Free Citizens’ Party – from Brussels to Prague?

ABSTRACT

Although the objectives of hard Eurosceptic parties are focused on the European Union (EU), a presence in the European Parliament (EP) is not their final goal. In order to fulfil their main objective – disbanding of the EU – they need to be relevant at the national level as well. Thus, being represented at the EU level can be used by them as a springboard to the domestic scene. This article analyses how such a process may occur. As its main finding, it claims that success in the EP elections can be Pyrrhic victory for hard Eurosceptics, since it reinforces their niche status.

KEYWORDS:

• Free Citizens’ Party
• European Parliament
• Czech Republic
• theory of roles
• niche party

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Petr Kaniok is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. His work was published in Journal of Contemporary European Research, Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, and in the Romanian Journal of Political Science.

Notes

1 An intensive discussion the conceptualisation of party-based Euroscepticism took place particularly in the beginning of the twenty-first century (Conti 2003; Flood and Usherwood 2005; Kopecký and Mudde 2002; Szczerbiak and Taggart 2003; Taggart 1998). This article departs from the second version of Taggart and Szczerbiak typology of soft and hard Euroscepticism. There, hard Euroscepticism stands for “principled opposition to the project of European integration as embodied in the EU, in other words, based on the ceding or transfer of powers to [a] supranational institution such as the EU”. Soft Euroscepticism is defined an attitude where:

there is not a principled objection to the European integration project of transferring powers to a supranational body such as the EU, but there is opposition to the EU’'s current or future planned trajectory based on the further extension of competencies that the EU is planning to make. (Szczerbiak and Taggart 2003, 12)

Although this binary categorisation is not without problems (see, e.g. Crespy and Verschueren 2009; Kaniok 2012; Vasilopoulou 2009), alternative typologies using for example more categories (Flood and Usherwood 2005) or which are based upon motivation and magnitude of the opposition (Rovny 2004) have been used very rarely. Even that the theoretical debate has been re-launched in recent years (see, e.g. special issues of the Journal of Common Market Studies 51/1 and the International Political Science Review 36/3), new definitions or new conceptualisations of Euroscepticism which would replace the Taggart and Szczerbiak concept have not emerged.

2 The idea of voluntary euro is not motivated by a desire to improve the project of EU common currency as a whole. Its goal is to enable non participation of the Czech Republic in the eurozone.

3 In the Czech Republic, only parties that obtain at least 3% of votes in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies are entitled to the regular annual contribution. Any party which exceeds the 3% limit obtains a minimum of CZK 6,000,000 and a maximum of CZK 10,000,000.

4 This case involves a Czech family living in Norway since 2003. In 2011, Norwegian Child Welfare Services (Barnevernet) decided to take away two sons from the family and placed them into the foster care due to suspected sexual abuse. Even though it has never been confirmed and the Norwegian police dropped the case, the children have not been returned. The case has sparked great interest in the Czech Republic and has been commented inter alia by Czech President Miloš Zeman and Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek.

5 Otázky Václava Moravce is the most important political talk show in the Czech Republic. It is broadcasted regularly by Czech Television on Sundays from 12 pm until 1 pm.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation under [grant number GA13-24657S].