Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This study reveals the main approaches to the reform of the European Union contained in the policy documents of the national law-populist parties in the 2010s and 2020s. The article shows that right-wing populists rejected the “renewal of Europe” project proposed by French President E. Macron. This project was aimed at accelerating the European integration process and increasing its effectiveness through sovereignization, strengthening supranational institutions, strengthening their powers, as well as forming a special European identity among citizens of EU member states. Having refused to demand withdrawal from the European Union, most right-wing populist parties conditioned their countries' continued stay in the grouping by demanding a revision of the current model of integration, its legal nature and supranational mechanisms. Their policy documents contain a demand to stop the federalization of the EU, which cannot be a state and have sovereignty. Only a nation can be a bearer of sovereignty, and no European demos has been formed in the centuries-old history of Europe. Populists demand that the EU member states return the full extent of their sovereignty and transform it into a decentralized alliance of European countries using the mechanisms of subsidiarity and democratization. This alliance should become a community of supranational partnerships that the participating countries create on a voluntary basis to solve specific tasks in “areas of common interest”. Rejecting the method of decision-making based on the principle of majority, as well as the procedure established by the EU Treaties for the distribution of votes between the participating countries, right-wing populists defend the principle of unanimity in decision-making on all issues of the union's vital activity without exception.
Author: Dmitry Popov
Institution: Omsk State University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410184696