The European People's Party was officially founded as a European political party in 1976. However, the European People's Party Group in the European Parliament has existed in one form or another since June 1953, from the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, making it one of the oldest European-level political groups. It has been the largest political group in the European Parliament since 1999.
History
The Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (the predecessor of the present day European Parliament) first met on 10 September 1952[23] and the first Christian Democratic Group was unofficially formed the next day, with Maan Sassen as president.[15][24] The group held 38 of the 78 seats, two short of an absolute majority.[15][25] On 16 June 1953, the Common Assembly passed a resolution[26] enabling the official formation of political groups; further, on 23 June 1953 the constituent declaration[27] of the group was published and the group was officially formed.[15][25]
EPP share of votes in elections to the Eur. Parliament 1999–2019
The Christian Democrat group was the biggest group at formation, but as time wore on, it lost support and was the second-biggest group by the time of the 1979 elections. As the European Community expanded into the European Union, the dominant centre-right parties in the new member states were not necessarily Christian democratic, and the EPP (European People's Party, the pan-continental political party founded in 1976, to which all group members are now affiliated) feared being sidelined.[28] To counter this, the EPP expanded its remit to cover the centre-right regardless of tradition and pursued a policy of integrating liberal-conservative parties.[28]
This policy led to Greek New Democracy and Spanish People's Party MEPs joining the EPP Group.[28] The British Conservative Party and Danish Conservative People's Party tried to maintain a group of their own, named the European Democrats (ED), but lack of support and the problems inherent in maintaining a small group forced ED's collapse in the 1990s, and its members crossed the floor to join the EPP Group.[28] The parties of these MEPs also became full members of the EPP (with the exception of the British Conservative Party, which did not join) and this consolidation process of the European centre-right continued during the 1990s with the acquisition of members from the Italian party Forza Italia. However, the consolidation was not unalloyed and a split emerged with the Eurosceptic MEPs who congregated in a subgroup within the Group, also called the European Democrats (ED).
Nevertheless, the consolidation held through the 1990s, assisted by the group being renamed the European People's Party – European Democrats (EPP-ED) Group; after the 1999 European elections, the EPP-ED reclaimed its position as the largest group in the Parliament from the Party of European Socialists (PES) Group.
Size was not enough, however: the group did not have a majority. It continued therefore to engage in the Grand Coalition (a coalition with the PES Group, or occasionally the Liberals) to generate the majorities required by the cooperation procedure under the Single European Act.
Meanwhile, the parties in the European Democrats subgroup were growing restless, with the establishment in July 2006 of the Movement for European Reform,[29] and finally left following the 2009 elections, when the Czech Civic Democratic Party and British Conservative Party formed their own right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) group on 22 June 2009, abolishing the European Democrats subgroup from that date. The EPP-ED Group reverted to its original name – the EPP Group – immediately.
7th European Parliament (2009)
In the 7th European Parliament, the EPP Group remained the largest parliamentary group with 275 MEPs. It is currently the only political group in the European parliament to fully represent its corresponding European political party, i.e. the European People's Party. The United Kingdom was the only member state to not be represented in the group; this state of affairs ceased temporarily on 28 February 2018, when two MEPs suspended from the British Conservative Party left the ECR Group and joined the EPP.[30][non-primary source needed] The two MEPs later joined a breakaway political party in the UK, The Independent Group.[31]
8th European Parliament (2014)
Logo of European People's Party Group from 1999 to 2015.
After twelve member parties in the EPP called for Hungary's Fidesz's expulsion or suspension, Fidesz's membership was suspended with a common agreement on 20 March 2019.[32][33] The suspension was applied only to the EPP but not to its group in the Parliament.[34] On 3 March 2021, Fidesz decided to leave the EPP group, after the group's new rules, however still kept their membership in the party.[35][36] On 18 March 2021, Fidesz decided to leave the European People's Party.[37]
The EPP Group is governed by a collective (referred to as the Presidency) that allocates tasks. The Presidency consists of the Group Chair and a maximum of ten Vice-Chairs, including the Treasurer. The day-to-day running of the EPP Group is performed by its secretariat in the European Parliament, led by its Secretary-General. The Group runs its own think-tank, the European Ideas Network, which brings together opinion-formers from across Europe to discuss issues facing the European Union from a centre-right perspective.
Activities performed by the group in the period between June 2004 and June 2008 include monitoring elections in Palestine[52] and Ukraine;[53] encouraging transeuropean rail travel,[54] telecoms deregulation,[55]energy security,[56] a common energy policy,[57] the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Union,[58] partial reform of the CAP[59] and attempts to tackle illegal immigration;[60][61][62] denouncing Russian involvement in South Ossetia;[63][64][65][66][67] supporting the Constitution Treaty[68][69][70] and the Lisbon Treaty;[71][72] debating globalisation,[57][73] relations with China,[74] and Taiwan;[75] backing plans to outlaw Holocaust denial;[76] nominating Anna Politkovskaya for the 2007 Sakharov Prize;[77] expelling Daniel Hannan from the Group;[78] the discussion about whether ED MEPs should remain within EPP-ED or form a group of their own;[79][80][81] criticisms of the group's approach to tackling low turnout for the 2009 elections;[82] the group's use of the two-President arrangement;[83] and the group's proposal to ban the Islamic Burka dress across the EU.
Parliamentary activity profile
Group parliamentary activity profile, 1 August 2004 to 1 August 2008 (see description for sources).
EPP-ED: 659 motions
The debates and votes in the European Parliament are tracked by its website[84] and categorised by the groups that participate in them and the rule of procedure that they fall into. The results give a profile for each group by category and the total indicates the group's level of participation in Parliamentary debates. The activity profile for each group for the period 1 August 2004 to 1 August 2008 in the Sixth Parliament is given on the diagram on the right. The group is denoted in blue.
The website shows the group as participating in 659 motions, making it the third most active group during the period.[citation needed]
Publications
The group produces many publications, which can be found on its website.[85] Documents produced in 2008 cover subjects such as dialogue with the Orthodox Church, study days, its strategy for 2008–09, Euro-Mediterranean relations, and the Lisbon Treaty. It also publishes a yearbook and irregularly publishes a presentation, a two-page summary of the group.
Academic analysis
The group has been characterised as a three-quarters-male group that, prior to ED's departure, was only 80% cohesive and split between centre-right Europhiles (the larger EPP subgroup) and right-wing Eurosceptics (the smaller ED subgroup). The group as a whole is described as ambiguous on hypothetical EU taxes, against taxation, environmental issues, social issues (LGBT rights, abortion, euthanasia) and full Turkish accession to the European Union, and for a deeperFederal Europe, deregulation, the Common Foreign and Security Policy and controlling migration into the EU.[citation needed]
^"Politics this week". The Economist. 23 March 2019. p. 7. Retrieved 24 March 2019. The European People's Party, a grouping of centre-right parties at the European Parliament, voted to suspend Fidesz, Hungary's ruling party, as a protest against what many in the parliament believe are repeated attempts by the government to undermine the rule of law
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