The State of Euroscepticism

In the aftermath of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are significant reasons to expect the terrain for Euroscepticism to have significantly altered. While there has been much work on some of the party families holding Eurosceptic positions, there has been no systematic classification of parties and their Euroscepticism in this changed context. In order to assess the contemporary state of party-based Euroscepticism, this paper reports the findings of a 2023 Expert-informed Qualitative Comparative Classification (EiQCC) on parties in over 30 European states offering a classification of hard and soft Eurosceptic parties. It also examines the different issues that are driving Euroscepticism in these parties and also reports on the finding concerning the politicisation of the issue of European integration in general in these states.