Talk:European Federalist Party

Description and lede

Hi everyone,

I would like to discuss the current description and lede of this article. As part of recent changes I made to a number of pages, I changed the description of this page to "Federalist European political alliance"; this was quickly changed to "Federalist European transnational party". Likewise, the lede currently states that the European Federalist Party is "a European transnational party".

I find this confusing and misleading. The European Federalist Party is not a European party. As the "history" section indicates, the EFP was an alliance acting across borders before it "merged with the citizen movements Stand-up for the United States of Europe and USE Now to create Stand Up For Europe." Then the French section retained the name.

As a result, the EFP is now a French political party (at least it seems to compete in elections in France). Even though it may have members in other EU countries (but the article is unclear on how this is structured), this does not seem to qualify for "European transnational party", which itself is not defined. I therefore propose to reclassify it as a French political party or any similar label that would be better suited to its current structure.

Happy to hear everyone's opinions on this. Julius Schwarz (talk) 14:26, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Please check the sources, not only the articles. ElTres (talk) 19:14, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

You're right, let's check the sources. The article has five sources. Four are from 2008 to 2014, so before the break-up of the original structure. So only one is actually posterior to the break-up; it dates back to 2017 (seven years old in one week, happy birthday!) and is a first-party source, so not particularly useful. It mentions "many European branches" but, like the rest of the EFP's website, it's utterly unclear what that structure actually implies. So that's not a lot to go by and it does not really sound like a real transnational structure, let alone a "transnational party". Julius Schwarz (talk) 20:30, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Actually, let's not limit ourselves to the sources in the article; let's try and find relevant sources online.

Looking up the EFP leads to two websites: "federalistparty.eu" and "eurofederalistparty.eu". The first one seems to be the pre-break-up one, as the "latest information" section dates back to 2016 and the latest post is indeed about the creation of "Stand Up For Europe".

The second one is up to date, with posts in September 2024. In the post dedicated to the 2024 European elections, it states: "The European Federalist Party will participate in this election and present a list of candidates for France. As a transnational party, it will also present lists in other European countries." And that's it; there are no more specific mentions of "other European countries" or other legal entities, no lists of candidates, and no results, as far as I can see. Other than that, there is a post from 2018 saying that the EFP "supported 5 lists in the Belgian local elections", and a post about the 2019 European elections saying that, back in 2014 (pre-break-up), the EFP had presented lists in several countries.

Further research leads to:

• a page by the UIA Global Civil Society Database saying its last news dated back to 1996,
• a publication by CVCE about the Austria European Federalist Party that actually dates back to 1973,
• a Euractiv article about the 2014 European elections, and finally
• one article by Agence Europe in January 2019 saying that the EFP would present lists in several countries. This the only one that actually mentions a potential transnational dimension, but is not even corroborated by the EFP's own page.

Of course, I might be missing things, but I honestly doubt it.

To be clear: I have nothing against the EFP at all. I am just trying to get a neutral look at it, and it really does not seem like there is any meaningful transnational activity (beyond perhaps cross-border individual membership) that has been going on since 2016 and that would warrant the "transnational party" claim. Julius Schwarz (talk) 06:29, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Any follow-up on this? @ElTres I almost don't dare ask, but are there any more relevant sources you would have at hand? Julius Schwarz (talk) 09:57, 11 October 2024 (UTC)