Old and New Political Parties, or Social Movements in Disguise? Front National, FSM, and the FSM and Euroscepticism

In the academic literature and the media the positions of political parties on European politics are represented as a field polarized in 'pro-European' and 'Eurosceptics'. The prevailing approach is to make equal the opposition to the principle of European integration and the political critique towards European Union. Euroscepticism is thus considered a dimension of the political competition that absorbs the left/right cleavage. Is it appropriate to include in a single political "front" parties which are alternative to each other on the ideological and programmatic angle? The paper addresses this question by analyzing and comparing the electoral manifestos for the European elections of 2014 of three political forces differently positioned along the left-right axis: the Front National, the 5 Star Movement and the European Left party. Evidence of this analysis goes in a different direction from that currently prevailing in literature: Euro-criticism and opposition to the integration principle cannot be overlapped, as they have opposed outcomes as regards the European integration process; the hypothesis that will be explored in the article is that the differences between left and right are not reabsorbed by an Europeanism/anti-Europeanism cleavage.