75
"So will your party join The Left or The Greens in the European Parliament?" "Yes."
(sh.itjust.works)
So Sumar's (Spanish party) politicians will apparently be distributed across both The Left and the Greens European parties. Presumably an image maneuver, since joining an European party usually doesn't bind your vote, and Spanish green parties usually get integrated in leftist electoral options anyway.
In the Netherlands, the parties PvdA and GroenLinks have started working together very closely, participating in elections with combined lists. They did the same for the EP elections, but had the challenge that PvdA was part of S&D, whereas GroenLinks was part of the Greens.
They went for the same solution: half the list (the PvdA part) will join S&D, and half (the GroenLinks part) will join the Greens. They will align their votes, though.
The way I interpret that, is that it'll be easier to influence the Greens (since it's a smaller group and thus GroenLinks is a larger part of it), but if the S&D position can be swayed, it'll have more effect. And in general, both parties presumably aren't that far from their group's stances anyway.
So what you are saying is that if there is a given vote in the US parliament, in order to find out how someone will vote, you need someone who can distinguish between the colours red and blue, and if you want to do the same for the EU parliament, you need a doctorate and a decade of intense study to even begin to comprehend the complexities? /s
It's funny that there are several levels of overlapping parties and even the lists don't avoid this chaos.
Yeah, which seems a bit of a hassle, given that there's only two possible opinions one could have on any given matter. Don't know why they bother with more than two parties, really.
Yeah, if you ask Hungary, one party is enough, they can manufacture your consent and tell you what your opinions are just fine.
Two party systems are just for hippies who want to believe they can change anything important while they get a show of tug of war on issues no politician really cares about.