Volt Europa: A Transnational Model of Representation in the EU Multilevel Party Field?

Volt Europa emerged in 2017 as a transnational political party with aspirations to become the first established EU political party. Volt emerged not as a federation of national parties—as the existing “Europarties”—but as an aspiring pan-European party. In doing so, Volt challenged the pre-existing national representative logic of European politics, presenting itself as an alternative to the dominant party models in EU politics. Yet, to what extent does Volt Europa represent a genuinely alternative model? To answer this question, we identify three Europarty models in the EU: national, supranational, and transnational. While the former two express the EU’s classic representative dichotomy, the latter could be a genuine innovation if implemented. We then explore Volt’s trajectory, focusing on its ideology, discourse and organisation through extensive document analysis and semi-structured interviews. We find that, despite meaningful attempts at establishing a transnational organisation, it largely reproduces the national vs. supranational dichotomy that characterises the EU’s approach to democracy, while maintaining centrist-technocratic politics and a strong German–Dutch anchoring. Therefore, we conclude that, while Volt is an important case study of innovative political practices at the supranational level, it falls short of presenting a convincing alternative model: its combination of supranational and transnational elements rather highlights the limits of trickle-down representative innovation when faced with the European political field’s structural dynamics.