Sovereignism and the Future of Europe

The paper aims to investigate nationalism in the post-Brexit period (2016-2020). Because of the negative consequences of Brexit on British politics and economics, nationalism has had to face the challenge to adapt to European integration and interdependence. This adaptation is here conceptualized as ‘sovereignism’. We identify commonalities and differences in the sovereignist narrative. In general, all sovereignists criticized the supranational character (institutional sovereignism) and the centralized policy system (policy sovereignism) which has developed within the EU. They also express concerns on dominance on the side of the EU and/or on the side of some member states over the others. Related to this is also the claim that sovereignism epitomizes the otherness compared to the so-called EU establishment. While sovereignism has used the argument about dominance as an attempt to define its identity in the political spectrum, it has so far failed to derive a specific vision of integration out of it. As a matter of fact, European sovereignists are still heterogeneous. They differ on the rationale of their criticism towards the EU, based more on an economic discourse (economic sovereignism) in western Europe and more on a cultural discourse (cultural sovereignism) in eastern Europe. If sovereignism aims to become the alternative to Europeanism from within the process of integration, the road to follow in order to define itself is still long.