traditions such as the Greens and social democrats being likely obstacles. The other, and probably bigger, challenge is from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s ‘Plan B’ movement, which represents the national sovereigntist left. There are ‘three features that characterise the Plan B counterdiscourse: the lack of satisfaction with the EU as political framework; the rejection of the economic model, particularly of the euro; and the defense of national sovereignty’ (Agustín, 2017: 329). We have seen how this group was relatively dormant until being resurrected as an adjunct to Mélenchon’s 2017 Presidential election campaign. Since his relative success in that election (coming third with 20 per cent of the vote), the emergence of FI and its

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246 conclusion split first from the PCF and then (via its constituent PG) the EL, the prospect emerges that Mélenchon could become the nucleus of a new ‘left populist’ and anti-euro list at the 2019 EP election. Indeed, it makes sense to see Plan B in terms of Mélenchon’s domestic ambitions – his need to distinguish himself both from Macronism and the remnants of the Socialist and Communist parties (Giannopoulou, 2018). Presenting himself as a figure of European stature offers the prospect that he might yet emerge as a Spitzenkandidat, which will do him little harm domestically. Thus the EL might in future be challenged both from more purely Left Europeanist and Left sovereigntist positions. Both competing groups contain high-profile activists and could certainly potentially undermine the EL’s status as the main radical left transnational actor. However, their potential should not be exaggerated. Personal leadership ‘charisma’ does not easily translate beyond national contexts and top-down transnational lists based around prominent European personalities might struggle in the absence of strong parties or networks of national activists. Therefore the absence of significant party actors supporting DiEM 25 may be its Achilles’ heel. Plan B offers apparently more prospects, growing on the FI’s coat-tails. In April 2018, the FI, Podemos and the BE signed a declaration founding the ‘Now, the People’ movement as a decidedly left-populist enterprise, declaring: In this spirit of insubmission relative to the current state, of citizens’ revolt and trust in the democratic capacity of our peoples facing the extinct project of Brussels’ elites, today here in Lisbon, we take a step forward. We urge peoples from Europe to unite around the task of building an international, popular and democratic political movement as a means to organise ourselves to defend our rights and people’s sovereignty against an old and unfair order, which will lead us to catastrophe. (Mélenchon, Iglesias and Martins, 2018)

In June 2018, the group’s declaration was further co-signed by representatives of the Danish RGA, Finnish VAS and Swedish Left Party (Transform!, 2019). It has the further support of anti-Euro groups like Greece’s Syriza offshoot Popular Unity, and potentially newer left-populist groups like Sahra Wagenknecht’s emerging Aufstehen (‘Stand Up’) movement in Germany. It is an open question what such developments mean for the EL. Some are sanguine, noting that signing up to a multiplicity of competing declarations and short-lived ‘movements’ is part of the left’s ‘variable geometry’ (Baier, 2018a). Moreover, by early 2019 the ‘Now, the People’ initiative appeared to have stalled (even if perhaps only temporarily), and the potential that the FI might itself act as a new pole of attraction for the wider radical left against the EL was in doubt: ‘France Insoumise is in conflict with the European Left even if it seems to have engaged [in] a

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de-escalation … [it is] believable that it intended to create … another group than the GUE/NGL but facing its failure to do so ( … given the position of Podemos, the Bloco and other partners) it might [ultimately] join the latter’ (Transform! 2018). Nevertheless, such centrifugal and/or competitive tendencies are, at the least, likely to make the EL’s internal consensus more difficult to maintain. The ultimate risk is of further salami-slicing the already small radical left electorate with a number of competing but individually unviable initiatives. It’s an old story, but one unfortunately often retold. Implications for further study Our study is to some degree like a matryoshka doll. Within the universe of TNPs, we examine the case study of the EL; within this we have to examine both the complex and competing histories and narratives of its chief political actors and the multiple layers of its operation to really drill down to its problems and perspectives. Does such a case study have any wider relevance? Of course, before asserting any such claim we have to be mindful that any single case study may identify factors without wider applicability, and the only way to test them is a more systematic comparative study. But our study can certainly be one step in that endeavour; we have embedded it in the comparative literature and included elements of explicit comparison. We would certainly argue that our work highlights the need for more substantive and more recent studies of TNPs. It is certainly noticeable that most of the richer studies (e.g. Lightfoot, 2005; Hanley, 2008) that explicitly focus on the roles of TNPs are getting somewhat ‘elderly’. Most recent studies focus on TNP activity only as a part of parties’ European activity (Brack and Kelbel, 2016), or conversely focus only on parts of TNP activity (Bressanelli, 2014; Shagina, 2017). These are valid studies, but we would argue that TNPs, despite the obvious decline in the salience and progress of European integration, remain important objects of detailed analysis in all their complexities. Indeed, the first main wider finding of our study is just this: TNPs are relevant party-networks, structuring and influencing EU party activity, and thereby the nature of the EU itself. They are neither the irrelevant lowestcommon-denominator actors imagined by sceptics, nor the integrated Europarties envisaged by optimists. Or at least, because they are arenas of continual internal party contestation, they often represent such things simultaneously, with the very role of the TNP being a source of debate or friction. But even for the most sceptical actors therein, they play important roles in terms of networking, socialisation and pooling resources.

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248 conclusion Second, the most important potential role that TNPs can play is as networks of Europeanisation, both driving and being driven by European integration. Even the EL plays this role somewhat. Accordingly, even though European integration has currently lost momentum, the theoretical role that TNPs might play in furthering this process and increasing the nature of EU democratisation remains, and should there be a return to greater integrative processes in future, we might expect the role of TNPs to be prominent therein. At that point, the dearth of recent studies may become problematic indeed. Further implications of our study concern the politics of the left and radical left directly. Indeed, this study of the EL shows some of the significant issues confronting the left in microcosm. The paradox of why the left has failed significantly to benefit from a major capitalist crisis has been much commented on (e.g. Bailey, 2016). More generally, we can see here an answer in how the broad left is divided institutionally into three competing and too rarely collaborating party families (social democrats, Greens and radical left) which not only lack numerical strength even collectively, but, despite espousing fundamentally common policies on a range of issues, disagree substantially on their strategic and ideological frameworks (with the radical left remaining the most ideological of all). Of the major ideological fissures, the very nature of the EU remains the most salient. The very term ‘radical left’ has latterly been attacked as normative and inaccurate (Calossi, 2016), despite its widespread use in existing literature, which already acknowledges the term’s potential weaknesses (March, 2011). Our study reinforces that radicalism (i.e. an orientation towards the ‘root and branch’ transformation of the economic and political structures of contemporary capitalism) remains a fundamentally important way in which to conceptualise the non-social democratic left. Whereas it is no longer helpful or accurate to analyse the radical left through the prism of reform or revolution (most main parties being self-evidently ‘reformist’), it still makes sense to see them as confronted by a ‘radical dilemma’ (i.e. whether and how to propose fundamental changes within what Lenin once regarded as the ‘pigsty’ of bourgeois democracy) (March, 2011; Charalambous, 2013). Hence the GUE/NGL’s frequent unwillingness to support other left-wing forces within the EP in areas which it sees as improving, rather than undermining or challenging, the EU’s economic prerogatives (herein an example of a preference for structural rather than incremental reform); hence the radical left’s use of neoliberalism as a proxy for anticapitalism; hence the insistence on the fundamental reform or abolition of the Euro-Atlantic military and financial structures; hence, ultimately, the basis for the division between Left Europeanists and the more intransigent of the Left national sovereigntists. The former operate within the EU to

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conclusion

249

change it, the latter regard it essentially as an archetypal unreformable ‘pigsty’. In sum, we argue that the very radicalness of the radical left is at the core of its identity, and its identity problems. The final wider contribution of the study is to argue that using ‘Eurosceptic’ as a label for the European attitudes of the radical left is fundamentally misleading and inaccurate except when the term is used at higher levels of abstraction (as a collective term for sentiments which are critical of the ‘really existing EU’, which, as noted in the introduction, risks being nearly everybody in the current climate). All of the radical left are often very sceptical of the really existing EU to be sure, but for the Left Europeanists, the ideal of further European integration remains a core concern. But we fundamentally cannot understand the trajectory of the radical left, not least at EU level, without recognising that Europe is the source of the most profound disagreement rather than consensus (as such a label as ‘Eurosceptic’ implies). This therefore furthers the arguments of certain scholars that the party family’s attitude to Europe is profoundly diverse and contains ‘many shades of red’ (Dunphy, 2004; Charalambous, 2011a). So, in sum, individual radical left parties will ebb and flow (and such dynamics are themselves of course worthy of analysis), but core to their study for the foreseeable future will be a) the nature of their radicalism and identity; b) their attitudes to Europe and the EU; and c) their attempts to balance national and supranational imperatives across Europe. The EL is an arena where all of these trajectories have come into play. As a partynetwork, it has successes and deficits, and its ultimate longer-term legacy may be in doubt. But the need for such an arena will remain.

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Postscript

The ninth direct elections to the European Parliament (EP), held in May 2019, proved a big disappointment for the European Left Party (EL). EL member parties lost ground almost everywhere and the EL’s presence in the 2019–24 EP will be reduced. The EL fought the 2019 EP elections on the basis of a common manifesto. But, apart from an explicit commitment to reform and change the EU treaties, above all by inserting a social protocol,1 it contained little new. Its commitments to democratising the EU, introducing new models of economic, social and ecological development, empowering citizens, extending the rights of immigrants, refugees and minorities, fighting for gender and sexual equality, exiting NATO and demilitarising Europe, and building fair trade relations with the rest of the world are all familiar themes to readers of this book. The campaign itself was lacklustre. The big rallies in numerous European capitals, inspired by the choice of Alexis Tsipras as Spitzenkandidat in 2014, were absent. As we remarked in the Conclusion, in 2019 EL put forward as joint Spitzenkandidaten Violeta Tomić, a member of the Slovenian Parliament and General Rapporteur for LGBT rights at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the former Secretary General of the Metalworkers’ Union of Belgium, Nico Cué. Explaining the choice of Spitzenkandidaten, EL President Gregor Gysi announced the hope that they would expand the party’s appeal and that: with these two candidates, we want to make a clear offer to the people of Europe, because we are on the side of those who do not accept the growing contradiction between wealth and poverty. The social question is the key issue of our time. The credibility of policies depends, in large part, on their ability to redistribute wealth to the benefit of the poorer classes.2

Unfortunately, although the candidates were tried and tested champions of gender and sexual equality and of workers’ rights and trade union freedoms, they were little known outside their own countries and seem to have had minimal impact on voters. Even in their own two countries – Belgium

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postscript 251 and Slovenia – the EL failed to win any seats at all. The radical left in Belgium did make a breakthrough with the far-left Workers’ Party of Belgium polling 8.7 per cent and winning a seat in the EP; but the party is of Maoist inspiration and is not a part of the EL. In the aftermath of the elections, Gabi Zimmer of Die Linke, a former President of the GUE/NGL group in the EP, described the results as a ‘disaster’ and, while exonerating the two Spitzenkandidaten, warned that they had been chosen late by the EL leadership and never given full support, a coherent strategy or a well organised campaign. She accused leaders of both national parties and the EL of failing to participate fully in the campaign and of lacking a clear vision of Europe.3 The number of MEPs returned for the radical left’s GUE/NGL group in the EP fell from fifty-two (2014–19) to forty-one after the 2019 elections, and of these forty-one just seventeen were from parties that are full EL members and three from parties that are observer members.4 In other words, the radical left as a whole won just over 5 per cent of the seats in the 2019–24 EP, with the EL winning less than 3 per cent. This is also the first time since the EL’s foundation in 2004 that it has been reduced to a minority of GUE/NGL members. Moreover, the GUE/NGL not only loses influence as a result of its reduced strength (which will fall further to forty after Brexit robs it of a Sinn Féin member from Northern Ireland), it arguably loses its attractiveness to new political forces. In Germany, Die Linke won just five seats, reflecting what Gabi Zimmer refers to as difficulty in reaching ‘important voter groups such as industrial workers, the unemployed and the socially excluded. The party was unable to convey how it intends, on the one hand, to criticize existing conditions in the EU, while at the same time developing a vision of the future for the European Union from the left.’ 5 In Greece, Syriza held six seats but lost votes, reflecting disillusionment with the implementation of austerity policies on the part of the left electorate. In Spain, the resurgent social democratic party saw the alliance between Izquierda Unida (an EL member) and Podemos (not a member) lose seats with IU returning just two MEPs and Podemos three. Elsewhere, EL parties either clung on to their meagre share of seats with a slightly reduced share of the vote (Finland, Czech Republic), or slightly increased their vote but without any gain in seats (Slovenia, Cyprus, Denmark). The two big exceptions were France and Italy, where EL lost all of its seats and suffered a true electoral meltdown. In both countries a 4 per cent electoral threshold applies for EP elections. In France, the PCF fell to just 2.5 per cent and in Italy a combined list of the PRC and SI managed only 2.8 per cent. This means that for the first time ever not a single French or Italian communist will be present in the European Parliament. In France, Mélénchon’s La France Insoumise (see

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252 postscript Conclusion) took the lion’s share of the radical left vote, although the six MEPs that it won were far less than it had hoped for. In Italy, the resurgent forces of right-wing populism completely swamped the radical left. Yanis Varoufakis’ DiEM25 movement made little impact, failing to win any seats. In the whole of Eastern and Central Europe, a single Czech Communist MEP held the solitary seat won by the forces of the radical left (EL and non-EL alike). This electoral setback has serious implications for the EL’s future. In the immediate term, it loses funding (which is partially dependent on the number of affiliated MEPs). More importantly, its self-effacement on the EP stage (see chapter 7) and its divisions over the future of Europe (see Conclusion) now seem likely to influence lengthy debates on how to regain momentum and challenge the far right. According to Gabi Zimmer, the radical left failed to offer any new European vision and appears ‘both culturally and linguistically like a fossil of the last century’.6 Only a few MEPs had started an initiative to reclaim the Manifesto of Ventotene (see chapter 2) but there had been a general failure to respond to their initiative and to launch a discussion on what a socialist Europe might look like7. Walter Baier, director of the EL’s think-tank, Transform!, goes further. Declaring his belief in the need for a party of the European Left, he warns that ‘as with any party, the EL’s future depends on its usefulness’.8 The EL, he argues, now has two options: a) It can be a loose political forum in which parties meet, exchange opinions, and occasionally agree on joint campaigns, a sort of New European Left Forum (NELF). We can allocate funds and capacities in creating a broader forum, as we are attempting with the Marseille/Bilbao/BXL Forum, a space where parties of different families meet and discuss with civil society actors, trade unions, and movements. This concept is reasonable and coherent. It requires a lean office structure with the task of coordinating rather than ‘doing politics’. The critical question, however, is whether this concept is adequate for coping with the present challenges the left faces. b) The second option is that the EL takes steps towards becoming a real political actor with its own political profile. Consequently, it would also have to develop a political and communicative capacity and intervene in political debates on the European level. Obviously, such a party on the European level cannot be modelled on national parties since it must be based on inter-party agreements. It requires a concise political platform delineating the framework in which the party is entitled to ‘do politics’, that is, issue statements, take initiatives, and intervene in European public debates. The programmatic platform must be sufficiently broad to address the concerns and interests of all possible partners within and beyond today’s EL.

postscript 253

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This is indeed the crux of the matter. It is the existential dilemma and the key political question that EL has hitherto failed to resolve. At heart is whether the EL can be a mere network of parties or a more supranational party-network. Given the diversity of positions within EL, whether it can be approached with greater serenity now, in the wake of electoral defeat, must be an open question. Notes 1 ‘Let’s Create a Different Europe: European Elections 2019 Electoral Platform’, p. 4. Available online at: www.european-left.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ 7392-01_EL_Wahlpr19_A6_EN_V02_190321.pdf, accessed 21 August 2019. 2 www.european-left.org/campaigns/two-candidates-from-the-people-for-thepeople/, accessed 21 August 2019. 3 www.transform-network.net/focus/overview/article/ep-2019-the-europeanleft-one-mouth-many-voices/future-perspectives-of-the-european-family-ofthe-political-left/, accessed 22 August 2019. 4 See www.guengl.eu/function/meps/, accessed 22 August 2019. 5 www.transform-network.net/focus/overview/article/ep-2019-the-europeanleft-one-mouth-many-voices/future-perspectives-of-the-european-family-ofthe-political-left/, accessed 22 August 2019. 6 www.transform-network.net/focus/overview/article/ep-2019-the-europeanleft-one-mouth-many-voices/future-perspectives-of-the-european-family-ofthe-political-left/, accessed 22 August 2019. 7 www.transform-network.net/focus/overview/article/ep-2019-the-europeanleft-one-mouth-many-voices/future-perspectives-of-the-european-family-ofthe-political-left/, accessed 22 August 2019. 8 See www.transform-network.net/focus/overview/article/considerations-on-theeuropean-elections/ from which all Baier quotations are taken, accessed 22 August 2019.

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Index

Agustín, Ó. G. 245 AKEL (Progressive Party of Working People) 26, 50‒1, 97‒8, 127, 146‒8, 156, 171‒2, 190, 242‒3 Allende, Salvador 45 Almeida, D. 3 Alternative European Summit (2012) 162 L’Altra Europa coalition 241 Amendola, Giorgio 52, 56 Amsterdam Treaty (1997) 45, 61 Andeweg, R. 19 ‘Another Road for Europe’ forum (2012) 228 Arhinmäki, Paavo 170 Assange, Julian 163 Athens declaration (2005) 127‒8 Auken, Margrete 175‒6, 214 austerity and anti-austerity 120‒1, 127‒8, 137‒45, 149, 153, 158‒63, 190, 230 authoritarianism of the EU 142 Auzende, Patrick 170 Baier, Walter 5, 163, 252 Bailey, D. J. 229, 248 Bardi, L. 2, 19, 21 Barroso, José Manuel 25, 147, 189‒90 Bartolini, Stefano 19‒20 Belgium 250‒1 Bell, D. 44 Benedetto, G. 39, 42, 44, 46, 50 Berlinguer, Enrico 43, 45, 54‒6, 60‒1, 143

Bertinotti, Fausto 6, 84, 87‒90, 132, 145, 157, 170‒1 Bevan, Aneurin 139 bilateral contacts between parties and regimes 65‒6 Bisky, Lothar 6, 81‒2, 107, 126‒9, 132, 134, 239, 242 Blair, Tony 35 Bolkestein, Frits (and Bolkestein Directive) 72‒3, 128 Bologna Process 131 Bomberg, Elizabeth 37, 203 Brexit 1, 24, 141, 151, 234, 251 Browning, C. S. 174 ‘cadre’ parties 31‒2 Calossi, E. 3, 54, 99, 130‒1, 248 capitalism 16, 214 Carrillo, Santiago 43, 48 Charalambous, G. 3, 48, 145‒7 Chomsky, Noam 163 Christensen, D. A. 49‒50 Christofias, Demetris 26, 146‒7, 188‒9, 229 Citizen-Agora process 131 civic nationalism 48 Comintern 66 ‘Comintern aversion’ 40, 174, 238 Committee for a Workers’ International 67 Committee of the Regions 88‒9, 205 communist identity 56 Communist International and New Communist International 66‒7

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index 279 communist links to civil society and trade unions 156 Communist Party 67 of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) 70, 72, 97‒8, 171‒3, 212, 242, 245 of Britain 77 French (PCF) 11, 236, 242‒3, 251 of Greece (KKE) 178, 186‒8, 212, 238 Portuguese (PCP) 179 Communists and Allies group 42, 51‒9, 89, 183 Confederal Group of the European United Left / Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) 6, 31, 39, 42, 51, 61‒3, 65, 71‒4, 81, 83, 87, 115‒16, 122, 124, 139, 155, 162, 172, 175‒83, 188, 191, 205‒6, 211, 227‒32, 237‒44, 248, 251 development of national components 72‒3 consensual decision-making 16 Conservative Party, UK 28, 33, 35 ‘consolidator’ parties 90‒1, 171‒2 contre-sociétés (Kriegel) 156 Council of Chairpersons of the EL 102‒4 Council of the EU 21, 33, 188 presidency of 229 Crocodile Club 56 Cuba 180 Cué, Nico 245, 250 Cyprus 145‒8, 156, 189, 229 Day, J. 115 Day, S. 29 debt crisis 233‒4 decantation function of TNPs 35 decision-making model of the EU 6, 16 de Gaulle, Charles 2, 48‒9 Delors, Jacques 46 democratic centralism 50 ‘democratic deficit’ 19, 30, 215 Democratic Left Scotland (DLS) 96, 109 Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) 42

de Rossa, Proinsias 60, 116 DiEM25 movement 163, 246, 252 Dietz, T. M. 203 Douzinas, Costas 150 Duff, Andrew (and Duff Report) 24, 28‒9 Dunphy, R. (co-author) 3, 211, 214 Duverger, Maurice 19, 30, 59 Economic and Social Committee of the EU 88‒9 economic policy, common ground on 221 egalitarian values 13 elections, ‘second-order’ 27‒8, 137, 234 EL FEM network 159 entrepreneurialism 29, 231 entryism 160 environmental policy 130‒1, 205 Ettinger, H. 83 Eurobonds 221, 228 Eurocommunist parties 41, 43, 62, 64, 174, 236 EuroMémorandum network 162 Europarties 2, 17, 29‒30, 32, 38, 233 stages in development of 34 European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL) 74‒6, 84, 89, 169, 177 European Central Bank (ECB) 88, 128, 130, 133, 149, 163, 221, 228 European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs) 24, 119‒20, 124, 132 European Commission 20, 33 candidates for presidency 208 presidency 136‒7 European Council (of heads of government) 20, 188 European Forums 122 European Free Alliance (EFA) 227‒8 European Green Party (EGP) 193‒4, 197, 200‒10, 216‒20, 223, 230, 235 European institutions 8, 190‒1, 208, 211, 215, 230, 233, 236, 239‒40

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280 index European Left Forum 70 European Left Party (EL) 3‒6, 10‒17, 38, 61‒5, 81‒137 absences from 91 achievements of 238‒43, 249 challenges for 245‒7 and civil society 156‒63 Council of Chairpersons 102‒4 creation of 81‒92 critics of 179 development of 235‒40 electoral performance 165‒6, 251 in the European Parliament 115‒17, 188 General Assembly 100‒2, 197 Identity Card 120 individual membership of 14, 94, 108‒15, 124, 238 institutionalisation of 210, 237 internal divisions within 194, 211, 243 lack of a parliamentary group 211 limitations of 92, 230‒1, 237 manifesto (2004) 88‒9, 92 members of 84‒6 non-adherents to 167 policy coherence 7, 15 policy convergence with other TNPs 193‒4 policy priorities 216‒20 political presence of 94 potential contradiction between majority voting and consensus 123 presidency of 106‒7 processes in 14, 94, 99‒108 programmatic and policy development 127‒37 prospects for 244‒7, 252‒3 reasons for parties’ joining 168‒9 relationships with other parties 15, 89‒90, 164‒80, 190, 207, 231, 239 small staff of 31 statutes of 87, 95‒6

European Parliament (EP) 1‒2, 6, 13‒14, 18, 36, 20, 41, 88 cohesion of the groups in 183‒7 elections to 19, 250 lack of a direct executive function 181 pan-European seats in 24 reliance on consensus principles 181 European People’s Party (EPP) 235 European social model 88 European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) 158 European Troika 1, 7, 15, 136, 142, 148‒53, 229‒30 European Union attitudes to 9‒10, 40‒1, 88, 215 common policy of 11 criticisms of 142‒5, 153, 239 nature of 248 prospects for reform of 6, 10, 153, 194‒5, 231‒4, 240, 248 Europeanisation 94, 123, 126, 148, 248 of culture 141 of debt 140 definition of 36‒7 ‘indirect’ 243 networks of 36‒8, 243 Europeanism 83‒4, 87, 92, 124, 138‒9, 153, 173, 178‒9, 231, 243 Europe des patries and Europe des partis 2, 18 ‘Eurosceptic’ label 9, 57‒8, 171, 249 Euroscepticism 3, 7‒10, 13, 26, 29, 39, 45‒50, 244 forms of 9 ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ 9, 46 of left and right 48 Eurozone membership 58, 138‒40, 147‒51 Executive Board of the EL 104‒6, 113, 134‒5, 152, 197 Farage, Nigel 10 ‘federal’ policies 24, 26, 235, 244 Ferrara, city of 160

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index 281 Ferraro, Paulo 242 Filip, Vojtĕch 173 Finnish Left Alliance (VAS) 11, 170‒1, 241 Fiscal Compact 147 ‘fiscal waterboarding’ 1, 240 foreign policy 58, 213, 215 ‘four freedoms’ 1 La France Insoumise (FI) 245-6 Freire, A. 47 full membership parties 94‒6 funding, European 19 further study, implications for 247‒9 Gabriel, Sigmar 190, 229 Gagatek, W. 28 Garavini, Sergio 157 Gauthier, Elizabeth 162 Germany 41 globalisation 88 global justice movement (GJM) 157‒60, 191, 214 Gorbachev, Mikhail 61 Grebenicek, Miroslav 182‒3 Greece 1, 8, 14‒15, 47, 51, 127, 133, 136‒41, 144, 149‒53, 186, 229, 233‒4, 245, 251 Green parties 16‒17, 20, 37, 113‒14, 175‒6, 214‒15, 227‒8, 231, 235 see also European Green Party Green Party of England and Wales 204‒5, 210 Green Radical and European Link (GRAEL) 201 ‘Grexit’ 150 Group for the European United Left 60 Guiat, C. 44 Gusmão, José 8 Gysi, Gregor 6‒7, 104, 107, 152‒3, 250 Haas, E. B. 29 Halikiopoulou, D. 3, 9, 48, 58 Hanley, D. 28‒35, 89, 92, 197, 204

hegemony, political 41 Henin, Jacky 11 Herberg, Martin 111 Hilário, Carmen 110‒12 Hines, E. H. 205 Hix, S. 20, 32 Hollande, François 229 Holmes, M. 215 Holzinger, L. 161 Hudson, K. 3, 69‒70, 128 Hue, Robert 43, 46 Humanité Festival 161 human rights 133, 135 Iceland 175 idealists with regard to TNPs 29‒30 Iglesias, Pablo 173, 246 ‘indirect parties’ 30‒1 INITIATIVE of Communist and Workers’ Parties 80‒2 integration, European 2, 9‒10, 13, 15, 18‒19, 29, 36‒9, 62, 65, 138‒9, 196, 236, 239, 243, 248‒9 criticism of direction of 128 diversity of RLP responses to 40‒2 obstacles to 231 paralysis of 135 interaction between TNPs 207 intergovernmentalism 235, 237 ‘internally created’ parties 19 International Conference of MarxistLeninist Parties and Organizations 68 International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties (IMCWP) 76‒81, 84, 92 participants in Istanbul (2015) 78‒9 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 88, 213, 215 International Socialist Tendency 67 Ioannou, G. 147 Iraq 213 isolationism 62 Israel 135, 213

282 index

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Italy 137‒8, 145 Iversen, John 49 Janssen, Thilo 10‒12 Johansen, A. 241 Johansen, I. V. 12 Johansson, K. M. 32 Jospin, Lionel 46, 213 Juncker, Jean-Claude 25 Karatsioubanis, Giorgos 104, 111, 175 Katz–Mair model 30 Keith, D. 9, 48 Keynesian policies 129, 195‒6, 212 Kouvelakis, Stathis 149‒51 Kriegel, Annie 156 Labour Party, British 26‒31, 35, 195‒6, 199‒200 Ladrech, R. 32, 37, 196, 243 Lafontaine, Oskar 163 Laprat, Gérard 59 Laurent, Pierre 102, 107, 112‒14, 132, 162, 242 Left Caucus 228‒9 Left Europeanism 13, 39‒42, 47, 49, 58, 62‒4, 129‒32, 142, 161, 176, 202, 236‒40, 243, 246‒9 Left Front (FG) in France 11 Left Platform 140, 149‒50 legitimacy 35‒6 badges of 242 Le Hyarik, Patrick 11 Lenin, V. I. 180, 248 Lepola, Sanna 171 Liebknecht, Karl 84 Lightfoot, S. 209, 215 Lindberg, L. N. 29 Lisbon Treaty 24‒5, 28, 119, 130, 147 Lisi, M. 47 Loach, Ken 163 Lord, C. 20, 32 Luxemburg, Rosa 84 Lynch, P. 19

Maastricht Treaty 20, 57, 61, 88, 128, 205 manifesto co-ordination 20, 28, 33, 36 Manifesto of Ventotene 7‒8, 40, 54‒7, 252 manifestos for EP elections 127‒31, 138, 215 Maoist Internationals 63 Marchais, Georges 43, 46 Martins, C. 246 Marxism-Leninism 178, 180 ‘matching positions’ between left-ofcentre groups 225‒6 Matias, Marisa 8 Mélenchon, Jean-Luc 4‒5, 11, 151, 153, 163, 170, 245‒6, 251‒2 Merkel, Angela 25 militarism, opposition to 129‒30 Millios, Yannis 141 Mitterrand, François 46, 196 monetarism 128 More O’Ferrall, Richard 114 Mpellou, E. 79‒80 Mudde, Cas 9 multilateralism, decline of 66‒8 Nanou, K. 3, 9, 58 nationalism 9, 12‒13, 39, 41, 47, 62, 234 ‘national roads to socialism’ 40‒1, 62, 178, 180 national sovereigntism 39, 42, 47, 49, 63‒4, 234, 236, 248 nation-states 11, 13 neoliberalism 7, 10, 40‒1, 57, 61, 89, 92, 127‒30, 138‒40, 143‒7, 152‒3, 156, 162, 177, 193‒6, 213, 221‒4, 228, 231‒2, 234, 236, 239‒40, 248 alternatives to 232 changing views on 221‒4 networking nature of the EL 155, 181, 191, 238 New European Left Forum (NELF) 68‒71, 83, 89 Niedermayer, Oskar 34, 206, 240

index 283

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Nikolakakis, Nikos 139‒40 Non-inscrits (non-attached MEPs) 74 Nordic Green Left Alliance (NGLA) 91‒2, 174 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 16, 48‒9, 80‒1, 88, 128‒31, 213, 215, 221, 241 ‘Now, the People’ initiative 246 observer parties 94‒8 open structures to promote participation in policy-making 117 Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) 47 Papadimoulis, Dimitris 141 ‘parliamentary road to socialism’ 180 Parti de Gauche (PG) 151‒3, 170, 234, 239 ‘partification’ 20 partnership agreements with the EL 94‒8 ‘Party Article’ 20 party-building, supranational 18 Party of Communist Refoundation, Italian (PRC) 127, 145‒8, 214, 251 Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) 164, 169, 241, 243 party Congress of the EL 99‒100 Party of European Socialists (PES) 193‒200, 207‒10, 215‒22, 227, 230‒1, 235, 237 pragmatic intergovernmentalism of 195‒200 party system of the EU 64, 188, 233, 238 organigram of 26‒7 ‘partyness’ 28‒31 ‘party-networks’ 233 term preferable to ‘party networks’ 34 path dependence 40, 57, 236 People’s Movement Against the EEC 50

petitions to the European Commission 119 Petrenco, Grigore 168‒9 Piquet, René 60 ‘Plan B in Europe’ 163, 245‒6 Podemos 173‒4, 238, 244‒7, 251 Poguntke, T. 37 policy convergence within the broader left 211‒30 policy emulation and policy transfer 35 policy-making procedures 242‒3 policy positions of EP groups 211‒12 policy priorities of left-of-centre parties 216‒20 Political Action Programme (2011‒13) 132‒3 Political Document (Berlin, 2016) 141‒2 ‘political engineering’ 35, 241 Political Secretariat of the EL 107‒8 Pollock, M. 1 populism 2‒3, 5, 9, 252 Portas, Miguel 102 Prague theses (2007) 127‒9 principal–agent theory 32‒3 Prodi, Romano 29, 145‒6, 170 Progressive Caucus 229, 232 protectionism 48‒9, 62 public opinion 44‒6 Quaglia, L. 39, 42, 44, 46, 50 qualified majority voting (QMV) 6, 16, 34, 197, 208 ‘radical dilemma’ 248 radical left parties (RLPs) 2‒9, 12‒13, 65, 139, 156‒7, 190‒1, 213‒15, 234, 236, 251‒2 divisions between 7 shaping the European policy of 42‒51 radical right parties 5, 21 Ransdorf, Miloslav 97, 116‒17, 173

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284 index realists with regard to TNPs 29‒30 Red-Green Alliance (RGA), Danish 41, 75‒6, 91, 97‒8, 119, 169‒70, 239, 241, 248‒9 ‘red-greens and ‘green-greens’ 204‒5, 214 referenda 131, 149 see also Brexit reformism ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ 10 ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ 55, 57, 62‒3 regional forums of the EL 118 ‘resisters’ 174‒80 revisionism 80, 173 Rossi, Ernesto 40, 54 São Paulo Forum 163 Scandinavian parties 98 scepticism about TNPs 28, 30 see also Euroscepticism Schäuble, Wolfgang 1 Scholz, Helmut 102‒4, 164 Scottish Socialist Party 177 sectarianism 190 Seiler, Daniel-Louis 28, 30 self-efficacy 14 Shaw, J. 29, 115 Silone, Ignazio 196 Single European Act 57 Sinn Féin 115‒16, 251 Soares, Mario 137, 139 ‘social democratic moment’ 230 social democratic parties 15‒16, 35‒6, 61, 88, 139, 145, 157, 195‒9, 211‒14, 228 ‘social Europe’ 157‒8, 211‒12 Social Forums, World and European (WSF and ESF) 15, 158‒61 socialisation 35‒7, 241 socialism 19, 140, 239 see also ‘national roads to socialism’; ‘parliamentary road to socialism’ Socialist International 91‒2 Socialist Party of England and Wales 67

Socialist Workers’ Party in Ireland 67‒8 Socialist Workers’ Party in the UK 79, 177 social movements 2, 66, 160 social-movement unionism 157 social protocols 250 Soeiro, Renato 102 sovereignty 11 pooling of 33 Soviet Union 40‒1 Spain 251 Spence, Stephen 112‒13 Spinelli, Altiero 7, 10, 29, 40, 52‒7, 60‒1, 143, 189 Spinelli, Barbara 57, 139 Spitzenkandidaten role 25, 210, 246, 250‒1 Stability Pact 128, 130, 146, 221 Stalin, Joseph (and Stalinism) 87, 96, 168‒9, 190, 241 state intervention, consensus on 221 strike action 158‒9 summer universities 122‒4 supranationalism 62, 83 symbols, parties’ use of 209 Syriza (formerly Synaspismós) 3, 7, 15‒16, 41, 58, 97, 111, 124, 126‒7, 133, 139‒45, 148‒53, 163, 190, 229‒30, 234, 239‒40, 243‒6, 251 in government 148‒51 Szczerbiak, Aleks 9 Taggart, Paul 9, 50 ‘There Is No Other Way’ (TINA) 234 Thibault, Bernard 157 ‘Third way’ policies 88 Tobin tax 128‒30 Tomić, Violeta 245, 250 ‘top-down institutionalisation’ (Bartolini) 19, 33, 83 trade unions 156‒8 Transform! (think-tank and journal) 122‒4, 160‒2, 175, 191, 241, 252

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index 285 transnationalism 1‒2, 64‒6, 234 forms of 65, 238 positive and negative 92, 237 transnational party federations (TNPs) 2‒4, 12‒38, 89‒91, 164, 181, 234 achievements of 35‒6 campaigning in EP elections 21‒2 characteristics of different federations 22‒3 context of 18‒26 development of 233‒4 existing functions of 34‒8 groups affiliated to 189 individual membership of 31, 34, 108 influence on EU executive policy 21, 35‒6 institutionalisation of 210 lack of up-to-date studies of 247 middle-way followed by 32 obstacles faced by 26 possible roles for 17, 21, 25‒9, 32‒8, 243, 247‒8 regulations governing operation of 21, 37 similarities between 197 stages in development of 240‒1 weaknesses of 19, 21 transnational policy discussion and policy-making in the EL 117‒23 Trotsky, Leon (and Trotskyist International) 67‒8, 177‒8 Tsipras, Alexis (and the ‘Tsipras factor’) 9, 14, 25‒6, 57, 126,

133‒42, 149‒51, 188, 210, 239, 241, 245, 250 Turkey 147 Turrero, R. M. 79 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) 24 United Left (ZL) coalition 171 United Nations (UN) 88 United States of Europe 54‒5, 59 Van Hecke, S. 33 Varoufakis, Yanis 1, 5, 163, 176, 240, 245, 252 Vasilopoulou, S. 3, 9, 58 Vercammen, François 177 Von dem Berge, B. 37 Wagenknecht, Sahra 246 Wallace, H. 1 welfare states, highly-developed 62 Wils, Sabine 158 working groups of the EL 117‒18, 124, 158, 175, 191 World Bank 213, 215 World Trade Organization (WTO) 88, 215 xenophobia 48 Yaroufakis, Yanis 148‒9, 229 Young, A. 1 Zimmer, Gabi 116, 227, 239, 251‒2 Žižek, Slavoj 163