Abstract
During the 1980s, the originally purely Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP) took the strategic decision to open up to conservative and other like-minded parties in order to increase its political weight. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the emergence of new democracies in Central Europe, the EPP continued its enlargement to include Central Europe's centre-right parties. Despite initial differences based on varying historical experiences, the EPP's Eastern enlargement was an enrichment. It was based on essential common values and succeeded in making this political family the strongest political force in European politics.
Keywords
Introduction
The historical nucleus of the European Union's centre-right was made up of Western European Christian Democrats, united in the predecessor organisations of today's European People's Party. By the time the Treaties of Rome were signed in 1957, Christian Democratic parties had achieved strong and sometimes even dominant positions in five of the six Member States: Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. France was a special case because it had no party that openly called itself Christian Democratic.
In the decade after its foundation in 1976 by Christian Democratic parties, the EPP faced a strategic dilemma: either to remain an exclusively Christian Democratic organisation, thereby risking political marginalisation in the steadily expanding European Communities (Jansen and Van Hecke 2011, 50), or to open up to a broader array of like-minded parties and have the chance to actually overtake the European Socialists in strength and become the largest political party family in Europe. This dilemma was, after some internal debate during the 1980s, resolved in favour of the second option around 1989. Of course, there has been and always will be a certain trade-off between programmatic purity on the one hand and size of the political family on the other. But the dominant idea in the EPP was that in the end, only an enlarged political family would guarantee lasting political influence in the institutions of European integration, particularly in the European Parliament.
On closer examination, the programmatic purity of the EPP of 1976 was already a relative matter. In particular, the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) represented a much broader range of the political spectrum than, for example, its Dutch or Belgian partners, openly declaring its roots not only in Christian Social teachings but also in conservatism and political liberalism. 1
‘The CDU has conservative, liberal and Christian-social roots’ (in that order) (Freedom and Security 2008, 6).
Opening up in the West
The choice of conservative parties as new members of the political family followed the reasoning that there is, at least in many European democracies, a large programmatic overlap between Christian Democracy and conservatism on the complex relationship between individual freedom and responsibility, on the general preference for a state that should interfere as little as possible in society and the economy, as well as a solid anti-Communist stance during the Cold War, to name but a few points. Some differences on economics existed, of course, but what was decisive was that from a pan-European perspective, the voter bases of Christian Democratic and conservative parties tended to strongly overlap. More pragmatically, there were countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark in which no or only very small Christian Democratic parties existed at all, so in order to have a significant political presence there, it made perfect sense to take conservative and like-minded parties on board. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, already then one of the strongest political figures of the political family, was definitely a driving force behind this pragmatically motivated expansion strategy. The CDU's broad political positioning (see above) made it particularly easy for Kohl to personally push this agenda, against some initial hesitation from other EPP politicians.
Greece with the Nea Dimokratia in 1983 was an early example of this strategy: a country without a classical Christian Democracy that nevertheless had a centre-right party clearly sharing the core values of the EPP. The first large member country, however, in which the redefinition of the EPP was used was Spain at the end of the 1980s. The Partido Popular, after having shed some more right-wing elements and drawn a clear dividing line between itself and Francoism, joined the EPP in 1989. The EPP now defined itself as ‘an open people's party with Christian Democratic traditions and goals’ (Jansen and Van Hecke 2011, 55). The 1992 Basic Programme, adopted in Athens, marked the programmatic renewal in which the fundamental values of the old Christian Democratic EPP were maintained, but with Christian language slightly toned down in comparison to earlier documents. Of course, the self-definition of the EPP remained ‘We Christian Democrats, members of the EPP …’ (Basic programme 1992, 3). But the strategic opening of the party had by then become official policy.
The collapse of the Italian Democrazia Cristiana, hitherto a pillar of European Christian Democracy, with the complete realignment of the Italian centre-right reinforced this tendency. Less dramatic, but with similar effects, was the decline of the centrist and Christian-inspired parties in France which now made the Gaullists eligible partners. But further east, much more dramatic developments had revolutionised the European landscape by the early 1990s.
The new partners from Central Europe
The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War and the subsequent reunification of Germany as well as the emergence of new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe meant a challenge, but most of all a huge opportunity, for the EPP. The process of German unification was largely shaped by the chancellorship of Helmut Kohl. And in most of the newly democratised, former Communist countries from the Baltic Sea to the Western Balkans, former dissidents came to power in the first free elections. The integration of their parties into the EPP became one of the most important projects of Europe's centre-right in the 1990s and 2000s. Wilfried Martens, as EPP President since 1990, played a leading role in this process (Martens 2008, 189–205).
Most of the new parties from Central Europe had their roots in clandestine opposition under Communism, while a few had existed as ‘satellite parties’ 2 under Communism. With the exception of these latter ones, the new postdissident parties in power initially had some very important ideas in common. Many of these ideas made them natural partners for the newly opened political family of the Western European centre-right. Some of these ideas were based on an entirely different historical experience. These ideas can and should be considered inputs in their own right that have modified and enriched the character of the EPP political family.
That is small parties separate from the Communist Party but under its control. Some of them survived 1989 and became valid democratic parties.
First and foremost, the Central European centre-right was thoroughly anti-totalitarian and saw in the ‘post-Communists’, as successor organisations of the formerly monopolistic Communist parties, their main political opponent. On this point, the Central Europeans fit effortlessly into the EPP. The same was true for their strong commitment to human rights. What is more, in terms of their strategic significance for European unity, the roles of both groups of parties have been comparable: while Western European Christian Democrats spearheaded European integration in the 1940s and 1950s (with Socialists at that time often lukewarm to the idea), the anti-Communists of Central Europe were the ones who brought down the Iron Curtain and not only made the completion of Europe's unity in the 1990s possible, but also declared it one of their most important goals.
But there were also important differences between these two groups of parties: differences that did not pose insurmountable obstacles to integration into one party family, but which nevertheless had their roots in absolutely divergent historical experiences. This did not make life together very easy for either side, at least during the 1990s. 3
On the specific mindset of the new member parties from the East, see the more detailed analyses in Freudenstein (2005, 2009).
One such difference was directly linked to the dissident past of the new parties in the East. Most of their first generation of leaders were professors, teachers, playwrights and journalists like Václav Havel, József Antall, Bronisłtaw Geremek, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Vytautas Landsbergis (only Lech Wałteosa, the electrician who was later to become Polish president, was an exception to this). These individuals represented a social stratum that, at least in the twentieth century, had not existed in this form in Western Europe but which in Central Europe had throughout history played more than just a cultural role for their countries: the inteligentsiya–-often charismatic figures, with a broader intellectual horizon than many of their Western European counterparts, but much less experienced in the exercise of political office, the struggle for votes and the art of compromise that any type of political organisation requires. This background very often cost them political expediency and, more often than not, their sustainability as parties. Very few of the Central European centre-right parties have actually survived until today–-Hungary's Fidesz is an example, whereas Poland's Civic Platform (PO) can easily be considered as already belonging to the third generation of centre-right and right-wing parties in that country in 12 years. What is more, the traditional Western European division of the right and centre-right into nationalists, conservatives, Christian Democrats and liberals did not seem to take hold in Central Europe, where parties and movements tended to represent much more eclectic blends and where the Western European political paradigms of left and right in some cases did not apply.
A second difference, at least in the initial phases of the transformation of their economies, was that the Central European centre-right displayed a clear penchant for laissez-faire liberalism (embodied by politicians like Poland's Leszek Balcerowicz), which often stood in stark contrast to the classical Christian Democratic core of the Western European EPP (but which was a welcome reinforcement for parties like Sweden's Moderates, who had themselves just joined the EPP's ranks). One should not forget that this economic liberalism was, in the 1990s, perfectly in tune with the global mood later labelled the ‘Washington consensus’, initiated in the 1980s with the policies of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan.
Third, the Central European affection for Reagan and Thatcher went beyond economics and referred to their Atlanticist, anti-Soviet stances. Now, Atlanticism and standing up to the Soviet Union were, at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, no sins in the eyes of Western European Christian Democrats, either. But the person of Margaret Thatcher was already viewed in a rather negative light among Western European continentals. That was another element of distinction between East and West in Europe's centre-right. What some Western European Christian Democrats found irritating, to say the least, were not only these Anglo-Saxon leanings but also the fact that the democrats of Central Europe often did not seem to accept a contradiction between these sympathies, the striving for integration into the EU and the hitherto Western European centre-right political family. As former Estonian Premier Mart Laar once put it, in his view, the greatest Western politicians of the end of the Cold War who brought about European unity were Thatcher, Reagan and Kohl (Laar 2010)–-a combination that would cause hiccups for more than one of his Western European colleagues.
Fourth, and much more important than the Anglo-Saxon question, were differences over the role of the nation state. In the peaceful revolutions around 1989, the nation state had played a positive, emancipatory role vis-à-vis a Soviet/Russian imperialism thinly disguised as socialist internationalism. Western European Christian Democrats, for their part, had always inherently blamed the classical nation state for the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century–-hence the ease with which they embraced supranational integration and the joint exercise of sovereignty from the Schuman Declaration of 1950 onwards. This, in turn, was an attitude not easily understood, let alone unquestioningly accepted, by the Central Europeans, at least initially in the 1990s.
Fifth, Central European centre-right parties tended to view Russia with more alarm than did their counterparts to the West. This was based on historical experience, but Western Europeans should not underestimate the effect of neoimperialist tendencies in Putin's Russia after 2000. The immediate consequence, still valid at least for Polish, Czech, Slovak and Baltic EPP parties today, is a strong commitment to democracy promotion in the Eastern neighbourhood of the EU, trying to defend the achievements of the ‘colour revolutions’ of the 2000s. Equally important is a strong advocacy for decreasing the EU's energy dependency on Russian gas by way of greater solidarity and better infrastructure.
Finally, irrespective of their Thatcherism and laissez-faire attitudes in economics, the Central European partners displayed a social conservatism on questions such as gender policy, abortion, sexual minorities and so on that was, ironically, reminiscent of Western European Christian Democrats in the first half of the twentieth century, positions from which parties like the German Christian Democratic Union or the Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal had moved on decades earlier. But the spectrum on these questions was broad enough among the Western Europeans themselves for the new partners to reinforce, at least temporarily, the ranks of the socially conservative in the EPP.
But all these (sometimes more atmospheric than concrete) differences notwithstanding, the Eastern enlargement of the EPP political family went ahead from the second half of the 1990s onwards, through associate memberships that were turned into full memberships, respectively, with the two waves of Eastern enlargement of the EU in 2004 and 2007.
Mindful of the necessity to bring the different perspectives together and state a common core of values, the EPP under the leadership of Wilfried Martens prepared a document designed to pave the way for the Eastern enlargement of the EU as a whole. ‘A Union of Values’ was adopted at the EPP Congress in Berlin in 2001. It contains numerous references to the freedom struggle in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as reassuring language about the continuous significance of the nation state while not renouncing the principle of supranational integration. In terms of social conservatism, it bridges a wide spectrum while going into great detail on some questions, such as medical ethics. On economics, the social market economy is the formula that everyone agrees to (A union of values 2001). At the beginning of the millennium and four years ahead of the first wave of EU Eastern enlargements, the EPP political family had created the programmatic basis for its own Eastern enlargement. Over the following 12 years, it would more than double its size from 35 to 73 member parties (including observers and associate members).
After EU enlargement
The ability of the new Member States to act as full EU members with equal rights as well as a generational change in the centre-right parties of Central Europe themselves have begun to change these parties’ core attitudes on many of the initial differences listed above. Not only have most of the Central European centre-right parties achieved some degree of stability and sustainability–-they have also become used to both winning and losing elections, and splits and mergers have become less frequent. A new, more professional group of party politicians has taken over.
That alone has helped a lot to make cooperation in the political family easier. But much more importantly, the division into East and West that was still perceptible around the middle of the last decade, especially in the crisis around the Iraq War of 2003, has given way to a much more complex political landscape. This refers, above all, to Europe's reactions to the global financial and economic crisis since 2008 and the ensuing sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone. Both the ‘old’ EU15 and the ‘new’ EU10 have ceased to exist as meaningful interest groups in this context. North and South are threatening to emerge as a new paradigm on questions of economic and fiscal philosophy. This refers to countries as a whole as well as to their centre-right parties.
Moreover, in a whole range of other policy areas, the Central European centre-right parties have become less ideological and more pragmatic, for example with respect to structural funds and the Common Agricultural Policy. The same pragmatism has meanwhile extended to the deeply political questions of future European architecture. Maybe this shift among Central Europeans in the political family is best exemplified in the speech by Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski (Civic Platform-PO) in Oxford in September 2012. Speaking to a largely conservative audience, he told his British friends not to count on Polish help when trying to prevent the EU from developing stronger institutions (Sikorski 2012). It is worth keeping in mind that this comes from a politician who had aggravated Western Europeans 10 years earlier with his neoconservative views and open disdain for Franco-German cooperation. Today, he is seeing his own country alongside Germany and France, even if Britain decides to opt out of the EU entirely. All this does not mean that the differences between old and new EPP member parties have disappeared. But they have become much more manageable while both groups have become more diversified.
Conclusion
Taking a step back and looking at the whole picture, one might say that the Central European centre-right, while having gone through a considerable process of programmatic and structural adjustment in the last two decades, has enriched the EPP political family and has been the decisive factor in making it the leading political force in Europe. We have all benefited from Eastern enlargement, while our core values have remained the same. The new EPP platform, adopted in Bucharest in October 2012, 20 years after the Athens Basic Programme, reflects precisely that.
Footnotes