European Conservatives Group

The European Conservatives Group (EC) is a conservative group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It was originally founded as the Group of Independent Representatives in 1970 by British and Scandinavian members of PACE, having about 35-40 members from the UK, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Turkey, Sweden and Switzerland. It was also formerly known as the European Democrat Group until its renaming in 2014.

It is affiliated to the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists Europarty.

While it was only the third group to be founded in PACE (after the Socialist Group and the Christian Democrat Group), it was the first to have an official secretariat, which was established in 1977. On 6 July 1978, a proposal to rename the group was submitted, leading to the official new name in September 1980.

For many years Vladimir Putin's United Russia party were members of the European Democrat Group.

Membership

As of 23 October 2014, the European Conservatives have the following members:^[1]

Country	Party name	Members	Other affiliations
Country	Party name	Members	Europarty	EU Parliament	International
Armenia	Prosperous Armenia	2	AECR	N/A	None
Armenia	Republican Party of Armenia (part)^[A]	1	None	N/A	None
Azerbaijan	New Azerbaijan Party	4	None	N/A	None
Czech Republic	Civic Democratic Party	2	AECR	ECR	IDU
Denmark	Danish People's Party	1	None	ECR	None
Greece	Independent Greeks	1	None	ECR	None
Iceland	Independence Party	2	AECR	N/A	IDU
Norway	Progress Party	2	None	N/A	None
Poland	Law and Justice	7	AECR	ECR	None
Poland	United Poland	1	MELD	No MEPs	None
Turkey	Justice and Development Party (part)^[B]	13	AECR	N/A	None
Turkey	Nationalist Movement Party^[C]	1	None	N/A	None
Ukraine	Party of Regions (part)^[D]	4	None	N/A	None
Ukraine	Sovereign European Ukraine	1	None	N/A	None
United Kingdom	Conservative Party	17	AECR	ECR	IDU
United Kingdom	Democratic Unionist Party	1	None	Non-Inscrits	None
^A One of the three members of the Republican Party of Armenia sit with the EC Group. The other two members sit with the European People's Party. ^B Eleven of the thirteen members of the Justice and Development Party sit with the EC Group. One sits with the European People's Party and one sits with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. ^C One of the two members of the Nationalist Movement Party sits with the EC Group. The other member sits with the Socialist Group. ^D Four of the seven members of Party of Regions sit with the EC Group. Two sit with the Socialist Group and one sits with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.