Between Sovereignism and Macronism. Sovereignty and the Future of Europe in French, German and Polish Parliaments

Today's debate on the future of the EU takes place at many levels and in many arenas, both formal and informal within the EU. The main axis of the dispute over the shape of integration lies between the views calling for deeper integration of the EU presented by the French President Emmanuel Macron (hereafter called Macronism) and those calling for the protection of national competences and – in many different forms – the preservation of national sovereignty, labelled as sovereignism. These two main groups of views differ significantly in their visions of desired institutional structure of the EU and content of the EU policies, but both are referring to sovereignty as main concept underlying the nature of the European polity and its relation to nation state. In the proposed paper we will present an analysis of the main threads of the debates on the future of Europe that have been taking place since the publication of the White Paper on the Future of Europe in 2017 in three national parliaments: French, German and Polish. Based on extensive empirical material, we will reconstruct how the future of the EU is presented by political forces in the three countries. We will focus on the detecting of the discursive patterns of various meanings of sovereignty in the European context – a key notion both for nationalist motivated forces as well as by those who demand deepening of integration. In our study, we will analyze the formal dimension of public sphere(s) as exemplified by the national parliaments’ debates in selected countries as they form arenas where MPs negotiate ideas, opinions, policy proposals and proposals representing interests of their respective (national) constituencies and political parties.