Meh, by divine right we still own parts of France... or would if Mary I hadn't been stupid enough to lose Calais

Not sure anyone wants a debate on European poilitics... there is one advantage to a 2 party system and that is it is easy to understand. Most European countries now have many, many parties and the way they interact within Europe is complicated. The parties that have power in their individual countries are not necessarily the ones that have power in Europe. For example, the Green party in Britain rarely stands for general election (they have one or two seats in parliament which they sometimes stand for and I am not aware of them winning anywhere) but in the European elections they often get several seats. Of course, they can do more for the environment in Europe (because Europe has more power over industrial standards) than they could in the UK parliament, even if they actually performed the miracle of getting a majority in parliament and therefore determining the government...

Of course, the main problem is that many of the smaller parties are too small to effectively create a government (and they are mainly single issue parties) so we are, in effect, limited still to the 2 and a half party system we have had for years...