Chega and the end of Portuguese exceptionalism in right-wing Euroscepticism

This paper studies the recent Portuguese radical right party Chega regarding its preferences towards European integration, to address the research question if the rise of this party in Portugal allows us to say that the Portuguese exceptionalism on the absence of right-wing Euroscepticism has come to an end. The presence of Euroscepticism in the Portuguese party system has been placed in the left wing since the European Economic Community accession, first with Portuguese Communist Party, and, from the 1990s, with the Left Block. Despite the conservative Social Democratic Centre/Popular Party (CDS-PP) made Eurosceptic incursions in the 90s, it was essentially a strategy to differentiate itself from the centre-right party PSD (Social-democratic Party) and overturning declining electoral success (Lobo & Magalhães 2011). Even with the 2008 financial crisis, and the Eurozone debt crisis that followed, hitting Portugal with a severe bailout and social consequences, Portugal had been immune to right-wing Euroscepticism, unlike other Southern EU member-states (Bosco & Verney 2016). Nevertheless, since 2019, the right-wing political space has been reconfigured, with the arrival of Chega to the national parliament. Being a party with nationalist appeals and populist strategies (Reis, 2022), it’s pertinent to study the political preferences of Chega about the European Union and concerning the relation of Portugal with the EU. Our hypothesis is that Chega fits the typical political preferences of European Eurosceptic radical right parties, thus leading to the end of Portuguese exceptionalism in right-wing Euroscepticism. To accomplish this research goal, adaptation of conceptual frameworks on Euroscepticism of Kopecky and Mudde (2002) will be adapted as theoretical models for the empirical study, which is composed of thematic analysis of party’s programmes and electoral manifestos, based on a specific tailor-made codification, according to the defined theoretical frameworks of Euroscepticism. This analysis is made resorting to the MAXQDA programme, for qualitative data systematization. This will allow to compare Chega’s preferences on European integration with the prototype of right-wing Euroscepticism, thus addressing the research question.