In its ‘early days’, DiEM25 presented itself as a protest movement making a claim to constituent power. According to its manifesto, it aims to initiate a European constitutional assembly that is to replace the Lisbon Treaty with a democratic constitution. Recently, however, DiEM25 decided to establish an ‘electoral wing’, thus moving in the direction of a transnational partisan association. A pan-European party list is to advance a policy-agenda described as ‘European New Deal’. This dual strategy creates a tension since the act of running for office seems to affirm the very structures of public authority that DiEM25 seeks to do away with through constitution making. Starting from this observation, this paper discusses the relationship between transnational partisanship and constituent power in the European Union. I argue that the two are incompatible as long as we conceive of transnational partisanship – following prominent proposals in political theory – as an alignment of actors who are in control of constituted powers at the national level, i.e. governing parties. However, the distinction between parties and partisanship allows us to envisage ‘revolutionary’ communities of commitment that establish organizational structures through which claims to constituent power can be promoted. In principle, a transnational partisan association has the potential to provide a European constituent power with political agency. DiEM25’s goal of competing in the European elections of 2019 is counterproductive in this regard. Striving for positions in constituted powers undermines the credibility of claims to constituent power.
