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In recent years, scholarship on postfunctionalism in European integration has drawn attention to how processes of Europeanisation are not restricted to policymakers, but exist equally (if not more significantly) in the quotidian. The 2016–2020 Brexit process and debates on the relationship between national identity and 'Europeanness' urge a new consideration of how Europeanisation is narrated in everyday discourses. This paper analyses British fictional portrayals of the EEC and EU and posits a new theoretical framework of 'Imperial Gothic 2.0'. Pre-2016 representations of the EU were entirely dystopian. But post-2016, Brex-Lit fiction has reversed this trend and the EU now appears as a flawless utopia. Early twentieth-century 'Imperial Gothic' saw popular fiction defined by themes of British decline and oppression by foreign powers; a century later, Brex-Lit has resurrected these themes by narrating Britain in terminal decline, reflecting cultural anxieties, a reversal of Self and Other, and a loss of identities. This 'Imperial Gothic 2.0' reveals anxieties which reflect and influence political action, and reveals the extent to which imaginations and narratives of the EU have transformed from depictions of a distant, technocratic entity used for comedy or conspiracy, into a site of intense emotional affiliation, nostalgia, anticipation, and regret. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the impact of European Union (EU) funds on corruption in the EU ex-communist countries by following a panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The panel includes 10 former EU communist countries, over 2007–2019. The key findings reveal that an improvement in the EU funds paid and their rate of absorption can reduce the level of corruption in the long-run in the recipient EU ex-communist countries. This is due to better monitoring of EU funds paid compared with national resources, and a more efficient and fairer channel of EU funds absorption. In parallel with the EU funds, corruption can be controlled in certain conditions by the degree of economic development, size of government, level of democratisation and religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on Euroscepticism tends to portray parties opposing European integration or criticising the European Union (EU) as a family of Eurosceptic parties (either hard or soft). Recent literature, however, offers empirical evidence on the ambivalence and diversity of the EU critique. What is still unclear are the reasons behind the chameleonic nature of Euroscepticism and the implications that this may have for the EU critique and the changes proposed about EU policy or institutions. The present article addresses this question exploring the role of EU crises to capture the changing nature of Euroscepticism and suggests that it is related to contextual pressures on the political debate around the EU. The paper develops this argument and illustrates it through the analysis of the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, covering the EU crises of the last decade, including the recent period of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine invasion. Drawing on a corpus of party manifestos and speeches between 2013 and 2022, this study shows that there are three main frames used by the party to criticise the EU. It also concludes that these frames involve distinct political implications for the EU critique and the alternative proposals presented by the party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which factors influence bilateral counterterrorism (CT) cooperation between EU Member States? Although scholars have studied European CT, the question still needs to be answered. This paper addresses the issue by introducing a new theoretical framework that combines CT and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) literature. As citizens' threat perception increases, governments are pressed to act. Overall, centrist cabinets tend to rely more on cooperation agreements; likewise, pushed by threat perception, left-wing executives also recourse to international cooperation. I tested this framework on a newly collected dataset, which comprehends bilateral CT agreements signed among EU Members from 2002 to 2017. As such, this paper fosters studies on EU CT, focusing on a less debated issue: bilateral cooperation between EU Member States. The results support the initial hypotheses, disclosing a robust influence of threat perception and cabinet ideology on the number of bilateral CT agreements signed. Furthermore, they show that the perception of the threat is more influential on cooperation than the actual impact of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit, Britain's exit from the supranational polity of the European Union has unsettled the vision of European unity. Rather than nourishing an "and/ both" cosmopolitan view even in the limited context of continental relationship, Britain inculcates an "either/ or" jingoistic nationalism fed on Euroscepticism. English literature has a long tradition of invoking political issues and Brexit has inaugurated a new subgenre, 'BrexLit'. The paper seeks to attempt a detailed study of Scottish writer Ali Smith's novel Autumn (2016), designated by The New York Times as "the first great Brexit novel". The first of the seasonal quartet, this novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and bagged the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Embedded in the Brexit Britain, the novel raises questions of citizenship, particularly in relation to immigration, and mirrors the loss of cultural conviviality. The paper discusses anti-immigrant toxicity, the upsurge of nostalgic appetite for national heritage, and the territorial social ontology of the contemporary English national outlook. The paper studies, in the context of the narrative, how the media resorts to post-truth politics and right-wing nationalistic propaganda in media resulting in the death of democracy and the end of dialogue. The paper explores how the novel advocates an inclusive, realistic cosmopolitanism through Elisabeth-Daniel friendship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decade after 2007 eurosceptic actors in the UK successfully deployed securitizing narratives to portray the free movement of people (FMoP) and EU citizens as a threat to the 'ontological security' of national citizens. The ensuing exclusionary policies (up to and beyond the end of FMoP) were normatively problematic, particularly given the absence of evidence in support of those narratives. However, the paper argues that a response aimed at de‐securitizing the issue—in this case, a return to the status‐quo‐ante – is not without its own normative problems. Indeed, the permissive pre‐2007 New Labour government's approach to FMoP was not inclusive of all EU citizens. In valorizing EU citizens as 'independent post‐national entrepreneurs', the marginalization of economically vulnerable EU citizens, particularly via tough welfare conditionality, was legitimated. The paper concludes by reflecting on the theoretical and political implications of the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Macedonia has been at the doorstep of the European Union since the initial 2003 Western Balkans summit in Thessaloniki, Greece. Although this milestone has reached the 20-year mark, the road to full membership into the European Union seems all the more difficult and challenging for the small mountainous Western Balkans state. For North Macedonia, the obstacles which provide context to the seemingly endless road to EU integration and possible membership, range from domestic shortcomings to historical, cultural and political predicaments with neighbors. In this paper, we will aim to analyze the case of North Macedonia, including the internal and external obstacles in its path to EU integration and propose possible resolutions and outcomes for the case and the seemingly never-ending journey towards membership status in the European Union. In this context, we will utilize EU commission reports and their key findings with regards to North Macedonia as well as recent social, political and economic developments in the country. In order to depict the case thoroughly, the first part of the paper will cover the historical development and background in relation to the EU integration, the second and third parts will cover the most recent developments and main obstacles in North Macedonia's path in both an internal and external context, and in the conclusion, we will provide a summary of the immediate concerns of North Macedonia in its path to EU integration and the possible trajectories for resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border regions are often deemed laboratories for initiatives to increase Europeanization. Our paper examines the German-speaking Community of Belgium in the Euregio Maas-Rhine to assess the relevance of everyday cross-border activities to the perception that living in a border region presents a unique opportunity to feel and think as a European. Departing from the assumptions of both Deutsch's transaction theory and Allport's contact hypothesis, we analyze Eurobarometer data (population-level surveys) and use data from focus groups with regional MPs. Results from quantitative data analysis suggest that perceptions of life in cross-border regions are positively influenced by frequent cross-border movement (functional dimension) as well as general trust in other people (emotional dimension). Our qualitative data from focus groups support the findings from the quantitative analysis and demonstrate further that it is not merely the quantity but the quality of contacts that contribute to a gradual 'growing together'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has the Europeanisation of football at the level of governance (due to for example the effects of the Bosman ruling and the formation of the UEFA Champions League) – influenced the identities of football fans? This paper explores how such structural Europeanisation in football is influencing identifications among fans. Based on an analysis of articulations in selected online message boards, we distil the positioning of fans towards 'Europe' in football, and the factors which shape it. We control for three main avenues of impact: the club level, the league level, and the societal context. Our inquiry is based on a set of paired comparisons of fan scenes for football clubs in four different European countries. Results show that the factor carrying the most explanatory power is the club's participation in European-level competition. Although this broadly confirms a 'contact hypothesis' – according to which the more fans are exposed to cross-border contacts, the less relevance they attribute to aspects of national belonging – significant variations of how frequent exposure to European-level competition translates into more Europeanised perceptions do exist. For European identity studies, the work corroborates that a lifeworld arena such as football can foster Europeanised identifications, albeit not in a uniform manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of growing nationalisms and Euroscepticism, this paper develops the original concept of 'Everyday Europeanhood' on a theoretical level, building on related concepts, such as Skey and Antonsich's 'Everyday Nationhood', Billig's 'Banal Nationalism', Anderson's 'Imagined Communities' and Beck's 'Cosmopolitan Vision'. It applies the concept to the European Universities Initiative (EUI), seen as a tool to promote European identity, based on a common sense of belonging conveyed through everyday practice, among students and staff in European University Alliances. It is argued that, in the light of previous top-down European initiatives designed to symbolically reinforce a sense of shared European identity, the EUI seems more in phase with bottom-up 'everyday' processes of identity development. Taking the European University Alliance 'FORTHEM' as an example, core features, aspects, actions and outputs achieved so far within this alliance are categorised in the light of four dimensions of 'Everyday Europeanhood': 'Talking Europe', 'Choosing Europe', 'Performing Europe' and 'Consuming Europe'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses de-legitimisation and Eurosceptic attitudes in Turkey as reflected in newspapers during the COVID-19 pandemic between 15 March 2020 and 30 May 2021. Easton's (1975) specific support about concrete policy outcomes and Scharpf 's (1998) output-oriented legitimisation theories are utilised in testing the hypothesis on de-legitimisation of EU-rope in both pro and against government media in relation to EU-rope's policies towards the "fight" against COVID-19 since Euroscepticism influences the political discourse in general regardless of political or ideological position. In the paper, EU-rope is used, instead of European Union (EU) and Europe as two different terminologies, since the analysed newspapers utilise EU and Europe interchangeably. Five newspapers are included in the analysis for this study: Hürriyet, Sabah, Karar, Gazete Pencere and BirGün based on their political and ideological stances. In the research, online archives of the newspapers are utilised, and in each newspaper the op-eds are excluded from the analysis. The main focus is given to the news - headlines on Europe and the EU. Keywords that are looked for in newspapers are EU, Europe, vaccine, BioNTech, Sinovac, Coronavirus, COVID-19, and the pandemic. It has been observed that, regardless of political ideologies and the position of newspaper at the left-right political spectrum, Euroscepticism became a common attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the changing discourses of former Czech president Miloš Zeman on European integration and the European Union. Together with his predecessors Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, Zeman symbolises the period of democratic transition and consolidation after the Velvet Revolution and, as prime minister from 1998-2002 and president from 2013-2023, he co-formulated Czech European politics. Although labelling himself a Eurofederalist, Zeman never spared any effort to criticise the EU. The paper assumes that the change in his Eurosceptic discourse was due to the institution of direct presidential elections. Zeman followed the Czech political mainstream, which is softly Eurosceptic. Moreover, Zeman's Eurosceptic critique of the EU corresponded with the positions shared by his electorate. Euroscepticism, therefore, helped Zeman's re-election in 2018. The authors analyse key texts from various periods of Zeman's political career to describe and interpret his discourses on the EU in particular and European integration in general, to demonstrate that beyond the façade of his Euro-federalism, one can find a specific version of the mainstream Czech Eurosceptic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the debate on domestic politicisation of EU issues by suggesting hitherto overlooked explanation of (non)politicisation. This paper uses Czechia as an intriguing case in which the mainstream explanations of a low level of domestic politicisation of EU issues do not apply. The Czech case illustrates that, first, even in the context of high public Euroscepticism, EU issues do not necessarily become politicised, particularly so when the public does not consider them to be important. Second, high politicisation does not occur when there is a path dependency of a mismatch between positions of political parties and significant parts of their electorates on EU issues. Finally, the rise of catch-all populist parties prevents a high level of politicisation of EU issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent spread of Euroscepticism has largely been limited to criticism of the actions, inefficiencies, or credibility of EU institutions, while the issue of leaving or not joining the EU is still out of focus for the vast majority of the European population. With the exception of the United Kingdom, which withdrew from the EU, Serbia is the only country where the majority of the population does not want to join the bloc. This paper is dedicated to researching the causes of this phenomenon and measuring their impact on the current additional increase in resistance to the EU among the population of Serbia. This paper presents the results of a survey organised by the authors in Serbia in 2020. MANOVA and the Generalised Linear Model (GLM) were used to analyse the impact of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, as well as the influence of the national attachment of respondents to their attitude towards EU membership. The results showed that Euroscepticism was on the rise due to a weakening expectation of economic benefits of EU membership and a strengthening of national attachment, including concerns over the loss of national sovereignty, under increased EU pressure on Serbia to give up disputed Kosovo territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research mainly analyzes mass attitudes towards the European Union (EU) from the national and individual‐level perspective. This paper adds to this literature by focusing on the relationship between EU support and subnational economic conditions, using harmonized survey data covering 40 years and 1.1 million respondents in 197 European regions. We first describe Europe's changing subnational conditions in terms of catch‐up, wealthy, declining and glass‐ceiling regions. The paper then develops and tests a set of hypotheses regarding the temporally dynamic relationship between EU attitudes and regions' long‐ and short‐term economic conditions. Our analyses reveal important longitudinal variations in this relationship with low levels of geographic differentiation in public opinion giving way to clear spatial differences in recent years. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the Great Recession and Brexit have generated a new geography of both Euroscepticism in Europe's declining regions and EU support in its wealthy and catch‐up regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union is often seen as a bulwark of progressive values, including LGBTI rights. By restricting such rights, politicians thus appear to reject the EU's fundamental principles. This paper argues, however, that anti-gender politics is often a surprisingly pro-European phenomenon. Many of its practitioners rebuff accusations of Euroskepticism. For them, rights restrictions are less an attempt to reject European integration than to redirect its trajectory. They aim to reconnect the EU with Europe's civilizational roots. The paper illustrates this argument by analyzing the discourse actors have used to justify anti-gender policies in three countries: Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper inquires divergences in electoral programs of four Czech political parties (the ČSSD, KDU-ČSL, KSČM, and the ODS) as delivered for all the previous European Parliament elections. The aim of this study is to compare the use of national and European themes as delineated in programs. It is assumed that, in many cases, the programs contain topics and aspects which are specific and valid for elections on the national level instead. Thus, the paper elaborates on one of the characteristics of the second-order elections theory as exemplified in the Euro-elections. Results of the analysis showed a significant superiority of national affairs over the European issues in the examined samples. Although the number of political parties varies in individual periods, the study has also confirmed the assumption drawn from the theory of second-order elections. Therefore, political parties utilize political programs for the European Parliament elections as of national interest with domestic affairs, not European. Furthermore, the study considers dissimilarities among political parties in positive and negative attitudes toward the EU. Hence, sundry approaches to European affairs may be identified across the Czech political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to provide better understanding of which factors shaped UKIP electoral support in local elections using borough-level data from London, as well as individual-level survey data from respondents residing in London. Results from this study display rising crime, falling turnout, and falling Conservative party vote share led to rises in UKIP vote share. These findings show that while perceptions of immigration and the economy may affect voter choice for Eurosceptic, nationalist, and populist parties, actual change in migration and economic conditions had no effect on voter support for UKIP in local elections. Additionally, there is substantial evidence that rising rates of local crime, and perceptions of rising local crime rates, lead voters to seek out parties, such as UKIP, with a policy platform supporting strengthened criminal justice measures. Finally, UKIP support in local elections is shown to have drawn heavily from former Conservative voters, as opposed to disenchanted Labour supporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of enduring crisis phenomena, quantitative evidence of the renewed salience of socio-economic agendas advanced by radical right populist parties calls for more qualitative research work and in-depth case studies. The present paper aims to contribute to filling this gap through a cultural political economy (CPE) investigation of the Italian League (Lega) party that foregrounds its socio-economic positioning by reconstructing the party's 'economic imaginary'. The suggested synergy between CPE and a critical discourse analysis of the League's practical argumentation in the 2013 and 2018 electoral manifestos points to a composite economic imaginary that prioritizes: 1) production (vs financialization); 2) support of internal demand; 3) lowering of fiscal pressure; 4) protectionism and 5) welfare. The analysis shows how, under Salvini's leadership, the party's practical argumentation in EU matters has become constitutive of its overall political strategy and so exacerbated the claims at the core of the respective economic imaginary. In this vein, the League's Euroscepticism has also polarized the relationship between the party's socio-economic and socio-cultural stance, thus urging to go beyond the focus on economic imaginaries and sketch out a CPE research agenda on the League's more encompassing struggle for hegemony in the Italian political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Italian responses to the Treaties of Rome in 1957 by looking at media's role as a tool to both amplify voices and construct ideas on European integration. It attempts to expand upon and also challenges existing narratives on integration in Italy – which have tended to assume that 'Euroscepticism' largely emerged in a post-Maastricht context – by showing that the matter was already the source of significant politicisation and contestation, and that political actors used the outlets at their disposal to influence public opinion. Indeed, the Italian media conversations enveloping the Treaties of Rome – at a time when the introduction of RAI television was revolutionising the media landscape, and the Treaties were broadcast and politicised as a landmark event – highlight the variety of visions of European integration that had emerged. On the one hand, the ruling Christian Democratic government had radio and television under its harness, and used these channels to push a pro-integrationist orthodoxy on the Italian public. Nevertheless, we also see dissenting visions expressed in much of the printed press, not only from the anti-Western Communists and Socialists, but also from a broad church including neo-fascists, monarchists and even federalists. The article crucially finds that there was a deliberate effort by government-aligned journalists to marginalise – rather than engage with – any dissenting views on European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how the diffusion of skeptical or negative attitudes towards the European Union (EU) and the process of European integration relates to the new technologies of political communication, education, and their interaction. Using both European-wide and national surveys, we find a strong relationship between exposure to online political activity and Euroscepticism only among individuals with lower formal education. When distinguishing between different forms of online political activity it also finds that it is not the use of the internet per se that matters, but the specific use of social networks, like Twitter or Facebook, for obtaining information about politics. These results turn out to be robust to the use of instrumental variables intended to capture the speed of connection available and the relative easiness of using internet and social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does political nostalgia influence voting? Although nostalgic voters have been often mentioned as central to the rise of populism in the West, scholars have rarely shown empirically how nostalgia influences electoral choice. In this paper, I use survey data from 2009 and 2016 to investigate the extent and electoral impact of Soviet nostalgia in the context of democratizing Moldova. First, the paper reveals and explains why political nostalgia is distributed unevenly across Moldova's territory with certain regions and ethnocultural groups embracing romanticized views of the Communist past more often than others. Second, the paper demonstrates that nostalgic orientations toward the past and cultural factors rather than perceptions of economic conditions structure party choice in post-Soviet Moldova. The paper also identifies the discursive similarities between varieties of Western populism, Euroscepticism, illiberal worldviews, and the nostalgic appeals of the Moldovan Left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows the perspective of recent political communication studies approaching the online public sphere as a new platform for the political expression of citizens. Based on an explorative, in-depth analysis of user-generated content related to mainstream media coverage of the immigration crisis, with a specific focus on representations of the role of the EU in the crisis, it aims to discover how recent political trends in Europe are reflected in the online political expression of Eurosceptic citizens of a post-socialist Central European country, the Czech Republic. Relating the analysed data to current knowledge of the links between populism, illiberalism and Euroscepticism, and reflecting the post-socialist specifics of this relationship, it suggests that ressentiment may explain the representation of the EU as a traitor to the Europeans in the civic online discourse in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the European Union (EU) citizen identity in Latvia over a 15-year timeline from 2004 to 2019, examining the ways in which feelings of "Europeanness" have grown among Latvian citizens since the nation's initial accession to the EU. This article contains theoretical, historical, and statistical frames for its analysis. Drawing on Eurobarometer reports and their data annexes published between 2005 and 2019, this paper documents the quantitative evolution of EU identity in Latvia and demonstrates that the EU citizen identity in Latvia has grown in recent years, but that, in certain regards, it still lags in comparison to other EU member states. Specifically, this analysis highlights that the social component of EU identity in Latvia--the "actual" self-description that one is culturally European--lags behind the EU average. This article contributes significantly to the existing body of EU scholarship because of its specific focus on Latvian identity development through the lens of Eurobarometer reports, and because of its selected 15-year timeline, which started with its initial accession to the EU. This article posits that, should the EU identity in Latvia continue to grow and develop in the coming years, then Latvia could--at a time when other nations are suffering from Eurosceptic ideology--elevate the country's social voice in the EU and position itself as truly European, thereby ending Latvia's previous connections to Eastern society and solidifying itself as a Western nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Support for EU membership has long been an important topic of study. Individual-level research shows that winners of globalisation, including the higher educated, express greater EU support as they profit from economic and cultural conditions resulting from European integration. Recent context-focused work suggests that individuals in 'left-behind' places are less supportive of EU integration because of their home regions' weaker long-term economic conditions. This paper brings these two research strands into conversation with each other by examining how the relationship between EU support and individual-level education is contingent on subnational economic conditions. Using harmonised Eurobarometer data from almost 750,000 respondents spanning 2004–2019, combined with subnational economic data from 201 European regions, we find no evidence that subnational economic conditions influence the relationship between EU support and respondents' education level. At the same time, when cross-sectionally comparing long-term differences between regions, we find that EU support is positively related to regional GDP per capita (though unrelated to regional unemployment), among both the higher and lower educated, and especially in the post-Great Recession period. Longitudinally, EU support is positively related to declining regional unemployment, both among the higher and lower educated, but not to increasing regional GDP per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When member states of the European Union face serious international threats, does this serve as a catalyst or obstacle for European integration in the security and defence domain? To gain purchase on this question, this paper examines public opinion from a common instrument fielded in 24 EU member states (and the United Kingdom) with a total sample size of more than 40,000 respondents.We argue that theoretical accounts of perceived threat produce rival hypotheses. Threats might have either uniform or differential effects on different groups of citizens and could lead to either convergence or divergence of public opinion. We show that perceptions of foreign threats are associated with more favourable views on integration in the security and defence domain. Importantly, this association is as strong among Eurosceptics as among Europhiles. The findings presented here are consistent with the view that functional pressures may temporarily convince Eurosceptics to accept integration in the foreign and security domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The idea of "Britain and Europe" that David Cameron emphasised in his speech on 23 January 2013 is a curious one -it evokes a shared history full of intricate twists, which spans over several centuries, and at the same time, preserves the apparent incompatibility of the island nation and the continent. Cameron even proposed an "in-out referendum" to determine the future of the British people, and its realisation in 2016 made Brexit an unexpected reality and signifies a crucial setback in the recent history of the European project. Brexit is furthermore an expression of "a perceived cultural distinction between Britain and Europe" (Spiering 2015) that seems to persist in British discourse specifically. The paper thus uses Menno Spiering's concept of "British Euroscepticism" (2004), a unique form of Euroscepticism in terms of history, politics and culture, to discuss the cultural aspects of British differentness as entailing not only an opposition to Europe but also a potential to reflect on shared values and experiences. Based on this, the paper will trace the presentation of Europe in contemporary literature that emerged as a reaction to Brexit, especially poetry by Simon Armitage, Sean O'Brien and David Clarke, to ascertain the British perspective on the continent as either the paradigmatic Other or a constituent part for defining British identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with former and current senior BBC editors and journalists. The research finds that BBC coverage in the pre-referendum period was closely tied to major events – such as summits – and elite party conflict. These patterns in coverage were primarily a consequence of the lack of traditional news values inherent in most EU stories and the impact of the wider political and media landscape. The consequence of these patterns in coverage was to present audiences with a restricted, negative and largely conflictual picture of Britain's relationship with the EU which is likely to have fuelled rather than inhibited the growth of Euroscepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euroscepticism is frequently presented as a key ideological feature of far right parties, however, this definition masks important variations between them. This paper argues that far right positions on Europe are characterized by long-standing ambivalence rather than straightforward opposition. While far right parties frequently oppose the EU, ideological flexibility, the malleability of European integration and the protean nature of Europe also lead them to display support towards certain aspects of it and towards Europe as a civilization. The argument is illustrated through a qualitative analysis of the party literature of the Movimento Sociale Italiano and the Front National. The analysis shows that these parties conceived of Europe as an identity, a space of liberty, an endangered heritage and a construction where national interests must be defended. In each theme, they offered ambivalent readings of Europe, oscillating between opposition and support depending on how Europe and the EU were defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the outbreak of the Eurozone crisis, the idea of providing cross-national financial transfers to countries in economic and financial difficulties has exacerbated the political divide between EU member states with strong macroeconomic performances, which were only weakly hit by the crisis, and the countries of the Eurozone periphery that struggled with a harsh economic downturn. This paper aims to explain which factors drive public support for cross-national solidarity within and across countries. We argue that the national context in which citizens live affects their preferences for providing financial help to other European countries, and moderates the role played by subjective egotropic and sociotropic economic concerns, ideological predispositions, and Eurosceptic vote choices in shaping public support for European solidarity. Using the original REScEU 2016 survey, we find that subjective economic motivations provide a limited contribution in explaining support for European solidarity, and almost only in countries weakly hit by the crisis. On the contrary, left–right positions, and especially Eurosceptic vote choices, strongly polarize preferences for EU financial assistance, both within and across countries with voters from Eurosceptic parties more(less) likely to support European solidarity in countries strongly(weakly) hit by the Eurozone crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how regional contextual factors influence Eurosceptic voting in Eastern Central and Western Europe. It employs a theoretical framework of multidimensional regional periphery and relative deprivation to explore how economic, spatial and demographic factors can generate collective feelings of deprivation among regional inhabitants. This relative deprivation is supposed to manifest as political discontent expressed at the EU level, either by attributing responsibility for regional peripherality to the EU or by blaming national institutions, potentially spilling over to the EU level. Based on an integrated dataset encompassing economic, spatial and demographic indicators as well as election data from the European election 2019 for 1169 NUTS 3 regions within the EU, the findings support the hypotheses. Poor economic performance in a region, relative to the national average and historical levels, increases Eurosceptic voting, and the impact of an ageing population is significant. Spatial infrastructure conditions have minimal direct but moderating effects: Eurosceptic parties benefit more from economic underperformance, if the infrastructure is also poorly developed. The paper further shows differences in cue -taking between Eastern Central Europe and Western Europe suggesting that citizens in Eastern Central Europe consider the EU more often as saviour than as creator of regional deprivation. The paper underscores the importance of regional contextual factors and infrastructural effects, and highlights the need to avoid one-size-fits-all explanations for Euroscepticism in Eastern Central and Western Europe.

In relation to the European Union, populist discourse is marked by Euroscepticism. Populism is related to the dysfunctions of democracies politically exploited by populist leaders and parties. In this sense, democracy makes possible the emergence of populism through dysfunctions, not through its nature. And the recent phenomenon of the pandemic demonstrates how a health crisis can increase the dysfunctions of democracy. In this crisis situation critical views show that "All practical issues hide theoretical issues" and this paper focuses on this aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until very recently, Spain has been an exception to the rise of the far right in the rest of Europe. However, Vox won a sizeable number of seats in the 2019 April national elections, followed by more than doubling them in the November 2019 ones. Following its victory, plenty of journalistic articles have attempted to categorise the party, ranging from Francoist or fascist to populist or conservative. This paper, departing from the ideational approach to populism, analyses the written and spoken production of the party, using both computerised content and discourse analysis to clarify and identify its ideological stance, including what relationship, if any, has with fascism or Franco's ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an in/out referendum, held on 23 June 2016, the British electorate chose to leave the European Union. This paper uses the information and scientific outputs accumulated since the vote to explore and explain the deeper reasons behind Brexit. Key findings can be grouped in two categories. First of all, there are centuries long-standing endowments/factors - like history, geography, or differences in law or traditions, and, closely related to these, the legendary obsession with sovereignty and free trade - which have always been major drivers in influencing the British attitude towards Europe and have generally been reflected, in aspirations for a looser cooperation. Second, there are more recent factors - however, being around for the last 30-40 years - like changing balance of power (i.e., rising German influence) in the European institutions, or growing inequality in income, wealth, and opportunities, which may have been pushing some voters towards rejecting the status quo and embracing disruption as occasion emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from six rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS), between 2004 and 2016, to examine attitudes towards European integration across countries. Using both individual responses and country-level variables, we analyse factors influencing Euroscepticism; how these factors are changing over time; and whether they may signal a latent potential for Brexit-like outcomes in different countries. Controlling for a unique combination of demographic, political and macroeconomic factors, we find individuals with higher levels of income and education, and those with more left-leaning political views to be more supportive of European integration, while those who are older and right-leaning to be less supportive. Using predicted values from our empirical analysis, we find median voters' attitudes diverging across European countries over time, with an increasing number of countries moving closer to the threshold values observed among voters in the United Kingdom in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has put forward a new indicator based on the "ABC‐model" of attitudes designed to capture individual‐level Euroscepticism. We constructed a composite anti‐EU score based on affective, behavioural and cognitive sub‐indices. The study analyses data from a representative, countrywide Hungarian public opinion research. Looking for the drivers of anti‐EU attitudes, we took an integrative approach linking various theories of voting behaviour, Euroscepticism and populism studies. Our research showed that subjective well‐being significantly reduces anti‐EU attitudes. We found some empirical support for the "left behind thesis" in the Hungarian context, as severe economic grievances and fear of losing social status explained anti‐EU attitudes. Authoritarian traits turned out to be a major driver of Euroscepticism in Hungary. We proved that cosmopolitan values reduce affective and cognitive anti‐EU attitudes, but foreign experience and some international ties significantly correlated with anti‐EU stance. We confirmed that being a supporter of the governing Fidesz party and sharing culturally right‐wing political views significantly increase anti‐EU attitudes. We also revealed that partisanship's effect is strengthened by affective polarization and political interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vital political opposition is one of the cornerstones of democracy, yet we know surprisingly little about the conditions that shape it. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive assessment of the drivers of parliamentary opposition in European Union (EU) politics in five countries: Denmark; Germany; Ireland; Sweden; and the United Kingdom. Based on an extensive hand-coded data set of 7,520 statements made by members of parliament (MPs) during both plenary sessions and deliberations during European Affairs Committee (EAC) meetings, we examine how institutions and party characteristics shape two types of oppositional behaviour: the expression of critique and the presentation of alternatives. We find that both factors are important for understanding to what extent, and how, opposition is voiced in national parliaments. Oversight institutions' strength and a party's degree of Euroscepticism jointly function as significant determinants of the likelihood that MPs will express opposition in the form of critique. However, when it comes to the likelihood of offering alternatives, oversight institutions' strength fails to explain variations in the share of alternatives, while degree of Euroscepticism remains a significant predictor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the European elections in 2014, the populist formations had been increasing the shares of power that their masses finally claimed in the May 2019 elections. In the case of France, this rise of the Rassemblement National has even given rise to a new political regime: the Europeanism of Macron vs. the Euroscepticism of Le Pen. This paper aims to delve into the communication strategy of the latter formation, to see how it has been able to shift the party's fascist image towards that of a protector of national sovereignty and interests (against the European ones). To this end, the 1256 tweets posted on its official Twitter profile during the fortnight of the 2014 and 2019 European election campaigns have been qualitatively analysed. The results point to a whitening of its image, in order to present itself as a potential voting option for the majority of the French electorate while retaining a certain populist essence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we present findings of a research project focusing on the tensions between the idea of 'Europe' and that of the 'nation' as well as on perceptions of national and popular sovereignty in times of crisis. We start from the assumption that in the context of the recent crisis, EU politics have become 'normal politics,' generating political passions, polarization, and a deeper Eurosceptic mood. Working on the emblematic case of Greece, we focus on two critical moments (referendum 2015 and Prespa Agreement 2018) so as to address the question of how the idea of 'Europe' was politicized and reconceptualized in its competitive symbiosis with perception(s) of the 'nation'. Drawing on discourse analysis and ethnographic research, we maintain that European identity, in this critical juncture, was not deconstructed but rather remodelled in constant tension with national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of an institution, such as the European Union, ultimately depends on people's support. This paper investigates whether EU redistributive policies have improved public attitudes towards European integration, both in terms of public opinion and political preferences. We focus on Cohesion Policy funds, whose allocation allows us to single out these effects by means of a regression discontinuity approach. The results show that EU transfers have mitigated the rise of Eurosceptical attitudes and reduced political consensus for anti-EU parties. The effects are homogeneous across different socio-economic groups, including the most disadvantaged ones. The improvement in public support for the EU does not appear to be exclusively a spillover of the positive economic effect of funding; we show evidence suggesting the existence of a 'reciprocity-effect' channel, that is, citizens in recipient regions recognize the beneficial role of the EU as the source of funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper commences with some general observations on Poland's kin-state policy followed by an analysis of that element of kin-state policy concerned with the Polish minority in Germany. The paper argues that the recent invigoration of kin-state politics cannot be viewed in isolation from wider global political trends. Rather it contends that this increased concern with the fate of claimed ethnic kin is part of a wider trend towards the privileging of identity politics. It is further argued that in turn this impulse is located within the growth of populism, the celebration of parochialism, anti-globalisation sentiment and Euroscepticism, all of which have been fuelled by the financial crash of 2007/2008. The paper concludes by pointing to a paradox between the pursuit of policies that seek to prioritise ethnic identification with a kin-state and the commitment of member-states of the European Union to ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing support for Eurosceptic parties and movements can be observed in the European Union's (EU) member states since 2009, when the economic crisis heavily affected the continent. This process has happened also within Central and Eastern European countries, especially in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary (collectively referred to as the Visegrad Group countries, or V4 for short). The goal of this paper is an analysis of far-right Eurosceptic politicians and their attitudes towards EU external actions. Using the Thomas Diez concept of discursive nodal points (DNPs) and examining European Parliament (EP) debates, literature about V4 Euroscepticism and media reports, this paper attempts to give answers about their attitudes to aspects of EU external actions. First, the notion of Euroscepticism is examined and the main difficulties with the definition are briefly discussed. Then, the methodology of this research and the concept of DNPs are laid out. The following section pays attention to V4 Eurosceptic politicians' (V4E) attitudes towards five areas of EU external actions: EU-Russia relations, EU defence policy, environmental policy, development assistance policy, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) issue. In the conclusion, the author summarises that V4 Eurosceptics are divided in their positions towards EU external actions. Paradoxically, they are linked not in the being in opposition towards the EU, but rather in having pro-Russian attitudes and being against any EU activity that would violate Kremlin's interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euroscepticism is often linked to the disappointment with the outcomes of transition as well as overgrown expectations that accompanied the accession to the European Union. The main aim of the paper is to investigate if and how party‑based Euroscepticism has been active in Bulgaria, a post‑ communist country in CEE and a member of the European Union since 2007. The paper will present the rhetoric and characteristics of main Eurosceptic political parties in Bulgaria. Bulgarian public opinion used to be perceived as one of the most pro‑European among the member states, but current events show that the European issue is not so salient for the Bulgarian society and political elite. The difficult social and political situation marginalises discussions about the functioning of the EU and the future of Europe. Not only the absence of Euroscepticism, but also the lack of any European issues in party manifestos is puzzling. This paper aims to answer the question if Bulgarian politicians are so pro‑European or rather if Europe doesn't really matter to the elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a cognitive approach that focuses on the cognitive representations that underpin public support for the European Union. Its objectives are threefold: (1) to describe systems of representation associated with support for the EU; (2) to illustrate the importance of less commonly studied representations, such as liberal cosmopolitan representations; and (3) to demonstrate that at the beginning of the 2000s, the EU often represented greater economic prosperity and/or social protection for many Central, Eastern and Southern European countries, although the situation has changed significantly since then. This paper uses Eurobarometer data from 2004 to 2017 as well as multilevel models to examine how cognitive representations of the EU can explain public support for the EU, including variations across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]