Party Positions in the EP -- p17
Finally, in order to examine the relationship between national parties and their European
Party parent groups we compared the estimated policy positions of the EP party groups with
those of their domestic affiliates, and found that the EP political groups are generally placed
at the centre of the distribution of domestic party policy positions. These intriguing
preliminary results suggest a remarkably close correspondence between the EP groups and
national political parties and point to interesting possibilities for future research on the
dynamic between national and European policy positioning.
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