The article examines the role of European left parties in the politics of their countries and the European Union. The author of the article examines the main types of European left parties, their program goals and the electorate. Modern left-wing European parties in terms of ideological orientation are mostly representatives of social democrats, the Greens, democratic socialists and communists, which roughly corresponds to the left-wing party coalitions existing in the European Parliament, with the exception of communists of the Marxist-Leninist type popular mainly outside the EU. Based on the analysis of successes and defeats in elections in diff erent countries, the author examines the reasons for the popularity or unpopularity of left-wing parties and their specifi c types among certain categories of the electorate, taking into account their age or membership in a particular social group, as well as their regional affi liation. It is noted that the Social Democrats are most popular in Western Europe, the Greens in Northern and Central Europe, and the Democratic Socialists in Southern Europe. In turn, in Eastern Europe, left-wing parties continue to be associated with communist ones. These regional political preferences of the leftist electorate largely refl ect the diff erences in the perception of leftist ideas among residents of diff erent regions of Europe. In this regard, the author also emphasizes diff erent role of the left parties in the political process of diff erent regions, whether it is the promotion of globalist ideas by the Greens in Western and Central Europe, or the reaction to economic crises in Southern Europe by democratic socialists. The author also notes the borrowing of elements of the programs of the left parties from each other in order to preserve the electorate. The impetus for this process, as a rule, is various political and economic crises, when the inability of the left parties in the ruling position to cope with the situation forces them to move to qualitatively new ideological positions, which the author of the article shows by the example of the radicalization of the Social Democrats in Western Europe or the socialist democratization of communists in Eastern Europe after the defeat in the Cold War.