Abstract
Kosowska-Gąstoł aims to calculate the balance of profit and loss from the European People's Party’s (EPP's) “opening up” strategy from the perspective of over twenty years. Focusing on successive phases of party cooperation, this chapter explains why it was first impossible to create one organization of Christian Democratic parties in the 1970s, and then why it did ultimately prove possible at the turn of the century. This chapter shows that, while the EPP has weakened transnational Christian Democratic ideology since the 1970s, this was caused more by conservative parties from Western European countries joining than by East-Central European actors. Kosowska-Gąstoł concludes that the EPP strategy of “opening up” has resulted in an increase in its potential and significance, but has diluted its Christian Democratic identity.
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Kosowska-Gąstoł, B. (2018). A Truly “European” Christian Democracy? The European People’s Party. In: Kosicki, P., Łukasiewicz, S. (eds) Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64087-7_6
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