Religion, New Sociopolitical Cleavages and Visions of European integration – Case of the Polish Delegation to the European Parliament

At the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, new sociopolitical cleavages are reorganising the political scene in the European Union’s Member States as well as in the Union itself. The main line of these new cleavages is the attitude to globalisation and the different visions of “community”, creating a division between cosmopolitan and communitarian/national (i.e. integrative or separatist) visions of nation states, European integration and, as a result, the organisation of the world. The main – but not only – issues dividing modern societies concern the hierarchy of values and the relationship between individual and collective rights, which are often articulated by means of religious arguments as they relate to the normative framework of social and political order. Our paper focuses on the question of the role of religion (and which one?) in the construction of visions of European integration by the various sides of the conflict mentioned above. To answer this question, we will analyse statements made by the Polish representation in the European Parliament in 2014-2021 and identify the main contexts in which references to religions as well as the freedom of religion are used, and then, using a qualitative content analysis and elements of lexicometric analysis, reconstruct the visions of European integration articulated using such references. Polish MEPs constitute a good case study, because it was the Member States from Central and Eastern Europe, after 2004, that challenged the secular status quo of the European Union.