The comparative study aims to analyze the positions of far-right parties from Central and Eastern Europe on contemporary geopolitical issues and conflicts. This research focuses on parties members and co-founders of European party Europe of Sovereign Nations, ESN, and of the ESN political group in the EP.
The main research questions are the following: what are the positions of CEE far-right parties on the war in Ukraine? What are their attitudes on Russia? What are their positions on the war launched by Hamas against Israel? What are their positions on U.S.? What are their positions on NATO and the EU project of EU defense?
How to explain the differences between these parties?
The main purpose is to delve into and to compare the ideological and geopolitical position of CEE far-right parties’ stances in FP. United by anti-globalism, anti-pluralism, the defense of national sovereignty, and Euroscepticism, these parties can have different attitudes toward Russia, the conflict in Ukraine, the conflict between Hamas and Israel, NATO, the U.S. Some of them appeared on radical anti-Americanism and pro-Russian traditions, while other are framed by political traditions that exclude pro-Russian or anti-American stances. Some of them are against NATO, while other count on NATO and oppose the emergence of an European defense. Generally, they are moved by Islamophobia, but on the war between Hamas and the State of Israel they may express different positions.
Far-right party’s positions on FP issues are flexible. For instance, the election of Donald Trump for a second term, his aspirations toward Greenland and Canada, and the shift to Russia of his FP were praised by the genuinely anti-American party Revival in Bulgaria.
A. Chryssogelos (2017) has summed up the main stances in FP of radical right and far right populists: they are anti-American, nativist and nationalist, opposed to immigration, to Muslims and Islam, to globalization. They are Eurosceptics defending the primacy of sovereignty, and often they are pro-Russian. Moreover, he has pointed out that the “foreign policy inconsistency and change has been a common phenomenon in the foreign policy of European populists” (Chryssogelos 2017: 8).
Similarly, S. Destradi et al. (2021) consider that one should not expect that populism translates into uniform foreign policy orientations. According to D. Cadier (2024) populism use foreign policy as the “continuation of domestic politics by other means”. Our research fits within the contemporary research on Populist Foreign Policy (Wajner and Giurlando 2023). The study fits also within Path dependency approach and takes into account the specific national contexts – historic, domestic politics, and geopolitical experiences - that shape differently far-right parties FP positions.
