Abstract

Surprisingly enough, the impact of European integration on national parties and party systems has been almost neglected by political analysis until recently.

My co-author and I have focussed on the Europeanisation of national party systems which has gained momentum as the impact of European integration and European policy making on the conflicts within national party systems is becoming ever more visible (Europeanisation and Party Politics, Colchester, ECPR Press, HB2012 and PB2014 )

In this respect, we have also paid attention to politicisation and depoliticisation, the issue of democracy and the European Union as well as the conjuncture between change at the level of the parties and change at the level of party system.

Accordingly, we studied eight country cases (France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Greece, Spain, Poland and Romania) and the European parties.

With the comparative method, I present the insight gained in understanding whether and how national and European parties and party systems have been affected by the debate over Europe.