The EDU – A Building Block for the EPP
- Open Access
- 2026
- OriginalPaper
- Buchkapitel
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Abstract
The short-lived European Democratic Union (EDU) existed for just under 25 years, from the late 1970s until the early days of the twenty-first century. It was not a long life, but it was an action-packed one. In that time Western Europe became stronger, while the Soviet Union and its domination of Eastern Europe collapsed, as the Cold War ended and centre–right parties gained a firm foothold across Europe.
The phrase ‘mission accomplished’ is applied to this organisation in the title of the current part of the book. In their contributions to this volume, my distinguished EDU colleagues Andreas Khol and Alexis Wintoniak explain what this involved, looking back at the organisation’s genesis, actions and dissolution. It is absolutely true that the EDU did accomplish its mission. Europe underwent the transformation that had been envisaged when the EDU was established. The changes would probably have occurred even without the EDU, but not without the ideals of freedom and democracy on which the EDU’s activities were founded.
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The EDU’s foreign policy message was, as indicated by Wintoniak, that with a Communist threat in the East and socialists in the ascendancy in the West, the European landscape needed to be addressed. Khol highlights eligible members’ intrinsic tendency to be more relaxed and apolitical in their attitude, ‘irrespective of the party’s name and whether Christianity was included in their programme or not . . . and irrespective of whether they were EU members or not’.
The EDU’s influence also went deeper than this, as is neatly captured by what happened in Finland. My own party, Kokoomus, was one of the founding members of the EDU, being involved from the very start. Membership meant much more than actions to achieve the EDU’s goals: it provided a new and valuable nexus with European thinking and political culture. A poignant illustration of the situation back then is Finland’s president Urho Kekkonen having to explain to the Kremlin why this Finnish party had joined the anti-Communist political movement.
The EDU also brought Kokoomus into close contact with like-minded European parties, making it possible to forge lasting personal connections and friendships. In hindsight, this rapprochement can be seen as representing the party’s first steps towards integration into the European family, as it meant that when Finland became an EU member state, we found it easier to settle into the already familiar ranks of the EPP.
I was elected chairperson of the EDU after Alois Mock stepped down in 1998. By then the EDU had already done its job and achieved its purpose, and it was clear that its activities would be brought to a close. The only question was how this would be done. The prevailing idea was to merge the EDU into the EPP, with an alternative being to launch a completely new political entity. This delicate process took about four years.
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I will only set out a few of my key thoughts about this process here.
By the turn of the millennium, the number of EDU member parties had skyrocketed. Soon after the liberalisation of Eastern Europe, a process of political realignment began, with a centre–right philosophy taking hold. Members and observer members from the former Soviet republics also joined the EDU. The new political actors were building democracy from scratch, and they appreciated the support that cooperation with the EDU provided. I had a feeling of déjà vu from the days when my own party had joined the EDU, as the representatives of the new member parties too developed a bond with European democratic thinking, along with strong personal relationships. On the other hand, this ‘unification’ phase also saw concerns raised about what would happen to parties from countries that were nowhere near joining the EU. In my view, it was probably in this light that after the process of bringing the EPP and the EDU together was completed, the EPP also took under its wing the parties that would otherwise have been left out in the cold.
The end result was not the creation of a new political entity but the majority of the EDU merging with the EPP. The sense was the same as that described by Andreas Khol in the late 1970s, namely, that some Christian Democratic and conservative parties simply could not collaborate closely enough for the first option to work: an impression that was due not only to political differences but also to different traditions and mindsets. However, while they could not belong to the same party in a classic sense, they could still work together within the same group in the European Parliament. In addition to the merger of the EDU and the EPP, negotiations were conducted to form a broad-based single parliamentary group, which was eventually set up after the 1999 European Parliament elections.
With the achievement of the EDU’s key goals, its mission was accomplished. Although the EDU ceased to exist, it left behind a valuable legacy. The EDU acted like a sports training club, bringing together people and parties from completely different backgrounds and making it possible for them to understand each other’s problems and to help one another. Today’s EPP safeguards this legacy.
A lot happened in the couple of decades of the EDU’s existence, including a fundamental change in the global order. Now, another couple of decades on, the order that emerged then is collapsing, and we find ourselves in a world in flux. At the turn of the millennium, the newly integrated Europe led by the EPP was a strong player. Today, we desperately need some of that strength.
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Sauli Niinistö
served as president of Finland from 2012 to 2024. He was chairman of Kokoomus from 1994 to 2001 and chairman of the EDU from 1998 to 2002. In the Finnish government, Niinistö served as minister of justice from 1995 to 1996, minister of finance from 1996 to 2003 and deputy prime minister from 1995 to 2001. He was speaker of the Parliament of Finland from 2007 to 2011 and has been honorary president of the EPP since 2002.