The party of European socialists and the identity of European social democracy

The question wether there is currently something that can be called the crisis of social-democracy is arguable: after all, social-democractic and socialist parties are still the counterpart of Conservatives and Christian-democrats, sharing alternaltively government responsibilities at national level as well as in the european Parliament. Nevertheless the major transformations of the last 25 years, namely the acceleration of both globalization and Europeanization has upset the core of both the social Democratic ideology and policies: the central role of the Welfare State. Thus, socialist politicians have to face the hegemony of the neo-liberal ideology and the fundamentally liberal nature of the european project based on the single market. Besides, the ideological debate on the political meaning of choices made for the economic governance in Europe tends to be watered down by the genuine weakness of party politics in the EU institutional constellation. Regarding this background, how has the social-democratic movement developped at european level?
The first step draws back to 1974 with the creation of the Confederation of the Socialist Parties (CSP) of the european Community related to the coming first direct election of the Assembly of the EC in 1979. At this early stage, the CSP was a very weak entity: on the organisational level, its was little more than appendices of the national parties ; while on the ideological level it was devided on the issue of european integration as a consequence of the Northern enlargement and the membership of the British, Danish and Irish Labour parties . With the introduction of Article 138 A in the Treaty of Maastricht and the recognition of the positive role of european political parties regarding the progress of integration, the CSP became the party of european socialists (PES): the new orgnization was meant to perform a better linkage function between all the components of the social-democratic movement in Europe on the one hand, and to provide for a common ideological platform on the other hand . In 1995, the statutes of the PES changed again to bring more supranationalism as accounted by the introduction of decision-making by qualified majority voting. Given the PES' ambitions, this paper will try to explain to what extent the PES performs the function of a catalyst for a common identity of european social democracy. In this respect, it will first enlarge on the elements accounting for the emergence of a common ideology, going then to the institutional constraints affecting the role of the PES; finally, there will be an analysis of the meaning of the rejection of the Constitutional treaty by the left-wing of the French Socialist party and its electorate for the topic at stake.