Eurosceptic Parties and Platforms in Western Europe versus Central and Eastern Europe

This project will analyse the emergence of euroscepticism in parties and political platforms, in Western Europe relative to Central and Eastern Europe. I presented the emergence of euroscepticism and theoretical concepts of it. I have analysed the most important parties and eurosceptic platforms from Western Europe, considering countries like Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Austria. Starting from the study realised by Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, I analysed the manifestation of euroscepticism in countries like Bulgaria, Slovenia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary. I followed the main differences existing at the parties’ level and political platforms from the both sides of Europe proceeding from six assumptions of the two authors’, starting from Western experience. Then, I presented the European context, in order to explain the main causes of euroscepticism’s rising and to make some predictions regarding the future evolution of eurosceptic manifestations in Central and Eastern Europe. Eventually I proposed to analyse the hypothesis that states there is a correlation between the emergence of eurosceptic parties and political platforms and the patterns of party competition, and also, euroscepticism is characteristic for opposition parties. The implications of this assertion are : parties’ position about the integration are affected by the party interest, the strategy adopted by the competitors or by opposition’s potential.