Christian politicians and Europe

In the debates dedicated to the streamlining of the party system reference is often made to European party organizations. This is a positive signal that demonstrates the ever stronger awareness of how closely political structures are interdependent within the EU. The national parties of the individual member states need unity of action with their own “brother” parties in Europe: if they are to be incisive at the EU level, a trans-national political connection is needed. And now this interaction between the European parties is being organized.In this connection the European People’s Party (EPP) is being more frequently mentioned, and in a more significant way. For it is in fact the political force of major significance present within the European Union. This political grouping not only holds the relative majority in the European Parliament, but includes more heads of government in the Conference of its party leaders than in the corresponding organ of its main competitor: the European Socialist Party (ESP). Against this background, it is understandable that in Italy – where a process is now underway of re-organizing, or simplifying, the general party political system, a “non-exportable” example but interesting to study at the European level – the promoters of the project for a new party, the “Popolo della Libertà” (PDL), should see in the EPP their own future European home, all the more so since its decisive component, namely Forza Italia (FI), was already a member of it.The identity and profile of the EPP are, now as ever, strongly characterized by its Christian-Democrat origin and tradition. This means that the EPP supports a policy aimed at a Christian image of man. Its leading principles are reconciliation, peace, justice, solidarity and subsidiarity. From these premises are also derived its pursuit, as fundamental policy options, of a federal community of states and of reconciliation between the laws of the market and the needs for a fair social policy. When the EPP was founded in 1976, only the Christian-Democratic parties of Europe belonged to it. These included Italy’s Democrazia Cristiana (DC), a party that for many years had remained a powerhouse in developing the policy and organization of the EPP. At the beginning of the 1990s, the EPP formulated a strategy of opening its doors. The move was aimed at permitting parties devoid of the Christian-Democratic tradition to become members of it, on condition that that they would adhere to the programme of the EPP and would not place its identity in jeopardy. This opening up of the EPP to a wider membership had become all the more necessary since no Christian-Democratic party had been present in most of the countries that joined the EU after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The role that the Christian-Democratic forces had played in the founding states of the European Community was safeguarded by the parties with a liberal and conservative profile both in the states of northern Europe, hitherto neutral, and more particularly in the countries of central and eastern Europe. The acceptance of these parties as members did not substantially modify the aims and policy of the EPP. The nascent PDL in Italy is not, however, automatically considered a member of the EPP. For the European People’s Party will have to decide whether it wants to accept the new party in which the right-wing Alleanza Nazionale (AN) with its specific history will form an essential part. This will not be an easy decision to make, since, however much the EPP is willing to include in its unity of action political forces placed to the right of centre of the political spectrum, it must also safeguard its own specific identity. The fact that the Union of Christian Democrats and Democrats of the Centre (UDC), another Italian party that belongs to the EPP, has been excluded from the project for the PDL could prove a significant obstacle in this sense.