Louis Drounau

European Democracy Consulting

European Democracy Consulting publishes its 2020 seminal report on reforming European political parties. The report was written for MEP Domènec Ruiz Devesa and covers six pillars of the regulation of European parties: registration, structure and operations, financing, campaigning, visibility and transparency, and sanctions. Link: https://eudemocrac...

In modern representative democracies, the link between citizens and the political parties representing them is essential. While considerations such as citizen engagement or parties’ internal democracy are important, the most basic pre-condition for this link is for citizens to know the competing parties. So elemental is this requirement that it is...

On 3rd May, the European Parliament adopted a report on the reform of the EU electoral act harmonising several voting modalities and providing for the creation of second vote aimed at electing 28 MEPs on a Union-wide constituency. While this announcement was welcomed by the pro-European community, European Democracy Consulting remains concerned by...

An update of European Democracy Consulting’s annual Geographical Representation in EU Leadership Observatory (EU-GRLO) shows limited progress in recent years and calls on Member States and EU institutions, in particular the European Council and Commission, to take strong action to ensure a fairer representation for all European citizens. In January...

In 2021, European Democracy Consulting published the first detailed analysis of European political parties’ donations and contributions, covering the years 2018 and 2019, to remedy the lack of contextual and visual information provided by the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF) on its website. Today, w...

The reform of the EU’s Electoral Act is one of the most consequential reforms for the future of European democracy. Members of the European Parliament’s Committee for Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) are scheduled to vote on a proposal on 28 March 2022. This quick review critically analyses the proposal’s provisions with regards to the creation of a t...

After contributing to discussions in the European Parliament and to consultations organised by the European Commission, European Democracy Consulting provides a full assessment and analysis of the European Commission’s proposal for a revision of Regulation 1141/2014 on European political parties and European political foundations. Link: https://eud...

As the European Parliament discusses the introduction of transnational lists ahead of the next European elections, and as several MEPs have presented their own proposals, European Democracy Consulting argues that the key to finding the optimal electoral method is to focus on the goals and principles that led to the idea of transnational lists. This...

In the public meetings of the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) held on 15 and 22 June, several Members of the European Parliament expressed their interest in “running the numbers” on various proposals for the reform of the public funding regime of European political parties. Indeed, in addition to its underlying phil...

Ahead of the European Commission’s drafting of legislative proposals to reform European political parties, this addendum, by European Democracy Consulting and REPRESENT, supplements their OSCE/ODIHR report with another 9 recommendations and goes more in-depth for certain sections of the report. Link: https://eudemocracy.eu/49-recommendations-europe...

Donations and contributions are essential parts of political parties’ private funding. In the absence of initiatives by the Authority for European Political Parties to provide European citizens with properly visible financial information on their European parties, European Democracy Consulting is stepping in. Link: https://eudemocracy.eu/visualisin...

Political parties are core stakeholders of modern representative democracies and fill a number of important functions in the political system. At the European level, however, European parties fail to properly meet most of these functions and, therefore, to live up to their role prescribed in EU treaties. In particular, European parties’ current fun...

In November 2019, European Democracy Consulting carried out a quick review of geographical representation in the EU’s leadership. Looking at the distribution of EU agencies and the nationality of key office-holders, this review highlighted a worrisome pattern of under-representation for Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the continued predomina...

Following European elections, national authorities focus on national results, while the European Parliament presents its parliamentary groups — leaving aside the supposedly core actors of European politics: European political parties. European Democracy Consulting introduces unique data and visualisations on the outcome of the 2019 European electio...