In 1989 the European People’s party (EPP) set the goal to represent Christian Democracy in the whole of Europe. This paper sets out to discuss three questions concerning this. A) What challenges and problems did the EPP have to confront? B) What strategies did they use to face these problems? C) To what degree has the EPP succeeded in reaching the goals? The study is done by following the EPP over time and how it has worked towards the new parties in Central and Eastern Europe with a special focus on Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The data used for this is party documents, yearbooks and interviews. Both the aims and the strategies of the EPP caused internal disputes. The main question was whether size or ideology should guide the strategic decisions. The conclusions are that EPP was successful much thanks to its pragmatism to organization and ability to reach compromises internally.