Liberal/SDP Alliance in the British elections of 1983 and 1987, when the word Alliance was specifically used to down-play the party politics and to play up its lack of partisanship. The Social Democrats and latterly the Liberal Democrats also dropped the word 'party' from their popular title. Adenauer's CDU/CSU scored the first electoral triumphs. They were followed by de Gasperi's Italian Christian Democrats, Robert Schuman's Popular Republican Movement (RPR) in France, and the Belgian Social Christian Party (CVP/PSC). From the late 1940s until the late 1960s Christian Democratic parties were the largest members in multi-party governing coalitions in West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland. In Austria and Switzerland they were junior partners in coalition. Only in France did their influence diminish. The 1970s were fallow years with electoral reverses. In Italy there was scandal following revelations of the Christian Democrat Party's corrupt links with the business world. But reform, rethinking, and renewal led in the 1980s to improved performance and good prospects for the millennium. At the most recent national and European elections Christian Democrats have commanded between one-third and two-fifths of the popular support of the electorate. In 1987 in West Germany they polled forty-four per cent; in 1987 in Italy, thirty-four per cent; and at the most recent elections in Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium a plurality of votes. They have shared power with Left, Right and Centre. Mr van Rompuy, the Chairman of the Belgian CVP, says that Christian Democrats should see their willingness to act as conciliators and mediators as a real strength; Lubbers talks of their 'healing role'; while Arie Oostlander, the Dutch MEP, says that Christian Democrats' belief in co-operation with others underlined why they could not be 'fitted into the Left-Right-Centre straitjacket of British politics'.
Our Common European Home
Undoubtedly the most significant achievements of Christian Democracy in postwar Europe have been the construction of the European Community, its role in Eastern Europe, and its commitment to a federated Europe. As each post-war nation strove to rebuild its economy, a handful of statesmen from previously enemy countries united in the conviction that nothing could be rebuilt to last without regard for the dignity of each person and without the unification of Europe. This utopia became reality. First, in 1951, in the Treaty of Paris, with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community; and then in 1957, in the Treaty of Rome, through the establishment of the European Economic Community.