This article assesses how the involvement of European party federations (Europarties) in the politics of Eastern Partnership (EaP) states relates to the objectives of the EU in the region. Under specific scope conditions, Europarties can promote EU interests and values and help EU neighbourhood policy overcome some of the inconsistencies created by the lack of the enlargement tool. The article conceptualises Europarties as transnational actors whose external activities match the pathways of EU influence in EaP states. Empirically, by examining political developments in Georgia and Moldova, the article demonstrates how Europarties function as a conduit for EU strategic influence over pro-European elites, as well as a normative influence on the functioning of party politics in EaP states.

Populist parties of the Right and Left are on the rise in Western Europe, but little has been said about their foreign policy positions. This article will try to sketch the basic elements of the positions of some important radical Right and Left populist parties on transatlantic relations, NATO, European security and EU-Russia relations. An examination of these positions reveals that European populist parties of the Right and Left are united by a common aversion to the ongoing modernisation and liberalisation of society and the economy-and that this aversion is reflected in foreign policies that conceptually and practically challenge the notion of the West. The centre--right is urged not to let populists appropriate yet another issue. Instead, it needs to challenge them (and particularly the populist Left) by consistently defending the merits of the Western community of values.

This article aims to theorize about how dynamics of party competition influence government decisions to engage in foreign policy change. It shows how a focus on the functioning of polarized two-party competition in Greece in the late 1990s sheds light on crucial questions concerning the content, timing and institutionalization of Greece's decision to allow the EU to grant Turkey candidate-member status. The article problematizes this foreign policy change as a decision influenced, among other factors, by the demands of party competition, and especially the strategy of the then ruling socialist party. More generally, this article shows how a focus on party politics complements in various interesting ways our understanding of foreign policy decisions and foreign policy change. Party system dynamics are shown to act as significant intervening factors between determinants of foreign policy usually analyzed in the literature and eventual foreign policy change.

Over the past 30 years, responding to different international, political and economic circumstances, populists have formed, preserved, nurtured and expanded a political identity that is today present in most political systems in Europe. This identity constitutes a 'populist potential', in the sense that it is nonideological and that it wavers between electoral abstention and support for antisystem parties. This essay provides a historical overview of the ideological and sociological evolution of the populist identity in Europe and reviews the ways parties of the centre-right have dealt with it in the past. Its conclusion is that practices like coalition building and theme co-optation are not so easy to deploy today, given the non-ideological and anti-system nature of the populist potential.

Transnational European party federations -'Europarties' -are an overlooked actor of EU external relations despite their strong footprint outside the EU. This article discusses the activities of Europarties as networks of EU external relations closely aligned with the interests and values of EU foreign policy, but conditioned by their character as transnational partisan actors with distinct priorities defined by ideological affinity and political commitments to partner parties. Empirically, the article investigates the activities of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) in Georgia and North Macedonia, demonstrating how Europarties can act as amplifiers of EU influence in Eastern Europe and Western Balkans, but also how their partisan interests often come into tension with EU priorities. The findings carry implications for the theory and practice of EU relations with its neighbourhood at a time when prospects for further enlargement appear significantly weakened.