Populism and Anti-Populism as Competing Political Movements within the European Parliament

In recent years, EU institutions have had to face two combined challenges: populism and Euroscepticism. These two ideational systems are generally combined because they are both utilised as signature policy ideas by a set of radical right populist parties, which have been successful in Member States and in the 2014 and 2019 European elections. The intensity of this challenge produced a set of reactions, which this paper argues constitute the basis for a conflictual interaction between a populist movement and a countermovement that opposes it. The paper will investigate the extent to which MEPs feel part of two conflicting institutionalised political movements. Given the centrality of Euroscepticism as a key ideological element of the EP radical right, and the strong opposition that it engenders in other party families, the paper also investigates the role of Euroscepticism in the movement/countermovement dynamic that characterises debates between the two blocs. It is argued that within the EP, rival ideas of the European project and therefore of Euroscepticism condense the identity of the two blocs and define their rivalry, which comes to be expressed in emotional terms.