Haughton, Τ. & Novotna, T. (2014) “The European elections in Central and Eastern EU states illustrate that the rise of Euroscepticism was far from uniform across Europe“, LSE EUROPP Blog, 29 May.
The key story to emerge from the European elections in countries like France and the UK was the rise of Euroscepticism, but does this narrative apply to all countries across Europe? Tim Haughton and Tereza Novotna present an analysis of the elections in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. They write that while there has been a tendency to regard CEE states as distinct from those in Western Europe, this perspective is largely outdated and analyses of EU-wide political trends should pay as much attention to smaller states in the East as they do to larger states in the West. When adopting this perspective it is apparent that the rise in Euroscepticism was not a Europe-wide trend, but rather confined to individual countries.
The success of UKIP and the Front National has dominated political discussion since the European Parliament (EP) election results were announced on Sunday night. But despite the lessons to learn from the performance of the nationalists and Europhobes in France and the United Kingdom, drawing on a research trip to Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic we suggest there are arguably more significant lessons to draw from the experiences of countries further away from the media spotlight. The Table below shows the election results for the four countries.
Relevant posts:
- Palmer, J. (2014) “After The European Elections – How Will The EU Leadership Respond?“, Social Europe Journal, 27 May.
- McDonnell, D. (2014) “The rise of Euroscepticism across Europe has masked general apathy about the European elections among voters“, LSE EUROPP, 29 April.
- Zikos, A. (2013) “Party Euroscepticism in Greece during the Financial Crisis, the Cases of SYRIZA and Chrysi Avgi”, National and Kapodestrian University of Athens, June.