This article was first published in German in Khol, Karner, Sobotka, Rausch-Amon and Ofner (eds.), Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Politik 2023, Wien 2023. All rights reserved with the Politische Akademie Wien.

Complaints about the decline of political parties are part of the everyday political wisdom of Western democracies. If this were indeed true, it would threaten the existence of parliamentary democracies. To this day, parties are its most important political actors. A closer look, however, shows that, despite all the dramatic changes in modern Western societies, the importance of political parties remains undiminished and that no convincing alternatives have yet developed that could take over central functions of parties, such as elite recruitment or program development. Nevertheless, the need for adaptation and modernisation of party organisations remains. The comparatively young European Political Parties play a unique role. As party parties, they sometimes differ significantly from national parties. However, they play a central role in strengthening democracy at the European level and in the democratisation of new member states.