Introduction: Europarties—Ubiquitous Yet Rarely Noticed

Europarties, parties operating at the European level, are ever-present in EU governance, yet their impact is often indirect and difficult to measure. This chapter reviews existing literature on Europarties and explains their relevance in EU policymaking. The starting point of this book is that European integration cannot be understood without accounting for the impact of the Europarties. It identifies Europarties as transnational partisan actors that operate both at intergovernmental and supranational levels of EU decision-making. Europarties have consolidated their own organizational structures and have over the decades built their own networks and coalitions that enable them to wield influence in ways not captured by previous studies.