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Political Parties' Contestation of the EU’s Engagement in Neighbourhood. The Polish Case

European Union
Foreign Policy
Parliaments
Political Parties
Euroscepticism
European Parliament
Magdalena Gora
Jagiellonian University
Magdalena Gora
Jagiellonian University

Abstract

Foreign policy has became recently a central issue in party competition in Central and Eastern Europe especially in the context of significant shifts in regional and global politics and proliferation of crises and conflicts in the close neighbourhood. The area of foreign policy for many years after transition into democracy was dominated in this region by extraordinary agreement among mainstream political parties and was prioritizing integration with the western institutions such as NATO and the EU. However in the last decade we can observe increasing salience of the radical parties as well as politicization of the European integration in CEE countries that contribute to increasingly polarized views of political parties regarding – among others – foreign policy (national and European). The main aim of the paper is precisely to analyse the position of political parties (with special focus on right-wing and populist parties) on pressing issues in close neighborhood as revealed in their contestation of the European Neighbourhood Policy. The EU’s relations with neighbouring countries are selected because it touches upon several dimensions that political parties explicitly contest such as relations with Russia or migrations etc. The paper will analyse and compare the party contestation of ENP in the national parliament (Sejm) and of the Polish MEPs in the European Parliament between 2004-2014.