Dunphy, Richard and Luke March. "Seven Year Itch? The European Left Party: Struggling to Transform the EU". Perspectives on European Politics and Society, vol.14, no.4 (2013): 520-537.

Dunphy, Richard and Luke March. "Seven Year Itch? The European Left Party: Struggling to Transform the EU". Perspectives on European Politics and Society, vol.14, no.4 (2013): 520-537.

• Despite considerable support at a domestic level, radical left parties in Europe have failed to greatly increase their representation at the transnational level, as shown by a consistently poor showing of the European Left Party in European Parliament, despite increases in support for national radical left parties (521).
• The role of transnational parties -- those which represent constituencies with in European Parliament -- is controversial. Generally they are organizationally weak, w/ a focus mainly on information exchange, coordination, and socialization w/ like-minded national parties (521).
• For political parties in 'new democracies', like those of Spain, Greece, or Eastern Europe, joining a transnational party is also sign of legitimacy (521).
• Despite being avowedly internationalist, some even calling for international revolution, Europe radical left parties have had a deal of difficulty organizing on the transnational level. Part of this issue has been the division between Eurosceptic and pro-EU radical left groups, with a divide over whether the EU could be transformed, or had to be destroyed (523).
• The European Left Party was born out of the pragmatic recognition among some radical left groups that they had to engage with EU federal structures to properly destroy neoliberalism (523). 
• Strong aversion to any kind of Comintern organization following the collapse of the Soviet Union prevented the effective organization of radical left parties on the international level, as they feared the negative association that came with that ideology (524).
• The purposeful construction of a diverse and 'grass-roots' party organizational structure inhibited the ability of the European Left Party to determine unitary ideology or make joint decisions. Its organization stress the importance of party sovereignty, giving each group representation regardless of size (524-525).
• The European Left Party has also encouraged unstructured participation through allowing direct membership of the European Parliamentary bloc (525).
• The European Left Party focuses more on the quantity of members than their quality, as demonstrated by the number of weak and populist parties of Eastern Europe included in its ranks. The abstract opinions and sometimes outright Stalinism of these post-Soviet parties undermines the ability of the European Left Party to function as a centralized body (528).
• The European Left Party has also failed to garner the support of radically anti-EU leftist parties, which regard any engagement in federal structure as a violation of the 'national paths to socialism' expounded by traditional Marxist-Leninism (528).
• The organization of the European Left Party has also been damaged by the split between itself and the other constituent groups of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL). If the European Left Party doesn't work together, there is a whole another round of issues of coordination and cooperation within the voting bloc (529).
• Excepting the radical right, whose groups are all racist against each other, the GUE/NGL is the least cohesive of any European Parliamentary group, showing minimal improvement over time (530).
• Before the 2009 European Parliamentary elections, the European Left Party created its first ever platform (530). Despite this, the platform stressed the importance of individual party management during elections and as such deliberately wrote off the possibility of a centrally managed political campaign (531).
• Despite slightly increased organization, the radical left and the left as a whole lost badly during the 2009 elections, registering a significant drop in the number of seats. It floundered in internal divisions and was defeated by voters fleeing to a resurgent centre-right and sane economics (532).
• The slogans and policies of the European Left Party were also out of date at the time of writing, as they had yet to recognize the passage of the Lisbon Treaty. This made many of their statements sound out of the loop and lowered overall credibility (533).
• The sole exception to this has been the Left Party in German, which funded the creation of a grants and low-interest loans funds for use in public works and local projects. This was seen as an alternative to the Lisbon Treaty (534).
• After the failure of the group in 2009 elections, the leader had called for increased centralization, however such calls were unpopular and resulted in his removal from the position. His replacement, Pierre Laurent, stuck to the party line of national sovereignty and party independence (534).
• The European Left Party certainly served a purpose as a locus for the collection of radical left parties in Europe, but it primarily served the legitimation of Eastern European parties rather than structuring or support for radical left parties as a whole (534).
• Many of the weakness discussed here affect all transnational parties in Europe, namely a subservience to national parties at the expense of cohesive policy (535).