European Political Parties and the Draft European Constitution
European Political Parties and the Draft European Constitution

Summary/Abstract: Subtitle: A comparison of the attitudes of the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists and their influence on the drafting of the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union. This article studies the role of European political parties during drafting of the European Constitution by the European Convention. Its objective is to verify two hypotheses. The first assumes that European political parties (for reasons of capacity the article studies the two largest ones – the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists) had an influential role in the drafting process due to the procedures of the Convention. The final draft of the Constitution therefore meets their expectations. The second hypothesis posits that, bearing in mind the nature of the European party system, the parties’ ideas about the future development of the European Union will not differ, but will bear strong similarities. The analysis proceeds in five stages. Firstly, both parties’ basic ideas about institutional reform and their opinions on the Nice Treaty are described. Then there is an overview of both parties’ attitudes towards the Convention’s procedure. Thirdly, the article analyzes the parties’ activities during the European Convention. Following that is an examination of the parties’ evaluations of the constitutional draft, and finally there is a comparison of the parties’ attitudes towards the Intergovernmental Conference created to approve the European Constitution.

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