[17] In the late 1990s, the Finnish politician Sauli Niinistö negotiated the merger of the European Democrat Union (EDU), of which he was president, into the EPP.

In October 2002, the EDU ceased its activities after being formally absorbed by the EPP at a special event in Estoril, Portugal.

[23] On one hand, the EPP had been reluctant for years to address Fidesz's stance against the rule of law, expressed by the Article 7 proceedings of the European Parliament.

[24] Orbán's campaigns targeting billionaire George Soros[25] and Jean-Claude Juncker[26] carried wide reverberations for Europe questioning the EPP's effort to install its lead candidate Manfred Weber as the next President of the European Commission.

[27] After years of deferring a decision about the Fidesz issue,[28] the EPP was eventually compelled to address the problem two months before the 2019 European elections, as 13 outraged member parties requested the Hungarian party's exclusion from the EPP due to its billboard campaign featuring Jean-Claude Juncker.

190 of the 193 EPP delegates supported the common agreement with Fidesz on 20 March 2019 to partially suspend its membership.

[31] Three days before this, the Hungarian Parliament had passed a law, declaring a state of emergency within Hungary, granting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the right to rule by decree.

[32] On 3 March 2021, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that Fidesz would leave the EPP group after it changed its internal rules (to allow suspension and expulsion of multiple deputies and their groups), although Fidesz remained a suspended member of the EPP itself.

[35][36][37][38] That same month, members of the newly elected Hungarian Tisza Party led by Peter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider, applied to join EPP.

Observer parties can participate in all the activities of the EPP, and attend the Congresses and Political Assemblies, but they do not have any voting rights.

Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Georgia Iceland Montenegro North Macedonia Norway Serbia Switzerland Ukraine Armenia Belarus Bosnia and Herzegovina Georgia Kosovo Moldova Norway San Marino Ukraine Armenia Belgium Belarus France Croatia Hungary Italy Romania Slovakia Spain Turkey Ukraine The EPP is governed by the EU Regulation No 1141/2014 on European Political Parties and European Political Foundations and its operations are supervised by the EU Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations.

Following the pattern of the EPP Summit the party also organises regular EPP Ministerial meetings before each meeting of the Council of the European Union, with ministers, deputy ministers, secretaries of state and MEPs in the specific policy field attending: The EPP also organises working groups on different issues on an ad hoc basis, as well as meetings with its affiliated members in the European Commission.

According to the Lisbon Treaty, the parties must present candidates for President of the European Commission, but the EPP had already done this by endorsing José Manuel Barroso for a second term in April 2009.

As of 1 December 2019, the EPP holds the Presidency of the European Commission with Ursula von der Leyen (CDU).

The Group is chaired by Walburga Habsburg Douglas (Sweden), and its Vice-Presidents are Consiglio Di Nino (Canada), Vilija Aleknaitė Abramikiene (Lithuania), Laura Allegrini (Italy), and George Tsereteli (Georgia).

The Group also includes members of parties not related to the EPP, accounting for the "like-minded" part of its name.

The Group also included members of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Republican Party of the United States, but now they are members of the Conservative Group The EPP has close relations with the International Republican Institute (IRI), an organisation funded by the U.S. government especially to promote democracy and democratisation.

In 2011 Martens and McCain made joint press statements expressing their concern about the state of democracy in Ukraine.

Its top priorities are to reform the legal framework for SMEs all over Europe and to promote and support the interests of small and medium-sized enterprises.

SME Europe was founded in May 2012 by three Members of the European Parliament, Paul Rübig, Nadezhda Neynsky, and Bendt Bendtsen.

Led by Virgilio Falco, EDS has 40 member organisations, representing nearly 1,600,000 students and young people[57] in 31 countries, including Belarus and Georgia.

As the officially recognised EPP association of workers, the EUCDW is led by Dennis Radtke, MEP.

It aims at the political unification of a democratic Europe, the development of the EPP based on Christian social teaching, and the defence of workers' interests in European policy-making.