Conservative doesn't really mean much anymore on its own. CDU might be considered conservative by Western European standards, but it's liberal by Eastern European standards.
They're pretty much opposite sides of the political spectrum in UK. Where are they anything other than that?
Basically the most liberal party is for low taxes, for diversity and for secularism. If you want high taxes then you aren't a liberal.
However they're primarily just groupings of like-minded national parties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_elect...
The EU has what's called a "political party at European level", there are 10 of these registered and a few more that don't meet the criteria to register.[0]
Most of these parties - and in particular the biggest two, the EPP[1] and PES[2] - don't allow individuals to become members.
Instead their members are political parties at national and regional parties that already exist in the member states.
One or two of the other parties are built around member states' parties, but also offer individual membership. ALDE,[3] the third-largest party, is one that does.
There are a few more parties that are active but don't meet the criteria to register.
The Pirate Party,[4] already mentioned by others, is one, but that too is a party-of-parties.
Volt Europa[5] is probably the only serious attempt at creating Europarty that is comprised predominantly of individuals, although even they allow for national-level parties as members in their statutes.
What can make things slightly confusing is that in the European Parliament MEPs don't actually formally sit as parties, but rather as political groups, of which there are 7. There are MEPs that don't sit in a group, but these tend to be more fringe parliamentarians, typically on the far-right.
The EPP and PES are big enough to have groups (EPP and S&D, respectively) that are more or less coterminous with their parties, but the other parties work together.
The European Greens sit with the European Free Alliance[6] along with the Pirate Party and Volt Europa, for example.
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[0] Regulation 1141/2014 [7] lays down the requirements. Amongst the details of the legal restrictions that have to be adhered to is the requirement to have elected representatives, or achieve 3% in European Parliament elections, in at least 1/4 of the member states.
[1] The European People's Party (EPP), this is the party of both the current Commission President and Merkel: https://www.epp.eu/
[2] The Party of European Socialists: https://www.pes.eu/en/
[4] https://european-pirateparty.eu/
[5] https://www.volteuropa.org/
[6] These are mostly sub-national regionalist and/or separatist parties. https://www.e-f-a.org/
[7] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
Which is mostly a result of Eastern European countries turning outright fascist (Hungary) or religious-authoritarian (Poland), it's a classic game of shifting goalposts.
CDU also was modernized by Merkel after the right-wing conservatives got booted off/sidetracked in the early '00s following a massive donation / tax scandal ("Schreiber-Spendenaffäre") and so the CDU still enjoyed wide popularity as a result, while the Eastern European conservatives never had that push.
> Which is mostly a result of Eastern European countries > turning outright fascist (Hungary) or religious- > authoritarian (Poland), it's a classic game of shifting > goalposts.
You are seriously wrong aka naive or intentionally missing truth.
a) current Hungary and Poland ruling parties just trying to make their countries strong, finish with some colonialism-like practices. Nothing fashist or autoritarism here. b) liberal and socialist (ex commies hire) disqualificate themselves via scams and -gates, stupidity and not doing ANYTHING for their own ppls.
You should better start to be concern about democracy in France (military state by now), Germany (censorship) and Espana (country suicide).
Of course, there are different political ideologies. It's not just a popularity contest.
What does this mean? How is alleged population related to family structure and sexual relations?
Regarding overpopulation: One motivation that I've heard quite often is that one of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to have one child less. This is always presented with the asterisk that this is of course a very personal decision and there is the understanding that this is not a standard under which you will be measured. Still, if you're just looking at the numbers, that's what you get. Sharing parentage with more than two people is an alluring way to achieve the same result, especially as it means you will retain more of your personal time when child care is shouldered by three (or more) people.
For some reasons I thought Europe has an aging population issue and demographic decline not overpopulation.
>> families with more than two parents
I never heard of this unless you consider divorced people.
> I never heard of this unless you consider divorced people.
Look for articles concerning co-parenting, that's where its most often discussed. Wikipedia: "Co-parenting is an enterprise undertaken by two or more adults who together take on the socialization, care, and upbringing of children for whom they share equal responsibility[1] Co-parents may include a variety of configurations, including a mother and a father, two mothers, two fathers, a parent with an adult sibling or grandparent, or a parent and another adult relative. The co-parent relationship differs from an intimate relationship between adults in that it focuses solely on the child."
The other typical configuration would be in polyamorous relationships, when more than two of the partners decide to take responsibility of the child. Granted "typical" is a bit of a difficult word when we're talking about niche concepts. Most of my friends and coworkers have never heard about co-parenting or any other of the more diverse and sometimes complex family-alike structures, unless they concern failed relationships (see divorces). Which is kind of a bummer, that only failure in previous relationships motivates them to experiment with other concepts.
I don't think it's worth to mangle obscure/exotic issues with mainstream subjects (overpopulation).