Editing European Democrats (section)

===1979–1992===
The [[European Democratic Group]]<ref name="t1s3"/><ref name="t1s49"/> (ED) was formed on 17 July 1979<ref name="t1s7"/> by British [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party]], Danish [[Conservative People's Party (Denmark)|Conservative People's Party]] and other MEPs after their success in the [[1979 European Parliament election|1979 elections]]. It supplanted the earlier [[European Conservative Group]].

In the late seventies and early eighties, the ED was the third-largest [[Political groups of the European Parliament|political group in the European Parliament]].

However, the group saw its membership fall sharply in the late 1980s, as many [[centre-right politics|centre-right]] members moved to the rival [[European People's Party]] (EPP), dominated by the [[Christian Democratic Union of Germany]] (CDU), Italian [[Christian Democracy (Italy)|Christian Democrats]] and the ideology of [[Christian democracy]] in general. The ED had been somewhat further from the [[Centrism|political centre]] and less [[Pro-Europeanism|pro-European]] than the EPP. Largely isolated, even hardline [[Euroscepticism|eurosceptic]]s like [[Margaret Thatcher]] conceded that the British Conservatives could not be effectively heard from such a peripheral group.