Inconsequential Radicalism: Explaining the Non-Impact of Poland’s Eurosceptic Turn on Public Attitudes to the EU

The populist radical right turn in Poland since 2015 has had significant consequences for the relationship between Poland and the European Union. Soon after taking office in late 2015, the Law and Justice (PiS) party embarked on a programme of illiberal reforms involving the successive subordination of judicial institutions to the executive. As a result, over the last two years Poland has been subject to an investigation by the European Commission under the EU’s rule of law procedure, a process which could potentially result in the application of sanctions, including the suspension of certain rights of membership. The confrontation between Poland and the EU has resulted in the escalation of rhetorical hostilities. PiS has always had a skeptical attitude to European integration and has allied itself explicitly with ‘Europe of nations’ concepts of multinational cooperation. Over the last three years its hostility to the EU has taken on a more radical form, yet this confrontation and the consequences of PiS’s defiance of Commission recommendations to date have had no impact on Poles’ overwhelmingly approving attitude to EU membership and approval for the functioning of its institutions, despite persistently high levels of support for the government throughout this period, and a compliant public media which has worked to frame the conflict to PiS’s benefit. Using existing survey data on attitudes to the EU and original survey questions fielded at the end of 2018, this paper will seek to explain why the attitudes of Poles remain immune to a major shift in the relationship between their government and the European Union, and to identify factors which could cause that relationship to change in the coming years.