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When, in the beginning of 2009, the Party of Free Citizens was founded, it was believed that the main impulse for establishing a new political party was the generally positive approach towards the Lisbon Treaty adopted by the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) a couple of months before. Thus, since its foundation, the media, commentators and political analysts have labelled the Party of Free Citizens as a single issue Eurosceptic party. This article challenges this prevailing evaluation of the Party of Free Citizens and subsequently confronts the party´s programs and press releases with three concepts – the concept of Euroscepticism connected with the work of Taggart and Szczerbiak, the concept of a single issue party developed by Mudde, and the concept of a niche party brought into political science by Meguide. The article concludes that while the Party of Free Citizens is undoubtedly a Eurosceptic party, both in terms of its soft and hard versions, its overall performance as a political entity does not meet the criteria of Mudde´s concept of a single issue party. As the Party of Free Citizens puts a strong emphasis on European issues (compared to other mainstream Czech political parties), it can, at most, be described as a niche party. ; When, in the beginning of 2009, the Party of Free Citizens was founded, it was believed that the main impulse for establishing a new political party was the generally positive approach towards the Lisbon Treaty adopted by the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) a couple of months before. Thus, since its foundation, the media, commentators and political analysts have labelled the Party of Free Citizens as a single issue Eurosceptic party. This article challenges this prevailing evaluation of the Party of Free Citizens and subsequently confronts the party´s programs and press releases with three concepts – the concept of Euroscepticism connected with the work of Taggart and Szczerbiak, the concept of a single issue party developed by Mudde, and the concept of a niche party brought into ...

The article focuses on the role of the phenomenon of Euroscepticism in the issue of the legitimacy of the European Union (EU), namely on the relation between the current conceptualisation of Euroscepticism and the EU's ability to operate "imide" the system as a credible actor. The text is based on the analytical premise that the EU is not a static entity modeled on a national unitary state or federation, but a dynamic political system. The current definition of Euroscepticism, however, is based on the notion of the EU having a static nature and the existence of the finality of European integration process, which significantly affects the EU political system's ability to perform the basic functions of a functioning political system -- in particular the function of evaluation and (re)formulation of policy objectives. The most important consequence of this approach is the inability of the EU to receive any critical feedback and work with it as a relevant political input. Adapted from the source document.

After ten years of research on party based euroscepticism, political science still has not succeed in creating a respected & accepted typology of euroscepticism. This article tries both to summarize & review this research up to the present & subsequently propose a new innovative typology. This typology is based upon two phenomena. The first consists of the incorporation of positive party attitudes towards European integration. The second pillar of the new typology is the understanding of European integration as a variable phenomenon where support cannot be identified with the maintenance of the current EU model. Adapted from the source document.

The article discusses the outcomes of elections to the European Parliament in Austria in June 2004. Attitudes of relevant Austrian parties towards the European integration project are briefly discussed and placed on the theoretical scale that ranges from "Hard Euroscepticism" and "Identity Europeanism". The presented outcomes of the elections are put into the general context of the Austrian party system and voters' preferences since the middle 1980s. Special attention is given to the phenomenon of Hans-Peter Martin's populist list that won almost 14 % of the vote. Also, relatively low voter turnout is discussed. The Austrian example is very suitable for theorizing European elections as elections of less voters´ attention that is conceptualized at the end of the article.