Ethnoregionalist Parties in the EU: The European Free Alliance Phenomenon

Abstract

The article is focused on the structure and ideology of the European Free Alliance. The research aims at identifying resources and possibilities of the institutionalized transregional and supraregional cooperation of ethnoregionalist parties at the European level. The research was conducted predominantly in the paradigm of structural functionalism, while employing the methods of institutional analysis, QDA (exemplified by program documents and key actors’ rhetoric), network analysis (based on the data of the EU databases). The research resulted in the following conclusions. The EFA has not succeeded in becoming an entirely representative europarty for the respective party family, due to deep discrepancies between ethnoregionalist parties in the domain of ideology, goals, attitude towards European integration, and domestic political opportunities. The attempts to create an integrative ideological platform based on “creative eurofederalism” and “progressive nationalism” may hardly be called successful. Besides, big ethnoregionalist parties prefer to cooperate with bigger and more influential europarties and political groups of the European Parliament. However, in the EP-2019, “Greens-EFA” political group improved its position, even in spite of Brexit. This happened not because of the EFA achievements, but because of the growth in representation of the European Green Party. Though influence and capacities of the European Free Alliance are lower than those of other europarties, it has a significant symbolic meaning as a structure unifying different ethnoregionalist actors.