Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary in the European Union: party politics, euroscepticism and salience of european issues

Abstract

The following dissertation investigates the quality of political representation in the programmes of select political parties in four East-Central European countries in the context of European elections. Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary form the Visegrád Group. Since they joined the European Union in 2004, open manifestations of resistance to (further) European integration, sometimes labelled as Euroscepticism, could be observed within the group. These include the deteriorating rule of law in Poland and Hungary as well as some of the lowest turnout rates at the European Elections in Czechia and Slovakia. At the same time, according to the Eurobarometer surveys, public support for the European Union remains relatively high in these Member States. Against this background, this dissertation sets out to investigate the European policy of sixteen established political parties active across the Visegrád Group and whether the public's preferences for European integration are reflected in the programmes of these parties. In other words, whether political parties consider the public opinion when preparing their European election manifestos and what kind of European Union the citizens and parties of the Visegrád Group advocate. In addition, an analysis of the salience of topics that parties address in their programmes is conducted with the goal of finding out which policies play a prominent role in the programmes at the European level. The investigation was conducted by a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The results revealed severe discrepancies between the public opinion and the European policies that most of the political parties advocate, hinting at deficiencies in the representative democracy in terms of the European level in the Visegrád states.