Populist EU-Pessimist Trajectories in Italy and the Netherlands during the European Crises

Multiple crises shook the European Union (EU) during the past decade. First, the economic and financial crises that unfolded in 2008 put under stress the foundations of the European project and its monetary union. Then, the migrants and refugees that crossed into Europe in 2015 questioned the EU’s ability to jointly respond to common political issues. These crises are have not only affected the course of European integration, but also provided novel issues for political competition within the EU member states. At the party-political level, populist anti-establishment parties have traditionally listed amongst the principal interpreters and drivers of criticism towards ‘Europe’. In this paper we are interested to empirically address the changing EU-pessimist frames adopted by populist parties during these crises, and assess the possible reverberation these frames may have had in respective party systems. For this purpose, we focus on two cases: Italy and the Netherlands. Both countries present full-fledged instances of populist parties of different ideological extractions within traditionally EU-optimist contexts. At the same time, both countries have been affected to very different extents by the recent crises, allowing us to examine how populist parties have responded to different political opportunities.