Culture Wars’ in the European Union: Apex of EU Politicisation, New Cleavages, or Much Ado About Nothing?

References to the politicisation of EU governance have become academic and political common wisdom. Politicisation is understood as a growing constraining dissensus over EU policies (specific issues and measures), politics (decision-making and institutional procedures), and/or polity (its very existence and overall legitimacy). Over the last decade however, a new framing of this dissensus has been advanced by some actors and organisations advocating that a “culture war” is taking place at all levels of governance: between certain member states and European institutions, between citizens and elites, between social groups within each society, and/or among political parties. The “Occupy Brussels” take by Viktor Orbán in 2024 can be interpreted as a claim to transpose cleavages allegedly dividing European societies onto supranational and transnational levels. This paper aims to investigate the origins, scope, limits, and modalities of these so called “European culture wars”, acknowledging their use as a political and/or descriptive terms while also questioning their explanatory and normative value. It shed light on the extent to which current developments of conflicts within the EU are redefining identities, ideas, discourses, practices, and coalitions of actors and/or repackaging long-standing patterns. In other words, are these alleged “European culture wars” a critical juncture, a change in the degree and/or nature of dissensus, and/or the continuation of EU politicisation by other means?