Blame allocation in the EU: populism and the unequal pathways to Euroscepticism

The relationship between populism and Euroscepticism remains theoretically and empirically unsettled. While both are often treated as overlapping challenges to EU legitimacy, recent research highlights ambivalent and conditional positions toward integration among populist actors, suggesting that populism and Euroscepticism do not necessarily move in lockstep. The paper makes inquiries about the relationship between the two phenomena, and asks how populist and Eurosceptic frames couple? The study builds on a differentiation between constructive or policy-oriented and destructive or polity-oriented Euroscepticism, the former more oriented towards reforming specific EU policies and the latter towards delegitimizing the EU as an authoritative political order. The distinction matters, because populism – understood as a thin-centered ideology that creates an antagonistic relationship between the virtuous people and the corrupt elites – moralizes conflicts over authority and is structurally suspicious of remote, technocratic, and even mediating institutions. Consequently, it is expected that populism should not merely increase the volume of EU criticism, but it should tilt the content of Euroscepticism towards polity-level, potentially destructive forms. To examine this argument in practice, the paper analyzes European Parliamentary Questions (EPQs) submitted by Fidesz MEPs between 2009 and 2024. Unlike speeches, which are often performative but low-cost, or roll-call votes, which are shaped by coalition discipline, EPQs allow MEPs to define problems, target institutions, and allocate blame within the EU’s oversight machinery. They are expected to offer a sensitive window into whether governments that claim to “change the EU from within” articulate constructive, policy-focused demands, or instead deploy EPQs as institutionalized delegitimization tools aligned with populist discursive frames. Three expectations are formulated in the paper. If Fidesz’ strategy is predominantly reformist, EPQs should cluster around concrete policy implementation critiques and institutional improvement proposals, with limited legitimacy-challenging language. This would signal constructive, policy-based Euroscepticism and a more conditional linkage between populism and EU opposition. If, on the other hand, Fidesz uses EPQs as an arena of polity contestation, questions should frequently invoke sovereignty violation, democratic illegitimacy, and / or moralized “Brussels elite” frames across multiple policy areas. This would indicate destructive, polity-based Euroscepticism, consistent with populism’s ideological predisposition to recast technical disputes into authority conflicts. Finally, the paper expects strategis and temporal variation: the balance between the two forms may shift alongside major EU-Hungary controversies and changes in Fidesz’ EP group affiliation, potentially affecting the incentives for either reformist engagement or overt delegitimization. Methodologically, the paper compiles a comprehensive dataset of Fidesz EPQs from 2009-2024, coded by addressee, policy domain and rhetorical frame. The analysis combines quantitative text analysis – dictionary assisted detection of populist and Eurosceptic frames – with qualitative frame validation in high-salience periods. By linking constructive-destructive Euroscepticism to populism through a novel dataset, the paper contributes a new empirical strategy for assessing the nexus between Euroscepticism and populism, which may be used for other cases or for future comparative analyses.