Protecting sovereignty, but how? Visegrad Four populist and Eurosceptic narratives on the future of the European project

The debate on future of Europe that followed White Paper on the Future of Europe in 2017 has amplified the tensions between different visions of European integration, some being openly hostile to EU institutions and competence transfer and others more or less carefully embracing the benefits and values of integration. The debate has seen a rise of contestation over the alternatives for the preservation of national sovereignty in a globalized world. Views that presented national sovereignty in opposition to integration were particularly vocal in the four Visegrad countries – Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, especially that governing parties in some of these countries are proponents of such views amplifying their resonance. Based on a comparative analysis of national parliamentary debates between 2015 and 2020 we demonstrate main features of narratives on future of Europe by parliamentary actors with special attention paid to claims by populist and Eurosceptic MPs. The analysis will focus on how nation, its sovereignty and relation to the EU are narrated and what are similarities and differences between these actors. We will use as a starting point the typology of sovereignty dividing it into national and supranational as well as popular and parliamentarian sovereignty (Borriello, Brack 2019). Theoretically, the analysis will pertain to discussion on how coherent are the visions of European integration that are pursued by populist actors and if that pose a challenge to integration. Additionally, we reflect on whether calls for rethinking representation within the EU polity in the literature match with (some of) the demands for the increase of sovereignty.