Populists in government and budgetary policy of the EU

Although the past decade has shown how populist governments may challenge the EU’s economic governance framework, we still lack an understanding of the impact of populism on EU-level decision-making in this field. Combining the literature on populism as an ideology, and EU decision-making, the article theorizes about the conditions under which populist governments are more likely to have an impact on EU policy-making. More specifically, it is argued that beyond the characteristics of the policy area, other features are also relevant in triggering a populist action. Potential gains – understood as the possibility to craft a populist narrative about a policy decision – and risk estimations – whether a policy-decision creates an immediate cost – are necessary but insufficient components to determine whether a populist government will challenge EU-level decision-making. Taking a closer look at a budgetary policy question, the introduction of the rule-of-law conditionality, suggests that the reaction of populists in government is likely to depend on other variables, such as the political power they possess domestically, their level of Euroscepticism, etc. The empirics suggest that although there were nine populist parties in government during the negotiations of the rule-of-law conditionality mechanism, only two countries exerted a great influence over the process. Hungary and Poland built a populist narrative around the issue, questioned the norm of the decision-making process, exerted a veto to block the process, and later challenged the regulation in court. Although it is found that the populist impact may vary, populist governments’ actions may further a ‘constraining consensus’ domestically.