European political parties and European public space from the Maastricht Treaty to the Reg. No. 1141/2014
The article, using a historical perspective, analyses the role and the functions of European political parties. Focusing on the different nature of national political parties and European political parties, the article describes the attempts to regulate political parties at the European level as a tool to enhance European democracy and to shape a European public sphere. In this perspective, the emerging role of political parties at the European level is analysed from the first election of the European Parliament, through the Tsatsos’s Report.