Political parties are often divided into parliamentary and extra-parliamentary organisations. Whilst the former are organised to influence the powers of parliaments (government formation and legislation) the latter are concerned with fighting elections and providing an opportunity for political participation through individual party membership and the formation of local branch organisations. They define political programmes for those of their members who win public office and aid the co-ordination of policy across the branches (executive and legislature) and levels (national and local) of government.
It is tempting - but not entirely correct - to suggest that the distinction between the European party federations and the EP party groups mirrors this classic division of labour between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties. Over the years, the Federations have, indeed, accumulated detailed political programmes, which may yet trickle through the various channels of party political influence (national governments and parliaments, the EP and even the Council of Ministers and the Commission) to define substantial areas of Union policy. Examples of some of these programmes are set out in a further section of this topic module.
On the other hand, the Federations are not exclusively organised to influence the EU political arena. Although this has, in practice, come to be their main area of concern, their membership reaches beyond the Union and an important aspect of their work in recent years has been to aid the development of party politics in Eastern Europe and provide some informal sites for co-ordination with political elites whose countries are not yet members of the Union.
A further difficulty is that the party Federations do not map exactly on to the groups in the Parliament. Only four of the eight groups in the present 1994-9 Parliament correspond to an extra-parliamentary federation. These are the PES, EPP, ELDR and the Greens. Moreover, two of these parliamentary groups - the EPP and ELDR - have members whose parent parties are not members of the relevant federation.
It is, perhaps, a fiction in any party political system to expect extra-parliamentary organizations to define the policies and priorities of the parliamentary representatives. In practice, the latter almost always enjoy a political authority, combined with access to information and specialist skills, that allow them to take the lead in the extra-parliamentary bodies from which they supposedly receive some direction.
However, the case of political parties in the European Union is particularly idiosyncratic. For a start, the membership of the extra parliamentary federations does not consist of individual citizens but of fully formed political parties, each of which is accustomed to being a fully sovereign self-governing organization, all of which have access to substantial organizational, informational and financial resouces, including, in the case of parties of government, those of the state itself. This could, in theory, put the federations in a strong position to issue directions to the EP party groups.
On the other hand, there are various factors that underpin the autonomy of the EP groups. First, inter-institutional relationships in the EU are structured in a manner that often requires the EP to consider issues before they become subject of inter-governmental bargaining or the concern of national parliaments and parties (because of the consultation procedure). This may give the EP groups a policy leadership role, as agreements hammered out in the parliament will often provide the federations with a series of ready-made orientations that demonstrate what is possible in inter-party co-operation at the European level. Given the tortuousness of negotiating agreements between parties from several EU countries, any attempt to use the Federations to agree what has already been decided in the groups will often seem a little like 're-inventing the wheel'. Second, although individual national parties may be able to rival the policy expertise of the groups even on EU questions, the latter enjoy the benefit of a 'permanent presence' within the EU institutions, together with the luxury of being able to give undivided attention to EU issues. Third, the federations - and still more individual national parties - need to give their parliamentary groups a good deal of flexibility to respond to events and negotiate their way into winning coalitions. Failure to do this may lead lead to the powers of the EP not being deployed in a manner that maximizes the interests of the federation or national party. Fourth, the whole debate about the relative powers of the federations and groups, and the capacity of the one to direct the other, assumes that these are unitary actors. In practice, the groups will enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy precisely because the national parties that make up the federations will usually only be able to degree broad orientations that leave a great deal of detail to be 'filled in' when the groups come to play their legislative role. Any attempt to assert a supervisory role - one in which a federation sets itself up as 'principal' and the group as 'agent'- will almost certainly come to grief as particular national parties will often prefer the group's preferred position to that backed by a majority of the federation.
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