European Conservatives Group and Democratic Alliance
The European Conservatives Group and Democratic Alliance (EC/DA) is a conservative group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It was founded as the Group of Independent Representatives in 1970 by British and Scandinavian members of PACE. It has 76 members from countries including the United Kingdom, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and Italy. It was known as the European Democrat Group until its renaming in 2014, and the European Conservatives Group until 2019.
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 new name in September 1980.
For many years the Russian political party United Russia was a member of the European Democrat Group.[1][2]