The European Left Party and the 2009 European
Parliamentary Elections
Richard Dunphy (University of Dundee) and Luke March
(University of Edinburgh)
Introduction
Radical left parties (i.e. those that define themselves as being to the left of and not
merely on the left of social democracy) are among the most avowedly internationalist
of all parties, yet they have been among the most reluctant to organise themselves
internationally in the EU arena. Transnational parties (TNPs), (con)federations of
parties at the European level that co-ordinate the work of national political parties and
party groups in the European Parliament (EP), have played an ever more central role
in EU politics, spurred on both by direct elections to the EP since 1979 and EU
legislation since the Maastricht Treaty (1992), which recognises them as a ‘factor for
integration’ and since 2003 includes an increasing element of financing from the EU
general budget.1 However, only in May 2004 did the radical left (hereafter, simply
‘left’) create such a TNP -- The European Left Party (EL).
With the exception of the major communist parties, European left parties have
received relatively little academic attention since the fall of the USSR, although this is
gradually beginning to change.2 However, their international activity has received
virtually no analysis.3 This position was perhaps warranted before 2004. Moreover,
even in its early days, EL appeared a weak organisation, being founded just weeks
before the 2004 European parliament (EP) elections with only a general, lowestcommon-denominator platform that declared it was ‘just a beginning’. However, by
2009, EL fought the EP elections on the basis of a common platform. Moreover,
several of its constituent parties (such as the German Left Party, LP) were polling
strongly in their national party systems and the European economic crisis provided an
arguably propitious backdrop for the return of the left. Although (as detailed below),
EL’s 2009 election performance was below-par, it had by now confounded
expectations of an early demise and emerged as an apparently stable actor within the
EU party system.
Accordingly, the time is ripe for detailed analysis of EL, and to bring it more
squarely into discussion of EU party politics. In particular, much of the study of TNPs
has been influenced by the concept of Europeanisation -- the ‘process of change in
national institutional and policy practices that can be attributed to European
integration’.4 Europeanisation, it is argued, increases the incentives for transnational
party activity at EU level, which in turn promotes new organisational and
programmatic development. The most sophisticated approaches to Europeanisation
see it as a dialectic, in which parties can shape as well as be shaped by European
integration.5 However, what is lacking in such discussion is precisely why and how
different party families can actively shape or contest this EU integration agenda.6 This
is a particularly relevant question for EL, which claims to be the most consistent
challenger to EU integration.
Therefore in this article we focus on the processes of endogenous party
ideological and organisational adaptation to Europeanisation processes, using
interviews and documentary data to concentrate on the interaction of external and
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internal party processes in the evolution of the EL project. Our overall interest is the
degree to which EL has emerged as a consolidated transnational party able to shape
EU politics even to a modest degree. After an overview of the founding, composition
and prehistory of EL, our specific focus is the 2009 elections, which provide a useful
benchmark of EL’s progress to date. We concentrate in particular on the manifesto,
election campaign and its results, asking why these results were only modest, and
what their implications are for EL as a transnational party.
Our conclusions are nuanced. It is undeniable that EL remains a relatively
marginal actor within the EU party system, in large part because of the weakness of
its constituent parties in some larger states of the EU – a weakness graphically
apparent in the 2009 elections. Nevertheless, the party has consolidated significantly,
and now performs some of the basic functions of a transnational party. We will
certainly not argue that EL marks a ‘great leap forward’ in left party transnationalism.
Indeed the obstacles remain formidable, and the ability of EL to shape, rather than be
shaped by Europe, is presently weak. Nevertheless, this consolidation is particularly
remarkable in historical perspective – EL has taken the level and cohesiveness of left
co-operation at EU level to a historical high, albeit from a very low base.
Furthermore, EL demonstrates potential to act, however incrementally, as a further
motor of integration for the European left, a process which may ultimately allow the
left to transform the EU far more effectively than hitherto.
EL from foundation to consolidation
EL was founded in May 2004 in Rome, following an appeal issued by a number of
reform-communist and democratic socialist parties that met in Berlin on 10/11th
January 2004 and took the decision in principle to form a European political party. At
the outset, EL defined itself in broad inclusive 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 (EU) who [were] working together and
establishing various forms of cooperation at all levels of political activity in Europe’. 7
There were 15 founder members of EL. Organisational consolidation was
reflected by the fact that by late 2009, a total of 34 parties and organisations belonged
to EL – 23 as full members and 11 as associate members (see table 1). There was
doubtless a mixture of motives and degrees of clarity and commitment amongst the
founders of EL. Some of the smaller parties may have hoped for an external source of
support, both moral and financial. Some of the parties from eastern and central
Europe may have seen involvement with a 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.8 But, as outlined below, for the
core of founder-members – Synaspismos, the German PDS, the French and Spanish
communist parties and Italy’s Communist Refoundation (PRC) – EL represented a
necessary acceleration of moves towards finding an organisational form that would
enable more concentrated efforts at coordinated policy-making and shared strategic
thinking on the European left in order to combat dominant neoliberalism. As direct
drivers of Europeanisation, the dual deadlines of European Parliament (EP) elections
in June 2004 and introduction of EP-administered funding for European political
parties in July 2004 may have forced the hand of the prime movers behind the EL
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project, encouraging them to move at a speed which some deemed hasty and
controversial.
Several features have potentially hindered organisational coherence from the
outset. First, like the European Green Party, EL defines Europe wider than the EU,
allowing equal-rights membership from parties with little immediate prospect of EU
membership such as Belarus and Moldova. Second, the EL’s members are far from
the complete spectrum of important European left parties. Several such have joined
after founding, but only as observers – e.g. the Cypriot AKEL and Czech KS M, and
several have not joined at all, notably the Greek and Portuguese Communists, Dutch
Socialist Party and most of the Nordic Green Left. Some of their motivations will be
explored below. Third, the picture of consolidation is somewhat obscured by the
presence of numerous micro-parties that have little national relevance in their
constituent countries, such as the Romanian Socialist Alliance, Estonian United Left
Party and Czech Party of Democratic Socialism.
Perhaps most significantly for any discussion of the ‘influence’ of EL is the
division between the left transnational party (EL) and the left EP parliamentary group
-- the Confederal Group of the European Unitary Left/Nordic Green Left
(GUE/NGL). In most TNPs there are differences of function and even friction
between the TNP (focussed on policy co-ordination) and the EP group (focussed on
policy implementation), particularly since the Green and Christian democrat EP
groups include other party families (the regionalists and conservatives respectively).
Nevertheless, EL’s founding aim to incorporate as broad a range of left-wing parties
as possible has been hindered by the fact that in 2004-8 it encompassed just 28 of the
42 members of the GUE/NGL group. The GUE/NGL included a number of
significant parties – principally the Portuguese and Greek communists, Dutch
Socialist Party, Swedish Left Party and Irish Sinn Féin – that have not joined EL to
date. In no way, therefore, might the GUE/NGL be regarded simply or even mainly as
the European Parliamentary group of EL.
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Table 1: EL members and observers 2004-2010
Country
Austria
Founding members (May
2004)
Communist Party of Austria
Belarus
Belgium
Members (February 2010)
Communist Party of Austria
Belarusian United Left Party
Communist Party (Wallonia)
Communist Party (Flanders)
Cyprus
Czech
Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Party of Democratic
Socialism
Party of Democratic Socialism
Estonian Social Democratic
Labour Party (later, United
Left Party)
Estonian United Left Party
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Italy
French Communist Party
Party of Democratic
Socialism, Germany (later,
Left Party)
Coalition of the Left,
Progress and the Movements
(Synaspismos)
Workers’ Party (later,
Hungarian Communist
Workers’ Party)
Communist Refoundation
Party
Luxembourg
Moldova
Poland
Portugal
Romania
San Marino
Communist Party of Finland
Left Alliance
French Communist Party
Left Party
Alternative Left
Progressive Party of The Working
People
New Cyprus Party
Communist Party of Bohemia and
Moravia
Red Green Alliance
German Communist Party
Coalition of Left, of
Movements and Ecology
(Synaspismos)
Workers' Party of Hungary
2006
A.K.O.A. Renovative Communist and
Ecological Left
Communist Refoundation Party
Party of Italian Communists
European Left
The Left
Party of Communists of the
Republic of Moldova
Young Socialists
Socialist Alliance Party
Left Bloc
Socialist Alliance Party
Communist Refoundation of
San Marino
Communist Party of Slovakia
Communist Refoundation of
San Marino
Spain
Communist Party of Spain
United Left
United and Alternative Left
(Catalunya)
Communist Party of Spain
United Left
United and Alternative Left
(Catalunya)
Switzerland
Turkey
23
Swiss Party of Labour
Swiss Party of Labour
Freedom and Solidarity Party
23
Slovakia
Observers (February 2010)
15
Communist Party of Slovakia
11
Source: From the statute of the European Left Party, available online at www.europeanleft.org/nc/english/about_the_el/documents/detail/zurueck/documents/artikel/statute-of-the-party-of-the-european-left-el/ accessed on 17
December 2009; List of Members of European Left Party, available online at http://www.europeanleft.org/english/about_the_el/member_parties/, accessed 11 February 2010
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Overall, in its early years, EL seemed to be concentrating more on the quantity
than the quality of its membership. This however, can be seen as what Hanley
describes as the important ‘decantation’ function of transnational parties – they clarify
party family identity simply by sorting out who is allowed to belong.9 In this respect,
EL has attempted a deliberately inclusive, non-sectarian strategy, which may not be
optimal in terms of quickly crystallising party identity, but has certainly underscored
its self-image as a flexible and decentralised organisation
Still, there was some evidence of organisational consolidation. In particular,
EL developed an innovative range of activities as a bottom-up ‘network party’. For
example, it offered individual membership and ‘friendship circles’ outside its
constituent parties. Furthermore, it contains a growing number of working groups
(eleven in 2009) intending to ‘open politics to citizens’, specialising in areas such as
trade unions, gender (‘EL-Fem’), LBGT issues, local politics and climate change.
Since 2006, EL has also run a Summer University for around 200 activists to discuss
topics such as the financial crisis, Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, Latin America
and EU Elections. EL has close links with the Transform! network of European thinktanks such as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (affiliated to the German LP), Espaces
Marx, France and Transform Italia which co-ordinate dialogue between European left
activists, particularly those participating in the European Social Forums, the principal
European collocation of the global justice movement.10
The troubled history of left transnationalism
In reality, the EL project was a long time in the making. Both EL in particular and the
hesitant transnationalism of the contemporary European left in general have their
roots in a long-standing 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 EC/EU as a capitalist, anti-Soviet institution
that had to be opposed outright. Several, pro-Soviet communist parties – such as the
Portuguese, the Greek Communist Party (Exterior) and, indeed, the French –
remained vehemently hostile to their countries’ membership of the EU, advocating
withdrawal from the EU, national protectionism, and ‘national roads to socialism’.
However, from the late 1960s, ‘Eurocommunist’ parties such as the Italian and
Spanish communist parties and the Greek Communist Party (Interior) – later renamed
Synaspismos – gradually came to hold a more positive evaluation of the EU, seeing it
as a project that could be subverted and reformed from within, and turned into a
forum for democracy, social justice and progress, led by a reinvigorated European left
that acted together strategically instead of retreating behind national barriers.
Moreover, European unity was increasingly seen as a potential antidote to the
bipolarism of the Cold War world.11
By the end of the 1980s, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), partly under the
influence of the leading federalist thinker and former EU Commissioner, Altiero
Spinelli, who was elected an MEP in 1979 on the PCI lists, had drifted towards a
much ‘weaker’ reformism vis-à-vis the EU than the Spanish Communist Party
(PCE);12 indeed, the Italians often seemed to see European integration as an end-goal
in itself. Moreover, the French Communist Party (PCF) was perhaps less vocal in
calling for EU withdrawal than its Portuguese or Greek sister parties. But the
fundamental distinction between what we might regard as pan-European and national
strategies for socialism remained, a distinction so stark that it prevented the
Communists and Allies Group in the EP ever formulating a common EP election
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manifesto. From 1989, the Communists and Allies Group de facto split, becoming
two new groups of MEPs – the Left Unity Group, led by the PCF, PCP and KKE, and
the United European Left Group, led by the PCI, PCE and Synaspismos.
The demise of ‘actually existing socialism’ and developments on the left in the
early 1990s complicated matters further. The transformation of the majority wing of
the PCI into a social democratic party saw its eventual absorption into the Socialist
Group in the EP, leaving its Eurocommunist Spanish and Greek allies (and Italian
MEPs who remained with the newly-formed Party of Communist Refoundation)
without sufficient numbers to constitute their own group. After the 1994 EP elections,
a marriage of convenience was contracted between the ‘Europeanists’ and the
‘nationalists’ within the ranks of what remained of western European communism,
which saw the birth of the European United Left (GUE) group in the EP. This was
later enlarged by the addition of Nordic red-green MEPs and renamed the Confederal
Group of the European United Left/ Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL).
Within the GUE/NGL, fundamental differences between parties that continued
to display an uncompromising hostility towards all things ‘supranational’ and parties
that continued to eschew as regressive and pointless any recourse to nationalism or
protectionism continued unabated. The PRC might have been considerably further to
the left than the old PCI, and stronger in its criticism of the course and direction of
European integration, but it remained determinedly anti-nationalist and anti-Stalinist.
The PCE and Synaspismos retained a broadly similar perspective. They were joined in
the ‘Europeanist’ camp by the German PDS-turned-Left Party which, for obvious
historical reasons of its own, had little reason to believe either in a pan-German
nationalism or the progressive potential of a strong German state. Increasingly these
parties would also be joined by the PCF which, having participated in coalition
government with Lionel Jospin’s Socialist Party at a time when the Maastricht and
Amsterdam Treaties were enforced, and having suffered continuing serious electoral
and political decline, had lost all credibility as a serious bulwark of Communist
euroscepticism.
Yet neither the GUE/NGL group in the EP, nor the New European Left Forum
(NELF), which was launched in 1991 and provided for loose gatherings of left-wing
parties twice-yearly to discuss common concerns, were intended for the task of
forging a common European left strategy or shared identity – quite the reverse, since
both deliberately eschewed anything that smacked of Comintern-era internationalism
and promoted decentralised networking. But supranationalism was increasingly
deemed essential by the ‘Europeanists’ if the left was to have any convincing role to
play in an era of resurgent neoliberal globalisation. After 2001, the Bush
administration’s drive for US global hegemony and dominance over eastern Europe,
as well as the EU itself; the growing militarisation with looming war in Iraq and
Afghanistan; and a sense of an ever-worsening environmental crisis; were all factors
that led the ‘Europeanists’ to conclude that a new momentum was needed. Indeed,
these very international developments would deepen divisions between the
communist and left parties.
According to Panos Trigazis, International Secretary of Synaspismos, speaking
at a conference on the EL project organised by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in
Warsaw in October 2003, the parties behind the EL project had concluded that
enlargement of the EU to the east had to be supported because, although enlargement
had the blessing of the US and Western establishment, it remained the case that the
accession countries would be even less able to resist American influence outside the
EU.13 More favourable conditions for class and social struggles would also exist in
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these countries inside, rather than outside, the EU. According to Trigazis, the
priorities facing the European left in general were:14
• To give fresh momentum to the anti-war movement and the movement of
global resistance to neoliberal globalisation;
• To give a new momentum to European integration that the forces of both the
right wing and social democracy could not give;
• To articulate a pan-European defence of the European social model, ‘which is
at the heart of a European identity’;
• To free the European integration process from “Euro-Atlanticism” and from
President Bush’s calls for ‘a united Europe under an expanded NATO’.
The struggle to address these priorities required a new form of cooperation that went
beyond the looser forms represented by the NELF and the GUE/NGL which,
nevertheless, would retain a useful role. However, those left forces committed to
providing a Europe-wide response to the challenges of neoliberal globalisation and
the crisis of capitalism would have to forge ahead towards ‘an upgraded, more
effective intervention that will cover the whole spectrum of developments.’ For
Helmut Ettinger of the German Left Party, ‘the alternative to today’s EU cannot be
withdrawal into national quarters.’ For the parties that formed the EL, loose-knit and
informal, piecemeal, cooperation was no longer enough: they had ‘a strong common
urge to pool their forces to influence the course of European events more strongly.’15
Naturally, not all the forces of the European left greeted the birth of EL
approvingly – or expressed an interest in participating. The Nordic Green Left parties,
traditionally suspicious of the European Union formed instead the Nordic Green Left
Alliance (NGLA) in Reykjavík, Iceland in February 2004. The NGLA was
emphatically not a new party, but merely a co-operation between independent and
sovereign parties that sought to reinforce existing regional co-operation -- although
the Finnish Left Alliance (as well as the Finnish Communist Party) eventually joined
EL in summer 2009. The Dutch Socialist Party, which has a strongly Euro-critical
position, generally opposes greater co-ordination of EU elections or the funding of
EU-wide political parties, leading it to regard the EL as unnecessary.16 In addition,
although the SP maintains strong relations with the German Left Party and promotes
its own forum for inter-party cooperation, it doubts the utility of a European party to
which, in its view, too many electorally insignificant micro-parties belong.17 Finally,
some parties of mainly Trotskyist inspiration had launched the European AntiCapitalist Left (EACL) in Lisbon in 2000 to contest further EU integration. The
EACL was a potential rival for EL, which many of its members regarded as
essentially a reformist, social democratic sell-out; however, few of its component
parties gained much electoral support. Many of its more important members (e.g.
Portuguese Left Bloc and the Left Party of Luxembourg) and observers (PRC and
Synaspismos) also joined EL, which weakened the EACL’s independent appeal. The
really trenchant criticism of EL came from more conservative communist parties that
remained faithful to Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism and ‘national roads to socialism’.
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The European Left Party: - an ‘EU Left Party’?
Perhaps the harshest criticism of the proposal to build EL came from the Greek
Communist Party (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
Synaspismos and the other forces involved of seeking to ‘keep open the prospect of
collaboration in center-left co-management governments’. 18 For good measure, the
KKE added that ‘Developments to date show that it is not only in Greece but
everywhere that the closer one is to center-left scenario [sic], the more deeply one is
identified with the “European Left Party”’. The KKE alleged 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 European Left Party and ‘the rest’, and creating
internal divisions within parties. The reason for this nefarious operation was allegedly
to benefit from EU financing.
The KKE claimed that EU regulations meant that EL was, in effect, a puppet
of the EU. Citing Regulation (EC) 2004/2003 on the rules governing the funding of
European political parties, the KKE argued that this implied that EL had abandoned
from the outset all fundamental criticism of the direction of the European integration
process. Under the Regulation, in order to qualify for funding, European parties must
show that they are committed to ‘the principles on which the European Union is
founded’ and submit a statement of their accounts for inspection by the European
parliament. KKE interpreted this as meaning that criticism of EU policy towards
countries such as Cuba would be abandoned and that EL would be ‘completely
bound…. This is a parody of a party even in bourgeois democratic terms. The only
thing that will remain finally is loyalty and commitment to the imperialist centre of
the EU, that has even to be proved in practice!’
The KKE denunciation further accused EL of lacking the ability to mount a
critique of the proposed EU Constitution or indeed of any recent developments:
‘Words like Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, EMU, European army and imperialism
have been relegated to the “fires of hell”.’ Instead, EL would be used to disarm any
independent opposition to the EU and to bolster the status quo. Finally, EL was
accused of promoting the ‘dissolution and liquidation’ of sovereign national parties
and their replacement with ‘currents at the European level’.
A year later, in declining an invitation to attend as observers the EL’s first
congress in Athens, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) made some similar
criticisms, albeit couched in much more diplomatic and less polemical language.
Stressing its ‘close relations of friendship, cooperation and mutual solidarity with the
majority of the ELP member Parties’, and its desire to continue to enjoy good bilateral
and multilateral relations with these parties, the PCP insisted that it could not snub the
KKE by attending the Athens congress. Its ‘serious reservations and disagreements’
with the work methods and ideological and political content of the EL had intensified
since the EL’s launch. The PCP 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’ amongst Communist and other
left-wing forces.19
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Nor was EL regarded as a boon by all left parties in Eastern Europe. The
Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KS M) raised vehement
objections. These were primarily ideological (KS M denounced the allegedly blanket
anti-Stalinism of EL’s statutes, which condemn ‘undemocratic, Stalinist practices and
crimes’ and preferred to talk of ‘anti-democratic abuses’). The party raised practical
issues too, arguing that EL created new dividing lines in Europe by excluding large
Eastern allies such as the Russian Communist Party. Ultimately, EL rejected the
KS M’s initiatives. Particularly given the party’s domestic strength (polling 18 per
cent in 2002), it might have been expected to follow the KKE and PCP in rejecting
EL altogether. However, it remained an observer member, a decision probably
motivated by internal reasons; although the KS M is often regarded as one Europe’s
larger ‘orthodox’ and Euro-rejectionist communist parties, it is significantly divided.
The dominant group are the traditionalist ‘conservatives’ who are largely
unapologetic about their Soviet-era past, see their natural allies as the Greek,
Portuguese, Russian and even Chinese communists and regard the EU as a ‘neoliberal
plot’. However, so-called ‘neo-communists’ have increasingly looked towards the
relatively moderate German LP and orientated themselves towards ‘Europeanist’
positions which envisage a more constructive approach to the EU.20
Finally, we may note the statement issued by the leadership of the Hungarian
Communist Workers’ Party in April 2009, announcing its decision to leave the EL, of
which it had been a founder member (the tiny HCWP is the only party to leave EL
since its creation). The HCWP denounced EL’s condemnation of the Soviet invasion
of Hungary in 1956 (which the Kadarist HCWP continues to defend), and accused EL
of being ‘a party of the European Union’ which concentrated on the problems of
Western Europe. It accused the EL of inviting into its ranks ‘parties which have
nothing in common with communist ideas, and in some cases are even enemies of
communism’. It alleged that the political line of EL was decided by parties which had
representation in the European Parliament and that since the second EL congress in
2007 this line had increasingly been about promoting a ‘common European culture’.
‘We want to liquidate capitalism; the European Left wants to make it better.’ The EL
was a ‘reformist’ party which ‘helps to strengthen the “democratic” image of the
European Union, the European Parliament, and the capitalist system generally.’
Against this vision of betrayal the HCWP rolled out the stock invocations of
Marxism-Leninism, Proletarian Internationalism, and the vision of a Hungarian
people that awaited ‘clear positions’ from their communists.21
It’s perhaps tempting to dismiss outright the criticisms of parties which if not
neo-Stalinist are at least Stalinoid (in terms of demonstrating uncritical sympathy
towards ‘actually existing socialism’). Nevertheless, their critique goes to the heart of
the problematic we identified at the outset – does the Europeanisation of the left, and
its increased pressures towards transnational co-ordination and convergence mean that
the EL is only capable of being transformed by Europe rather than transforming it?
These parties certainly think so: the common thrust of their allegations is that 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 in
essence an ‘EU Left Party`.
That EL is a reformist party is probably not 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 to
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be sure, but are nevertheless wedded to the parliamentary road to socialism. That 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
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. What
concerns us here is the allegation that EL, by virtue of being constituted as a European
party under EU regulations governing the financing of such parties, is de facto a party
of the EU establishment. Is such a view justified?
European political parties that meet certain conditions have qualified for
funding from the European Parliament (EP) since July 2004.22 An operating grant,
which can cover up to 85 per cent of the expenditure of a party, is paid; its size is
determined in large part by the number of MEPs the party has won at the most recent
EP elections. This does have political implications for the EL. For example, it
explains why the party is anxious to ‘keep on board’ as observers, parties with MEPs
such as the Cypriot AKEL and the Czech KS M, which have reservations about
joining EL as full members. However, the hard-line communist critics of EL almost
certainly exaggerate considerably the extent to which the rules on funding determinate
the character and ideology of parties. European legislation may recognise that parties
formed at the European 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 eurosceptic 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 case, that this is a commitment to a
particular interpretation of ‘liberty, democracy ..., etc.’, which might rule out
solidarity with a one-party socialist state such as Cuba, has hardly borne fruit, given
that EL has several times demanded an end to the US-imposed embargo and the
opening of EU-Cuba dialogue ‘in the political, economical and cultural fields’.23
In any case, the 2009 European elections manifesto of EL, to which we now
turn our attention, contained much that was strongly critical of the current direction of
European integration and of capitalism in general.
The 2009 EP election common platform24
As one of the declared primary aims of the European Left is to facilitate a much more
effective process of shared left party policy formulation and strategic planning at the
EU level, the 2009 elections to the European Parliament offer a useful starting point
in assessing how far EL has succeeded to date in realising its objectives. In
comparison, the 2004 EP election manifesto was released too soon after the party’s
birth to offer a realistic assessment of anything. 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.’25
In contrast, EL’s common platform for 2009, 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. The platform 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
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free circulation of capital, the liberalisation and privatisation of public services, and
the status and mission of the European Central Bank.’ It reaffirmed opposition to the
Lisbon Treaty as encapsulating ‘undemocratic and unsocial policies’ and called
instead for strengthening of 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 platform 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 how public services are run, deteriorations 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 statutes of the ECB should be changed
to allow the European Parliament 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 platform pledged EL to
fight against the working time directive extending working time up to 65 hours per
week. A maximum of 40 hours was a realistic immediate target with 35 hours a
further target. A European minimum wage set at 60% of the national average wage
was sought.
The platform sought a reinforcement of immigrants’ rights with no expulsions
of immigrants. 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, etc. A commitment was given to replace the European Union Defence
Agency with a disarmament agency. The platform committed EL to the dissolution of
NATO and the prevention of any new military blocs. NATO was seen as performing
an increasingly negative role, keeping European policy subservient to that of the
USA. 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 EL from other forces on the anticapitalist left, the platform declared that ‘EL stands for the further enlargement of the
European Union, and for a stable all-European 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.’ 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.
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The European Court of Justice’s recent decision restricting workers’ and trade
union rights were 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 platform 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.
All in all, the platform mounted a strong critique of the current direction of EU
policy in most fields of life, whilst equally making it clear that the alternative sought
by EL was not a retreat to nationalism or protectionism – or a recourse to vague talk
about a ‘people’s Europe’; but a series of concrete reforms of the existing EU
institutions, procedures and practices which, it was thought, could have the
cumulative effect of reconstructing the EU from within.
The platform in comparative perspective
The emerging political identity of EL becomes clearer if we compare the 2009
electoral common platform with two other documents -- the common manifesto of the
European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL) and the Joint Statement appeal issued by hardline communist parties such as the Greek and Portuguese parties. A word of caution is
necessary because some parties – such as Portugal’s Left Bloc – signed both the EL
common platform and the EACL common manifesto; and some of the communist
parties belonging to EL sought to maintain good relations with the Portuguese
Communist Party by signing a joint appeal with that party and some others (but not
the Greek Communist Party).
The common manifesto of the EACL is more stridently opposed to the EU in
principle than the EL common platform.26 In what amounts to little more than a list of
bullet points, expressed in rhetorical form, EACL argued for much that was also in the
EL common platform (although with much less policy detail) but also called for the
immediate closure of all offshore banking, for ‘a break with capitalism and its logic’
and for parties signing the manifesto to pledge themselves to ‘refuse any support for
or participation in social liberal governments with social democratic parties or the
centre-left’. This contrasts sharply with EL’s ambition to use a strengthened
GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament to campaign to draw the social
democrats (or a left segment thereof) into an alliance against neoliberalism.
The Joint Statement issued by the Greek and Portuguese communist parties
(and 19 other mainly tiny and politically insignificant hard-line communist and
workers’ parties) amounted to a much more traditionalist and rejectionist statement –
which high-lighted the extent of policy differences with EL in EU matters.27 This
document urged workers to engage in an all-out rejection of the EU – ‘don’t await
solutions from the EU, it is part of the problem, it has solutions which serve only the
oligarchy.’ The EU was identified as the ‘choice of capital. It promotes measures in
favour of the monopolies, the concentration and centralization of capital.’ Whilst
many of the problems with EU policy were as identified by EL – the extension of the
working week to 65 hours, the intrusion of markets into public services, the
precarious nature of work, attacks on wages and pensions – the conclusion drawn by
the traditionalist communists was a rejection of EU membership: ‘The European
Union is a pillar of the new imperialist order, of capitalist globalisation. It supports
the massacre of Palestinians by Israel. It participates actively in aggressive plans
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against peoples, especially against the countries of the Mediterranean, of Africa, the
Middle East, and Latin America. It participates in the arms race, the establishment of
the “anti-missile shield”, the return of the dogma of the first nuclear strike. It aligns
with the USA and NATO. Militarism is integral to its structure.’ The Joint Statement
called for a struggle to defend ‘the right of every people to choose their own path of
development. This right includes the right of disassociation from the multifaceted
dependences from EU and NATO {sic} as well as the socialist option.’ It concluded
with a call to voters to reject any forces that ‘support and defend the EU’ and to vote
‘No to the EU of monopolies and militarism.’
As can be seen from even this short examination of the three main policy
statements of the left parties, fundamental differences in EU policy separate EL from
the main representatives of the neo-Trotskyist and neo-Stalinist traditions, despite the
fact that specific problems identified by the three groups are often similar. Whereas
EL, in what is by far the most detailed of the three policy statements, sought to chart a
way forward for an alternative vision of how the EU might develop, the EACL
statement had little to say on this front and the Joint Statement of the hard-line
communist parties explicitly rejected EU membership and eschewed talk of reform of
the EU from within as at best an illusion.
The campaign
The EL Executive Board met in Berlin in January 2009 to decide the shape of the
campaign for the 2009 European elections. In essence, of course, elections to the
European Parliament tend to be national elections and each party has to fight on the
basis of whichever national political priorities dominate the campaign in each member
state. However, EL attempted to add a pan-European dimension by highlighting a
series of policy commitments contained in the joint manifesto at rallies held in various
European cities, including Strasbourg, Rome, Tallinn, Paris, Luxembourg, Brussels,
Helsinki, Florence, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Lyon and Prague.28 Advantage was also
taken of the opportunities for joint propaganda provided by traditional workers’ rallies
on 1st May and at days of action called by European trade unions on 14-16 May.
Furthermore, party activists distributed leaflets and publicity concerning the common
manifesto at days of social protest – against the bail-out of the banks, for example.
EL’s campaign priorities were defined by Helmut Scholz of the German Left
Party as: employment policy, fighting job insecurity (‘precarity’), climate policy and
energy security, rejection of EU foreign and security policy militarisation as well as
opposition to sending EU troops outside Europe on operations such as Iraq and
Afghanistan, education and health policy, measures to help defend the livelihood of
the rural communities, strengthening consumer protection, and rejection of restrictive
migration and asylum policies.29
In general, EL election rallies tended to be small affairs, each attracting on
average several hundred keen activists rather than thousands; and they were almost
certainly aimed at the party faithful rather than the general public. However, they did
have a definite purpose: to impart a common sense of belonging and to raise
awareness on the part of activists that European elections should be about more than
just local or national issues. This was done in several ways. First, by the constant
reiteration at rallies that members were part of a pan-European party of more than
400,000 members, ‘from Estonia to Portugal, from Cyprus to France’ as Lothar Bisky
told the Paris rally.30 This was clearly intended to provide political support to the
smallest of EL’s national components such as the Estonian United Left Party. Second,
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at all rallies, political leaders from other national components of EL were present –
for example, Italian representatives in Tallinn; German, Greek and Czech leaders in
Paris; French, German and Spanish leaders in Brussels etc. The exposure of key
activists to political speeches by comrades from other national components of EL
again emphasised the pan-European nature of the party’s politics and mission. Finally,
the constant repetition of key themes from the common manifesto – the struggle for a
shorter working week and a higher minimum wage, employment creation, the need to
reject the Lisbon Treaty and have a European Constitution voted on by all the peoples
of the EU, opposition to militarism and racism, support for stronger environmental
legislation – again raised activists’ awareness of the positive agenda for an alternative
EU that the party sought to put across. The intention was to use the campaign to begin
the long process of forging a new European political identity for the party, not only on
the part of key elites who might in any case meet at summits of the EL Executive
Board but on the part of thousands of vitally important party activists.
The outcome
Clearly, the outcome of the 2009 European elections was disappointing for EL – as it
was, of course, for most left and centre-left forces across Europe in an economic crisis
that might have been expected to favour them. With the important exception of the
Greens (who saw their vote share increase by two to 7.5 per cent) the elections saw a
victory for the centre-right across the EU as a whole, together with a strengthening of
the far right in a number of countries. Left parties saw their aggregate vote declining
from 5. 2% to 4.8% and the EP’s GUE/NGL group dropped from 42 members to 35.
Nevertheless, according to EL Board and Secretariat member Stelios Pappas, the
outcome saw MEPs within the GUE/NGL who belong to full or associate member
parties of EL decline only marginally from 28 to 27, an outcome that was ‘as
expected’ and ‘not bad’.31 Nevertheless, the performance appears somewhat worse
than Pappas claims. In fact, of the 35 GUE/NGL MEPs, just 24 now belong to EL full
and associate member parties. The full results for EL member parties are in Table
Two; as can be seen, several components polled virtually no votes whatsoever.
What explains these poor results? Pappas implied that if several key national
components had sorted out their internal difficulties then EL might have returned a
strengthened team to Brussels.32 For example, the split in the Italian left cost the EL
perhaps five MEPs; there were divisions in Greece, where some members of the left
coalition, Syriza, questioned the common European identity that is central to
Synaspismos (and of course EL) and subscribed to the much more Euro-rejectionist
EACL agenda outlined above; finally, in Spain, Izquierda Unida members were
divided over relations with the Socialists, which also may have led to the loss of seats.
Certainly, given the national content of EU election campaigns, smaller EP party
groups are especially vulnerable to sharp fluctuations in national party support.
Furthermore, the extent of the left’s ‘defeat’ is exaggerated by the overall cut in MEP
numbers (from 785 in 2004 to 736 in 2009). Moreover, the presence of significant
internal problems in a few key parties obscures the fact that several EL members
(German Left Party, PCF, Syn and Portuguese Left Bloc) and associate members (e.g.
AKEL) did increase their vote share.
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Table Two
EL component
country
Austria: Communist Party
Belgium: CP Wallonia
Cyprus: AKEL
Czech Republic: KS M
Estonia: United Left Party
Finland: CP
Finland: Left Alliance (a)
France: Front de Gauche (b)
Germany: Die Linke
Germany: Communist Party
Greece: Syriza
Italy: PRC/PdCI
Luxembourg: Dei Lenk
Poland: Young Socialists
Portugal: Left Bloc
Romania: PAS
Slovakia: Communist Party
Spain: IU-ICV-EUiA (c)
Average
in home
% of vote
MEPs elected
0.67
0.31
34.9
14.18
0.83
0.50
5.9
6.0
7.5
0
0
2
4
0
0
0
5
8
0
1
0
0
0
3
0
0
2
4.7
3.38
3.41
0.02
10.72
1.65
3.73
5.47
Key:
(a) The Finnish Left Alliance joined EL in late June 2009, just after the EP elections
(b) Front de Gauche included the Communist Party (PCF) and the recently formed Left Party (PG)
(c) One of the Spanish MEPs – from the ICV – chose to sit with the Greens, not the GUE/NGL Group to
which members of EL are committed.
Source: adapted by the authors from www.european-left.org/english/elections_2009/results/;
http://polling2009.belgium.be/en/eur/results/results_graph_EUL92094.html;
http://pxweb2.stat.fi/Dialog/Saveshow.asp.
In general, the elections might show that the right benefits most when
economic crisis increases voters’ need for ‘reassurance rather than radicalism’.33 This
tendency was particularly accentuated when key European centre-right leaders such as
Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel criticised neoliberalism and spearheaded
proposals for greater market regulation. The co-option of its traditional agenda was
something the whole left struggled with. As EL chair Lothar Bisky argued: ‘Nobody
votes for you just because you’ve known things from the start’.34 However, a
contrasting argument contends that EP elections are a perfect stage for smaller, less
mainstream parties to punish national governments.35 If this is so, the poor
performance of the left relative to the far right and above all the Greens demonstrates
a troubling failure to exploit opportunities. The Greens in particular appeared better
able than the left to articulate a ‘progressive’ protest vote, and remain an alternative
for more moderate and pro-European elements of the left. For example, the red-green
Danish Socialist People’s Party, which from 1979-1994 and 1999-2004 sat with the
left in the EP and in the 2009 elections polled over 15 percent of the vote, has since
2004 sat with the European Greens-European Free Alliance group. Moreover, one of
two MEPs elected for the Spanish IU also chose to sit with the Greens in 2009.
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Furthermore, as table 2 graphically shows, with the sole exception of the Czech
KS M, EL has no viable national electoral presence in former Eastern Europe.
Certainly one should never have expected the EL manifesto to make a
dramatic, immediately visible difference to the electoral fortunes of its constituent
parties. The simple lack of a fully-developed European party system means that such
a direct effect cannot be demonstrated even for the largest, best-resourced
transnational parties for whom national concerns remain a very definite priority.36 For
example, the weakness of the left in Eastern Europe is in large part a lasting legacy of
‘actually existing socialism’ that perhaps only the passing of time and generational
change will fully eradicate – it is certainly not eradicable (in the short-term at least)
by EL actions.
Nevertheless, it is fully possible to evaluate EL’s achievements to date more
positively, even if perhaps not as optimistically as EL chair Bisky, who regarded
production of the first common EL manifesto in 2009 as a ‘minor sensation.’37 The
emergence of the common manifesto is certainly a big step in historical terms (after
all, it has taken 40 years of left co-operation in the EP to produce it). Moreover, the
election manifesto allows EL now to perform several of the basic functions of a TNP:
at the very least a ‘coordinating nexus’ and ‘socialisation conduit’ able to incentivise
greater ideological convergence.38 Particularly for its smaller members, it thereby
becomes a vital ideological and organisational lifeline, involving knowledge transfer
from larger parties to smaller. Overall, the common manifesto is a significant factor in
resolving questions of party identity and belonging – an important function because
the very existence of a (radical) left party family as such has been in doubt since
1989, if not before..
Conclusion
EL shares some of the enduring weaknesses of more established TNPs -- above all
that, however co-ordinated and consolidated, they simply cannot directly ensure
electoral success for member parties at nationally-focussed EP elections, especially
when (as in EL’s case) several of these parties have long-standing internal problems.
Overall, EL remains a relatively small actor within the EU party system, such
as this even exists. Moreover, we have outlined numerous problems EL faces. Most
significant are enduring fundamental disagreements among the left over of the nature
and purpose of the EU, and thereby co-operation at EU level. Certainly (except with
the partial exception of the KS M) the neo-Stalinists’ critique has barely moderated
in tone or substance its absolute opposition to European integration. Most
significantly of all, EL’s failure to date to attract several large left parties whose
opposition to the EU is closer to its own core positions and far less ideological than
the neo-Stalinists’ – for example, the Dutch Socialist Party, the Swedish Left Party
and the Danish Socialist People’s Party - clearly weakens its ability to influence left
politics across the EU in general and its policy impact in the EP in particular. In this
context, it is worth noting that not only did the size of the GUE/NGL group diminish
after the 2009 elections, but EL’s proportion of that group increased only marginally
(from 67% to 68%) –only the far right EP group has a greater proportion of members
unaligned to a TNP.
Nevertheless, even if starting from a low base, the level of left co-operation in
the EU has reached a degree unthinkable in 1989. EL now performs some of the
basic, essential functions of a transnational party, which at the very least lays the
groundwork for a deepening of this transnationalism. Certainly, EL leaders
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increasingly aspire to this. That EL chair Lothar Bisky became head of the GUE/NGL
group in 2009 in itself marked a new stage in co-ordination between these two bodies.
Bisky voiced aspirations for EL to 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’, whilst still preserving GUE/NGL’s pluralism.39 Of course, the left’s
own transnational experiences weigh heavily against this aspiration, but Marx’s
modern heirs now have the perfect opportunity to test his expectation that the past
weighs ‘like an Alp’ on efforts to make one’s own history.
1
E.g. Simon Hix and Christopher Lord, Political Parties in the European Union (London: Macmillan,
1997); David Hanley, Beyond the Nation-State: Parties in the Era of European Integration
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008).
2
E.g. Luke March and Cas Mudde ‘The European radical left: Decline and adaptation’ Comparative
European Politics, 3:1, 2005: 23-49; Tim Bale and Richard Dunphy, ‘In from the cold: left parties,
policy, office and votes in advanced liberal democracies since 1989’, paper presented at a PSA
workshop on radical left parties and government participation, 2007; Jonathan Olsen et al., Left Parties
in National Governments (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).
3
For one exception see Hanley, Beyond the Nation-State.
4
Simon Hix and Klaus Goetz, ‘Introduction: European integration and national political systems’, West
European politics, 23:4, 2000: 27.
5
E.g. Robert Ladrech, ‘Europeanisation and political parties’, Party Politics, 8:4, 2002: 389-403.
6
For one exception, see Elizabeth Bomberg and Neil Carter, ‘The Greens in Brussels: Shaping or
Shaped?’, European Journal of Political Research, 45, 2006, 99-125.
7
‘Statute of the Party of the European Left’. Available online at http://www.europeanleft.org/nc/english/about_the_el/documents/detail/zurueck/documents/artikel/statute-of-the-party-ofthe-european-left-el, (accessed 22 December 2009).
8
According to EL Board and Secretariat member, Stelios Pappas, even such a prominent figure as
Lothar Bisky, chairman of the German Left Party and (from 2007) of EL itself, saw PDS-Left Party
involvement in EL as a `pathway to the West’. Interview with Stelios Pappas, 27 November 2009.
9
Hanley, Beyond the Nation-State, 202.
10
For the Transform! Network, see http://www.transform-network.net/.
11
For a full discussion of these differences see Richard Dunphy, Contesting Capitalism? Left Parties
and European Integration (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
12
Se Dunphy (2004), pp.4-7 for a discussion of ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ reformism on the left with
respect to the institutions of the EU and the direction of European integration.
13
Parties such as the PCP and the KKE strongly opposed the eastern enlargement of the EU.
14
Panos Trigazis, `The Process towards a European Party of the Left’, available online at
www.rosalux.de/cms/index.php?id=10354 (accessed 17 December 2009).
15
Helmut Ettinger, `On the Foundation of the Party of the European Left (EL), available online at
www.rosalux.de/cms/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/themen/leftparties/pdfs/ettinger_FoundationEL_e.pdf
(accessed 16 December 2009).
16
‘SP opposes payment of subsidies to European political parties’, available online at
http://international.sp.nl/bericht/21847/071130sp_opposes_payment_of_subsidies_to_european_political_parties.html (accessed 19 February 2010).
17
Interview with Hans van Heijningen, general secretary of the Dutch Socialist Party, 29 August 2005.
18
‘With the people’s struggles or with the Party of the “EU-Left”?’, available online at
www.inter.kke.gr/News/2004new/2004-02-el/ (accessed 14 December 2009).
19
‘First Congress of the European Left Party – Reply to an Invitation’, available online at
www.international.pcp.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=37 (accessed 17
December 2009).
20
Vladimir Handl, ‘Choosing between China and Europe? Virtual inspiration and policy transfer in the
programmatic development of the Czech Communist Party’, Journal of Communist Studies and
Transition Politics, 21:1, 2005: 123-141.
21
‘Hungarian CWP, Withdrawal from the Party of the European Left’, available online at
www.inter.kke.gr/News/2009news/2009-04-hungarian (accessed 17 December 2009).
22
The legal basis for the funding is Article 191 of the Treaty establishing the European Community
and the rules governing funding are laid down is Regulation (EC) 2004/2003 adopted by the European
Parliament and by the Council. The conditions to be met are specified under this regulation as:
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a) The party must have legal personality in the Member State in which its seat is located,
b) It must be represented, in at least one quarter of Member States, by Members of the European
Parliament or by MPs of national or regional parliaments or in the regional assemblies,
c) It must observe the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental
freedoms, and the rule of law,
d) It must have participated in elections to the European Parliament, or expressed the intention to
do so.
23
E.g. ‘EL for the immediate lifting of the economic blockade of Cuba’, available online at:
http://www.european-left.org/index.php?id=81&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=143&tx_ttnews[backPid]=364
(accessed 16 February 2010).
24
Together for Change in Europe! 21st Century Europe needs Peace, Democracy, Social Justice and
Solidarity: Platform of the Party of the European Left for the elections to the European Parliament
2009 (Brussels: Party of The European Left, 2009).
25
European LEFT Manifesto (Brussels: Party of the European Left, 2004).
26
‘Make the Capitalists pay for the crisis!, European Anti-Capitalist Left joint statement for the 2009
European elections’, www.scottishsocialistparty.org/euro-elections-2009/anti-capitalistdeclaration.html (accessed 14 December 2009).
27
‘Joint Statement in the face of the European Elections’, www.inter.kke.gr/News/2009news/2009-05join-euelections (accessed 17 December 2009).
28
A funding requirement laid down by the European Parliament is that European political parties
should campaign in at least a quarter of the member states – or a minimum of eight states; EL’s list of
rallies satisfied this requirement.
29
Helmut Scholz, ‘Fight Together’, in Newsletter of the Department of International Policy, Die Linke:
Berlin, February 2009.
30
Quoted in `European Elections are Crucial for our Future!’, www.europeanleft.org/nc/english/home/news_archive/news_archive/zurueck (accessed 17 December 2009).
31
Interview with Stelios Pappas, 27 November 2009.
32
Ibid.
33
Andrew Gamble, The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession,
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009: 112).
34
Lothar Bisky, ‘European Parliament elections: Ambivalent results for the left’, Transform!Europe, 5.
Available online http://www.transform-network.net/en/home/journal-transformeurope/display-journaltransform/article/4/European-Parliament-Elections-Ambivalent-Results-for-the-Left.html (accessed 23
December 2009).
35
E.g. Simon Hix and M. Marsh, ‘Punishment or protest? Understanding European Parliament
elections’, Journal of Politics, 69: 2, 2007: 495-510.
36
cf. Simon Lightfoot, The Rise of the Party of European Socialists (London: Routledge,. 2005).
37
Bisky, ‘European Parliament elections’.
38
Lightfoot, Rise of the Party of European Socialists.
39
Bisky, ‘European Parliament elections’.
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