FEPS (Next Left) Seminar on the Future of Transnational Parties

Closed event – upon invitations only

Following the last year’s vote of the European Parliament adopting the report on the “Reform of Electoral Law of the European Union”, FEPS together with Renner Institute is launching herewith a new thread of deliberations on the imminent and future challenges for the transnational partisan system in the EU. It supplements the work done already by the Working Group and resulting, among others, in the publication “In the Name of the Political Union – Europarties on the Rise”.

This first reflection session will be inaugurated by Jo Leinen, MEP of S&D Group – who co-authored the report and who will chair the deliberations on the matter this year. In the opening he will be joined by Marije Laffeber, Deputy Secretary General – and what is foreseen as an exchange between them will kick off start the conversation by departing from the evaluation of 2014 and moving towards the horizon of the 2019 European elections.

In the course of the day, the participants – invited academics and renowned expert investigating the issues of europeanisation and transnational political cooperation – will look at the questions of the transnational lists, the future of the top candidate as an electoral institution, the transferability of the political mandate in between diverse levels of governance and the principles of representation in the context of the EU. The event is the first out of three foreseen to take place in 2016, is a closed one and participation in it is by invitation only