In search for more ‘authentic’ EU attitudes: re-evaluating regionalist parties’ EU positioning from sub-state parliamentary debates

ABSTRACT

This paper responds to the tendency of past scholarship to reduce European Union (EU) attitudes of regionalist parties to one general position. It undertakes a comprehensive analysis of regionalist parties’ EU attitudes from sub-state parliamentary debates. Drawing on three different cases from three territorial contexts – Plaid Cymru, Femu a Corsica and Süd-Tiroler Freiheit, it systematically captures the content and nature of regionalist parties’ EU positioning from EU-related interventions in regional parliaments over a recent five-year period (2016–21). The paper finds that regionalist parties simultaneously adopt a distinct position on multiple EU-related issues (with varying salience and clarity). Importantly, each party constructs its EU attitudes around diametrically different issues, closely intertwined with its regional empowerment strategy and reflecting the unique regional context. Moreover, each party displays contradictory tendencies in its EU support, adopting Europhile positions on some issues, while Eurosceptic on others. This contribution is significant in two ways. First, the thematic variability identified within and across the cases provides an original insight into the full scope and scale of regionalist parties’ engagement with the EU at a given moment. Second, this in-depth qualitative analysis based on novel data advances past methodologies while challenging their conclusiveness about the regionalist parties’ actual EU support.

KEYWORDS:

• regionalist parties
• European Union
• party attitudes
• parliamentary debates
• thematic analysis
• Plaid Cymru
• Femu a Corsica
• Süd-Tiroler Freiheit

1. INTRODUCTION

There has recently been voluminous research into the attitudes of regionalist parties towards the European Union (EU). Interestingly, as Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro (2018, pp. 37–38) already observed, scholars have reached diverging conclusions about these parties’ current levels of EU support. Two conflicting strands exist in the literature. The first argues that the regionalist party family – highly Europhile during the 1990s – has taken a progressively Eurosceptic trajectory from the early 2000s (Elias, 2009; Hepburn, 2010, p. 198; Massetti, 2009; Massetti & Schakel, 2016, 2021). This development is caused by (but not limited to) the EU’s evolution towards a state-governed polity that hampers regional empowerment and dismisses sub-state self-determination demands – the EU’s preference for Spain’s territorial integrity during the 2017 Catalan independence crisis only exposed this long-lasting trend (Massetti, 2020, 2022, p. 75). Contrastingly, the other strand maintains that regionalist parties have remained moderately pro-European until the present day (Gómez-Reino, 2013; Jolly, 2015; Jolly et al., 2022; Marks et al., 2002; Ray, 1999). At the aggregate level, the regionalist party family has been, mainly for economic motives (Jolly, 2015) and despite shifts and reversals in individual EU attitudes (Gómez-Reino, 2013, p. 134), steadily supportive of the EU over time.

This disagreement has two principal causes. First, scholars have devised different methodologies and drawn on different data to evaluate regionalist party EU support. While quantitative studies have defined EU support in terms of the preference for deeper integration (Massetti & Schakel, 2021; Zuber & Szöcsik, 2019) and the volume of received EU funding (Gross & Debus, 2018; Massetti & Schakel, 2016), with some adopting no definition (Jolly et al., 2022; Ray, 1999), most qualitative works have done so only implicitly by focusing on ad hoc aspects of European integration in a given context (Frampton, 2005; Gómez-Reino, 2013; Hepburn & Elias, 2011). Second, and inherently linked to this, both quantitative and qualitative scholarship has generally reduced regionalist parties’ EU attitudes to one general position. Although practical for comparative research, this inevitably oversimplifies the complexity at a particular moment.

To overcome narrow conceptualisations of EU support, this paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of regionalist parties’ EU attitudes from parliamentary debates. Based on framed thematic analysis applied to the EU-related interventions of Plaid Cymru (PC), Femu a Corsica (FaC) and Süd-Tiroler Freiheit (STF) in regional parliaments between 2016 and 2021, I demonstrate that regionalist parties adopt a distinct position on multiple issues simultaneously. Most importantly, despite sporadic overlaps, each party constructs its EU attitudes around diametrically different issues that are closely intertwined with its regional empowerment strategy and reflect the region’s unique contextual conditions. Moreover, their issue-positioning is not monolithically pro- or anti-European: A party can frame most issues positively yet be entirely negative about others and vice versa. The parties are mostly clear on the immediate issues (what European integration is like) and blurred on alternative integration forms (what it should become).

This contribution advances the extant scholarship in three respects. First, capturing the full content and nature of the EU positioning of three parties representative of the regionalist family from parliamentary debates provides new evidence of the actual scope and scale of these actors’ real-time engagement with the EU. Second, the variability in position-taking identified within and across the cases using novel data without an a priori definition of EU support challenges the conclusiveness of past single-issue methodologies. This raises a broader methodological question of how regionalist parties’ EU attitudes can be effectively evaluated without missing the fundamental yet context-sensitive factors for one’s position-taking. Finally, an in-depth comparative analysis over a recent period provides evidence of how regionalist parties respond to current territorial crises in Europe, such as the absence of EU intervention in favour of Catalonia (Holesch & Jordana, 2021) or Brexit catalysing sub-state territorial demands (McEwen & Murphy, 2022), potentially forcing them to nuance their EU attitudes.

The following section surveys and discusses past evaluations of regionalist parties’ EU attitudes. Responding to their limitations, the article proceeds to design a methodology for a systematic qualitative analysis of EU positioning from sub-state parliamentary debates. The cases, data, timeframe and method are presented here. Next, I report the results of the analysis. The penultimate section discusses the main findings and their significance and compares them to past approaches and relevant debates in the literature. The final section summarises the main contributions to the literature and addresses issues for future research.

2. NUANCING REGIONALIST PARTY EU POSITIONING

Euroenthusiast(ic), Europhile, pro-European or pro-integrationist, on the one hand; Eurosceptic(al), anti-integrationist, anti-European or Euro-rejecting, on the other; moderately supportive in between. These and similar terms are employed to describe the attitudes of regionalist parties towards the European project. However, because European integration is a multifaceted phenomenon, supporting (or opposing) it can mean different things (Mair, 2007). As Szczerbiak and Taggart (2018, p. 15) highlighted, Euroscepticism is a ‘catch-all term encapsulating a disparate bundle of attitudes opposed to European integration in general and opposition to the EU in particular'. The same applies to pro-European attitudes. This section discusses the existing indicators of regionalist party EU support and pinpoints their limitations. In addition, surveying what regionalist parties reflect regarding European integration provides a theoretical starting point for a more comprehensive analysis and an analytical framework for capturing the variability within their EU positioning.

Regionalist parties link their identity, ideological profile and political programme to a particular territory (region) of the state. They defend regional interests. On the centre–periphery spectrum, their primary agenda consists in achieving, preserving, re-organising or expanding ‘some kind of [regional] self-government’ (De Winter, 2003, p. 204; Fagerholm, 2016, p. 307). This self-government objective, spanning from administrative decentralisation to independence, is reflected in their attitudes vis-à-vis the EU: given the capacity of European integration to re-distribute state authority between the territorial levels, regionalist parties have viewed the EU as a favourable external structure facilitating regional empowerment (Jolly, 2015; Lynch, 1998, p. 191). For this reason, their territorial strategies have been ‘heavily Europeanised’ since the first linkages between regional emancipation and European integration were made in the 1980s (De Winter et al., 2006, p. 21).

No standard definition exists of what qualifies as regionalist party EU support. Explicit conceptualisations are present only in quantitative methodologies. Massetti and Schakel (2021) equate pro-Europeanness with the further deepening of European integration to accommodate the self-government sought. Drawing on the categories by Flood and Usherwood (2005), they construct a six-grade continuum: While Eurosceptics oppose EU membership, prefer earlier integration stages or the status quo, Europhiles tacitly support further integration, push for it actively or favour a federal superstate. Similarly, Zuber and Szöcsik (2019) define Euroscepticism–Europhilia as an 11-point preference scale for competence redistribution, with ʻintegrationist’ parties wanting more authority for the supranational level whereas ʻdesintegrationist’ parties for the nation-state. Besides, regionalist party EU support has been measured based on Cohesion Policy, showing a positive effect of quantity on pro-EU attitudes (Gross & Debus, 2018; Massetti & Schakel, 2016).

Although favouring comparability and inference, the above methodologies share a twofold problem. They are decontextualised and reduce regionalist parties’ EU attitudes to a single position, missing parallel aspects of European integration at play at a given moment. Elias (2009, p. 161) argued that ‘[regionalist party] support in principle for European integration cannot be taken as a proxy for the attitude of these parties towards the European polity [existing] at any given point in time’. Some qualitative works draw this distinction intuitively: During the 1980s, the far-left Bloque Nacionalista Galego rejected the capitalist underpinnings of European integration. However, while slowly embracing Europe as a solution to nationalist claims in the 1990s, it remained critical of the EU’s economic policies (Gómez-Reino, 2013, pp. 135–136). To conceptualise the long-lasting preferences for European integration against the changing perception of the EU as ʻa concrete political, institutional and policy-making reality' (Elias, 2009, p. 23), Elias (2008) categorised regionalist parties into ʻEuro-enthusiasts' (supportive in principle and of the current form), ʻEuro-sceptics' (supportive in principle, sceptical about the current form), ʻEuro-pragmatics' (sceptical in principle, exploiting the current from) and ʻEuro-rejects' (sceptical about both).

Although rich in context and detail, single-position reductionism equally affects qualitative scholarship. Able to disentangle the preferences for European integration as an empowerment framework from its concrete form and capacity to meet sub-state territorial demands, it typically restricts the latter to only one issue at a time: In 1992, the Flemish regionalist parties affirmed ‘yes’ to Europe but ‘no’ to the Maastricht Treaty for several well-developed reasons (Deschouwer & Van Assche, 2008, pp. 82–84). Qualitative studies offer many detailed yet essentially ad hoc accounts of how EU-related aspects connected to regionalist parties’ emancipation goals and thus shaped their EU attitudes. Regarding the EU’s potential to grant de jure representation to the regional level, regionalist parties showed disappointment over the Committee of the Region’s symbolic role (Giordano, 2004, p. 220), the deficient subsidiarity principle (Deschouwer & Van Assche, 2008, p. 82) or, most generally, the EU’s democratic deficit (Gómez-Reino, 2013, p. 136). Regarding ethnocultural rights, they welcomed minority language protection (Elias, 2009, p. 133) but regretted the failed enshrinement of the right to self-determination (Acha, 2006, p. 81). Linked to both is the ʻcompetence overlap’, that is, encroachment on regional jurisdictions through the supra-nationalisation of policy areas previously reserved to subunits, provoking negative sentiments in highly decentralised systems such as Scottish devolution (Hepburn, 2010, p. 92) or the Basque Autonomous Community (Pérez-Nievas, 2006, p. 52).

Regionalist parties may adopt multiple preferences simultaneously (Hepburn, 2010, p. 20). Attempts at systematically differentiating their general EU position have repeatedly been made in expert surveys assessing party families on specific EU policies (Benoit & Laver, 2006; Jolly et al., 2022). For instance, on the Chapel Hill Expert Survey’s seven-point scale in 2019, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie being ‘somewhat in favour' (4.3) on European integration scored ‘in favour' (5.6) on the internal market, ‘neutrality' (3.5) on cohesion and ‘somewhat opposed' (2.6) on common asylum policy (Jolly et al., 2022).¹ However, only a few categories within these state-wide party datasets concern the sub-state level (cohesion), are level-neutral (complexity of the EU architecture) or bear on the left–right agenda of interest to regionalist parties such as environment (Conversi & Friis Hau, 2021). Most concern European ‘high politics' (tax harmonisation, foreign policy or enlargement to Turkey), that is, areas insignificant for most regionalist parties.² Moreover, only parties represented in state-level parliaments are included, leaving out the majority of this party family.

All things considered, past evaluations evidence that regionalist parties base their EU attitudes – against the background of their principled position towards European integration – on a broad spectrum of issues. At the same time, state-wide party expert assessments evidence that they may display varying support for different EU issues. However, given the narrow, decontextualised and instrumental definitions of EU support (or the absence thereof), these methodologies cannot account for the full content and nature of regionalist parties’ EU positioning at a given moment (and the dynamics between the two). Which issues are most salient and thus decisive for regionalist parties’ position-taking when no pre-defined analytical lens is adopted, and which are marginal? Drawing on sub-state parliamentary debates can prove helpful to this end. Contrary to party materials which imply party unity (Levy, 2004) and offer little coverage of the EU (Marks et al., 2007, p. 29), parliamentary debates are less affected by the electoral cycle, which forces parties to simplify complex issues and de-emphasise the sensitive ones (García Lupato, 2014, p. 29). Hence, I expect them to reveal party positions more accurately.

Furthermore, since parties are not unitary actors (Ceron, 2019), parliamentary debates can expose competing or dissenting views caused by intra-party competition (Budge et al., 2010). The factional rivalry between ‘gradualists’ and ‘fundamentalists’ within the Scottish National Party over ‘independence in Europe’ (Hepburn, 2008, p. 545) is one example; the split in the Partido Nacionalista Vasco over the draft European constitution (Pérez-Nievas, 2006, pp. 51–52) is another. In parallel, a party’s position can be clear or blurred (Han, 2020). Indeed, past literature sporadically testifies to less transparent positions on EU-related issues such as the Volksunie’s ʻfederalist project', an extensive restructuring of the EU architecture (van Haute, 2017, p. 100). Although the degree of unity and clarity of regionalist parties’ general EU position has been assessed (Jolly et al., 2022), parliamentary debates allow for estimating these attributes on an issue-to-issue basis.

Finally, this analysis draws on parliamentary debates in regional assemblies because the region represents the core reference level for this party family (Deschouwer, 2003, p. 220; Terrière, 2021). Furthermore, evaluating regionalist parties’ EU attitudes closest to their ‘regionalist agenda’ will presumably yield the largest available corpora of EU-relevant reflections. Empirically, I examine PC, FaC and STF, which are representative of the regionalist party family in several respects and combine three territorial contexts.

3. CASES, DATA, TIMEFRAME AND METHOD

Parties engage in parliamentary debates to present and defend their standpoints. Since parliamentary proceedings typically close with a vote, parties take the floor to explain the direction of the vote. This makes them well-suited for exploring party positions (García Lupato, 2014, p. 29; Proksch & Slapin, 2014). Contrary to projects collecting protocols of proceedings in state-wide parliaments (Rauh & Schwalbach, 2020), no comparable datasets exist for the regional level. Sufficiently varied data thus had to be generated first. PC, FaC and STF reflect the existing variation within the regionalist party family in terms of the self-government objective and, thereby, the preferred European framework, the extent of past reflections on European integration and the volume of scholarly coverage. As such, the well-researched PC (Elias, 2009; Lynch, 1995), wanting an independent state with European membership, is joined by the underresearched autonomist FaC, wishing for a more region-oriented Europe, and the irredentist–separatist–protectionist STF, disregarding (albeit only formally) the European dimension.

Regionalist parties adopt diverse positions on self-government: protectionist, autonomist and national–federalist, pursuing emancipation within the existing state; independentist, wanting an own sovereign state; and irredentist, seeking self-determination through reunification with a neighbouring kin state (De Winter, 2003, pp. 205–207). Founded in 1925, PC has repeatedly reformulated its self-government goal. Radicalising its territorial demands since the mid-2000s, the Party of Wales now calls for an independent state (PC, 2021, p. 123). In turn, FaC strives for extensive autonomy within France. Created in 2010 as a coalition of three autonomist parties (which merged into a single political subject in 2017),³ FaC has been the most electorally successful party since the triumphant accession of Corsican nationalists to power in 2015. The envisaged statut d’autonomie should primarily comprise taxation, culture and environment (FaC, 2022). In contrast, STF follows three territorial strategies simultaneously. Emerging as a splinter party in 2007, STF became one of the ethnic parties representing the German-speaking population in South Tyrol. Irredentist by definition (or rattachist; see Dandoy, 2010, p. 213), independent statehood or extension of autonomy within Italy represent viable alternatives to reunification with Austria (STF, 2022).

Regionalist parties’ self-government objectives underpin their territorial strategies regarding ‘self-government in Europe’. Past literature has identified the following general conceptions: (1) regionalised Europe (‘Europe of the Regions’) – empowering the meso-level while diluting the current state boundaries; (2) supranational (federal) Europe – an ever-closer union of the regions as independent yet sovereignty-sharing nation-states; and (3) intergovernmental Europe as a strictly state-based order. Regionalist parties can further reject European integration or be indifferent to it (see De Winter, 2003, pp. 205–208; Hepburn, 2010, p. 201). PC is committed to an independent Wales as a fully fledged EU member state. Historically, this party’s trajectory towards Europe followed a ‘U-turn’: During 1970–85, the leftist PC opposed the capital-driven European Economic Community and denounced the underrepresentation of small nations (Elias, 2009, pp. 50–51). Turning openly pro-European a decade later, it advocated for a federal set-up, as expressed in the post-sovereignist ‘full national status for Wales in Europe’ (PC, 1990, p. 14). To accommodate independence demands after 2000, PC has shifted to ‘an independent Wales to join the European Union’ (PC, 2021, p. 123). In turn, the centre-left FaC projects Corsican autonomy into a democratic and solidary Europe that has recognised minority identities and the specific needs of insular territories (FaC, 2022). To make this polity reality, FaC counts on its membership in the European Free Alliance in the European Parliament (Acquaviva, 2019). In sharp contrast, STF appears not to link self-government to the European dimension. As Scantamburlo (2016, p. 27) already observed, this right-leaning niche party completely ignores Europe in its party materials. Strikingly, test scannings of STF’s parliamentary discourse evidenced abundant reflections on the EU, justifying its inclusion in the analysis.

Interventions of PC, FaC and STF were accessed via official transcripts of proceedings in The Welsh Parliament, Assemblée de Corse and Südtiroler Landtag, respectively. Regarding the timeframe, a five-year period covering the most recent closed legislature(s) was selected: the fifth National Assembly for Wales (June 2016–April 2021); the fifth and sixth mandature de Corse (January 2016–December 2017; January 2018–June 2021); South Tyrol is split between the XV. Legislaturperiode (from May 2016) and the XVI. Legislaturperiode (to May 2021) for synchroneity (see the Appendix in the supplemental data online for further details on data collection). Assuming a relevant frame can surface in virtually any context, transcripts of all proceedings within this period were sourced.⁴ They were cleared from supplements and converted to txt. format.

To identify EU-related interventions, the transcripts were scanned using an original vocabulary⁵ of language-sensitive search words.⁶ Informed deductively by past literature and inductively by a pre-study of several transcripts and own reasoning, the search words divide into core and context search words.⁷ The core search words identify European integration as the unifying macro-topic (‘EU’/‘Europe’/‘Brussels’/‘single market’, etc.). However, repeated test scannings revealed that only a fraction of the identified instances related to the macro-topic – the core search words appear mainly in irrelevant (e.g., geographical) contexts or are mentioned without position-taking. Therefore, to identify EU-related content relevant for regionalist parties, the context search words serve to connect the macro-topic to concrete sub-state realities. They come about in two categories: universal and region-specific. The universal context search words denote, in four loose groups, general notions associated with nationalist–regionalist projects within the European framework: (1) self-government (‘independence’/‘autonomy’/‘representation’/‘decentralised’, etc.); (2) self-identification as a distinct community (‘nation’/‘people’/‘minority’/‘we’, etc.); (3) policies (‘funding’/‘environment’/‘quotas’, etc.); and (4) principles (‘subsidiarity’/‘democracy’/‘legitimacy’, etc.). Since regionalist parties operate within different institutional structures (Hepburn, 2010, p. 210), the region-specific context search words connect the macro-topic to the unique domestic setting (while respecting the conventional language use). For instance, PC may refer to ‘devolution’ and ‘Westminster’ while FaC to ‘statut’ and ‘hexagone’ and STF to ‘Provinz’ and ‘Rom’ (see section 2 of the Appendix in the supplemental data online for full details of the vocabulary).

The Wordsmith Tools 8.0 concordance feature scanned the transcripts for the co-occurrence of the core and context search words within the –30/+30 span.⁸ Following deduplication, every identified instance delivered by PC, FaC and STF was manually checked and, if judged relevant, copied into a separate sheet. Intervention types included floor speeches, oral questions and, for the governing FaC, also ministerial statements of regional executives.⁹ Committee reports were excluded for the unclear link between the presenter and authorship. This extraction produced 217 (PC), 84 (FaC) and 83 (STF) pages of relevant utterances.

Party positions have been derived from parliamentary debates quantitatively by computing word frequencies (Pagoaga Ibiricu, 2020). Interested in the content and how parliamentarians organise their accounts argumentatively, this methodology aligns with meaning-oriented approaches (Every & Augoustinos, 2007). By employing qualitative methodology, this analysis does not seek to ascertain causality between European integration and discourse nor explain the EU attitude formation process. Instead, through a comprehensive analysis of novel sub-state parliamentary data over five years, it seeks to systematically capture the full range of content and nature of regionalist parties’ EU positioning. The data treatment proceeded in two steps.

First, reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was applied to search and structure the datasets. Using CAQDAS (NVivo), codes were attributed to any data item which could be meaningfully assessed (Boyatzis, 1998, p. 63). The coding process was open, iterative and purely data-driven to ensure that no instance was ‘squeezed’ into a pre-defined frame. The codes were refined, expanded or merged during the repeated close reading of the data and, subsequently, grouped around organising concepts of candidate themes. Because themes are constructed entities bringing ‘meaning and identity to a recurrent experience and its variant manifestations’ (DeSantis & Ugarriza, 2000, p. 362), I approximate them to self-contained areas of position-taking. The ultimate rounds of code refinement produced three dozen themes within and across the cases.

Second, to characterise the existing variation, the themes were assessed with a multi-dimensional framing matrix informed by past approaches discussed in the previous section. Developing the themes first and estimating their attributes later allowed for overcoming the necessity to define the indicators of EU support a priori. An abductive process ensured that the matrix provided adequate dimensions with sufficient granularity.¹⁰ Each theme was positioned along the following five dimensions:

1. Dominant–Marginal.

2. Positive–Negative.

3. Europe–EU.

4. EU integration framework–EU policy.

5. Clear–Blurred.

While (i) describes the theme’s salience,¹¹ (ii) captures its value judgement. The dimensions (iii) and (iv) classify the ‘layer’ of European integration. Finally, (v) marks the theme’s clarity. Because all parties appear internally coherent on the addressed themes showing no intra-party dissent, the initially intended dimension United–Divided proved superfluous.¹² To demonstrate the significance of the findings, I contrast them with the existing methodologies and compare them to recent debates in the literature.

The final methodological remark concerns the limitations of the data to be conclusive about regionalist parties’ EU attitudes. Do parliamentarians mean what they say on the floor? As a subtype of political discourse, parliamentary debates are highly contextual, following a binary logic: the first is specific to party competition in the parliamentary context, and the second to self-representation and constituency interests (Morel, 2018, p. 373). Moreover, ‘genuine’ deliberations generally occur in committees behind closed doors, potentially concealing their most authentic part (Proksch & Slapin, 2014, p. 174). Nevertheless, their rich, spontaneous and unstructured nature makes them a relevant data source for this research aim.

4. ANALYSIS

This section presents the variability of the identified themes by contrasting them along the dimensions delimited in the previous section. Supporting the view that European integration plays out differently in different contexts (Elias, 2009, pp. 21–23), the developed content varies considerably from party to party. The themes are closely connected to each party’s self-government objective and the region’s unique territorial setting. If cross-case thematic overlappings occur, they are discussed together. Representative excerpts illustrate the inner logic of the themes (see section 3 in the Appendix in the supplemental data online for a synthesised overview of all themes).

Before presenting the comparative analysis, I summarise the character of the parties’ EU-related interventions. As the leading opposition party, PC’s reflections are contained in regular enquiries about the Welsh government’s post-Brexit strategy, urging it to mitigate the impact on Wales. In contrast, the governing FaC talks about European integration when presenting and justifying its executive actions (the interventions are thus very ‘technical’). The niche opposition STF typically takes the floor to reflect on the EU (sometimes at length) before relevant region-related legislation is voted on. In sum, STF’s accounts are the most detailed, with articulate argumentation.

4.1. Dominant–Marginal

Concerning within-party thematic salience, the addressed issues differ in the attention received. For PC, the damaging consequences of Brexit are prevalent; it weighs the pros and cons of European membership for Wales in various areas (dominantly protection and regional development; marginally education, arts and sports). In turn, FaC focuses on three prominent themes: exploiting European funding, the status of insular territories and common market competition rules. To a lesser degree, it ponders the standing of stateless nations in Europe. Conversely, STF is mainly preoccupied with the unsatisfactory situation of sub-state minorities and regional self-government in the EU. It is also concerned about rising Euroscepticism.

4.2. Positive–Negative

Whereas PC’s and FaC’s themes are predominantly positive, STF’s are almost entirely negative. Interestingly, each party owns at least one theme from the other side of this spectrum. For PC, EU membership proves highly beneficial in two respects: the first is European legislation providing more comprehensive protection than the state, and the second is Regional Policy supporting less developed areas. FaC is equally enthusiastic about the EU’s financial instruments, since they target Corsica’s priority areas such as green energies, biodiversity, sustainable tourism, digitalisation and social cohesion. All parties welcome that the EU promotes regional identities, be it through directives on product labelling in regional languages (STF), programmes for preserving regional cultural heritage (FaC) or by subsidising deprived – predominantly Welsh-speaking – rural communities (PC).

The cases also converge on two negative themes. Most prominently, they decry the absence of a resolute reaction to ‘political jailings’ following the independence referendum in Catalonia. The parties conclude in unison that the European polity is unwilling to endorse the self-determination of stateless nations. On a less dramatic note, all perceive some EU legislation as too bureaucratic, either constraining public aid to flagging industries due to the free competition imperative (FaC, PC) or hindering local tenders (STF). Interestingly, the passivity during the Catalan crisis and the complicated legal environment mark PC’s only negatively framed themes.

In contrast, STF is predominantly critical of present-day European integration. Although a ‘blessing’ for South Tyrol by enabling a gradual approach of the Brenner pass, it is ‘failing’ regions in three respects: (1) not preventing the nation-states from closing borders at will, as manifested during COVID-19 and the migrant crisis, sealing off border regions from their kin communities abroad; (2) not protecting the regions from arbitrary encroachments on autonomous policymaking (e.g., when Italy suspended regional self-rule and replaced it with state-wide crisis measures); and (3) not legislating in ‘desirable’ areas, leaving crucial issues for border regions unregulated. As for FaC, significant positive–negative contrasts exist within the themes: While European funding has historically benefited Corsica, FaC criticises the fierce (and unfair) interregional competition and the decreasing EU-wide solidarity to support the less developed.

4.3. Europe–EU

The parties associate Europe with concrete processes, principles, and values that transcend the contemporary EU. Outraged by the mistreatment of the Catalan crisis, they believe that self-determination should be Europe’s guiding principle. Intriguingly, all base this reasoning on democracy, another European value: self-determination is a fundamental, undeniable right enshrined in the UN Charter; it must be legitimate to exercise it. As the quality of democracy comes down to the plurality of legitimate interests, criminalising the ‘right to decide’ is undemocratic and – because Europe is committed to democracy – also anti-European. Put representatively by FaC, Europe is in constant evolution; speaking out now means contributing to its construction:

[i]f we accept without a word that men and women [face a political process and imprisonment] simply because they peacefully defended a popular consultation by a referendum  … , I think we’ll give up everything which constitutes democracy, the European project and the European ideal. (FaC, Assemblée de Corse, 21 February 2019, pp. 87–88)

On the individual level, STF deplores unmaterialised European regionalism. As the ‘self-proclaimed’ European unity vanishes with the first crisis, the states resort to ‘national’, state-centred, isolationist measures (grenzstaatliches Denken). This ‘penalises’ border regions. To counter state unilateralism, effective regionalism should allow for adopting region-specific measures and coordinating them autonomously with the bordering regions. PC also contemplates the underlying principles of European cooperation. It rejects Brexit because belonging to wider networks lies in the ‘national interest’ of small nations. These networks not only amplify the voice on the international stage but are also inclusive: In contrast to marginalising Wales in the UK, recently intensified by the ‘hostile’ and ‘exclusive’ Brexit ideology, PC associates the ‘family of European nations’ with openness, diversity and equality, hence compatible with the ‘outward-looking’ Welsh nationalism.

4.4. EU integration framework–EU policy

The parties reflect the formal position of their region (and the regional level more generally) within the EU architecture. In parallel, they evaluate the EU’s capacity to provide the ‘right’ policies. Most articulately, STF considers the contemporary EU far from any ‘Europe of the Regions’. The once-promising regional emancipation has stopped and, worse, reversed: The state-governed EU ignores sub-state territorial demands and, hypocritically, turns a blind eye to minority rights violations in its territory. This trend ties in with the resurgence of majority nationalism in the West, adversely impacting minority nations. The EU’s region-unfriendly institutional set-up explains the ill-suited policies it provides. Regarding sub-state minorities, while standardising ‘absurdities’, areas important for cross-border communities remain unharmonised. The most ‘blameworthy’ is geo-blocking preventing South Tyrol from accessing German-speaking media content: ‘We can’t cross the border even on the internet … ’ (STF, Südtiroler Landtag, 16 May 2019, Nr. 15, p. 60). Regarding self-government, the EU issues and enforces legislation with no room for small-size regions to influence it. Hence, South Tyrol’s attempts to tackle local problems unilaterally risk contravening EU directives.

FaC is equally dissatisfied with the region’s institutional status. As an ‘ordinary’ region,¹³ Corsica has to compete for funding with larger mainland regions. To counterbalance the insular handicap, FaC calls for an ‘insularity clause’ in the EU law, giving Corsica preferential treatment: ‘[e]quality also means treating different situations differently’ (FaC, Assemblée de Corse, 30 July 2020, p. 39). Echoing STF, it considers the official representation channels available to regions limited (the Committee of the Regions is purely symbolic). FaC is most critical of the ‘ultraliberal’ common market competition rules preventing the governing coalition from achieving one of its priorities – an affordable connection to mainland Europe through a subsidised region-owned maritime company. So far, the European Commission has contested any initiative to this end (yet hypocritically approved the bailout of Air France during the COVID-induced aviation crisis).

PC pays minimal attention to the EU integration framework. Instead, confronted with involuntarily losing European membership, it ponders the benefits that will be lost: The UK’s fundamental principles of employment, environment, the food industry, health care, and animal welfare were derived from EU law. The appeal to the European Court of Justice secured the right to equality, unguaranteed by the Bill of Rights, protecting the most vulnerable in society. ‘What on earth is wrong about being bound by rules that actually work in our favour?’ (PC, Senedd Cymru, 28 February 2018, 17:41:21). In parallel, Regional Policy allocations to impoverished rural areas supplied regional development neglected by the state. Since most Welsh speakers live in these areas, the EU indirectly contributed to preserving the Welsh identity. Additionally, the Erasmus programme broadened horizons and raised awareness of European citizenship.

The parties converge on one additional theme. All notice the growing Euroscepticism elsewhere, notably in the newly acceded member states (which is paradoxical, as they profit the most). The parties acknowledge that, given the EU’s technocratic image, fair criticism is understandable and (must be) legitimate. To counter further Eurosceptic sentiments, the EU must be communicated more carefully (FaC) and its benefits more convincingly (PC). According to STF, if the EU turns ‘incomprehensible’, citizens could lose understanding of this project: ‘I want people to be able to identify with the EU and not to turn their back to it’ (STF, Südtiroler Landtag, 17 September 2020, Nr. 68, p. 19).

4.5. Clear–Blurred

The parties are unequivocal about the immediate issues they (dis)like but markedly blurred on future (alternative) integration frameworks. The secessionist PC depicts independence, in light of Westminster’s post-Brexit encroachments on devolution, as the only solution to safeguard Wales as a political entity. However, PC constructs ‘independence in Europe’ rather nebulously, projecting it into vague conceptions of a ‘Europe of the Peoples’, ‘family of European nations’ or simply the ‘European future’. The goal of rejoining the EU is stated only implicitly, with no accounts of how and when EU membership should become accessible again. FaC also refers to a ‘Europe of the Regions’, ‘Europe of Stateless Nations’ or ‘Europe of the Peoples’ but remains silent about what these polities (should) entail beyond their ‘citizen-based’ foundations. Neither is STF clear about the institutional parameters of the preferred ‘Europe of the Peoples and Regions’, apart from, as mentioned above, its regionalist underpinnings.

Similarly fuzzy are PC’s and FaC’s accounts of ‘Europe’s failure’ in Catalonia. Within this theme, each party targets different actors with its criticism. While STF states resolutely that EU institutions apply ‘double standards’ (Doppelmoral), PC is less explicit, alternately holding the EU and individual member states accountable. Even less precise is FaC, blaming the whole of ‘Europe’. Intriguingly enough, whereas PC and STF consistently differentiate between Europe and the EU, FaC sometimes employs these terms interchangeably.

5. MAIN FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This section summarises the main findings, compares them to alternative sources and discusses their broader significance regarding the theoretical and methodological framework. An analysis of the sub-state parliamentary discourse of PC, FaC, and STF has identified the following patterns in the content and nature of these parties’ EU positioning. First and foremost, each party has based its EU attitudes on a unique combination of issues. In each case, the issues addressed are closely associated with the party’s self-government objective and other programmatic priorities and are embedded within the region’s unique context. Corroborating that regionalist parties perceive European integration through commitments on domestic goals (Marks & Wilson, 2000, p. 433), the cases have emphasised aspects of European integration that either facilitate or hamper their empowerment strategies in institutional, legal, economic and cultural questions. Hence, despite several overreaching themes, autonomous policymaking of border regions (STF), post-Brexit protection degradation (PC) and compensating the insularity handicap (FaC) are primarily responsible for these parties’ opinion-forming on the EU.

Regarding the substantive content, the parties have consciously differentiated between a three-fold manifestation of European integration. The first concerns the formal position of the regions and various opportunities and constraints of regional co-decision within the contemporary EU (including visions of alternative integration frameworks). The second relates to region-oriented policies that this polity provides (or fails to provide). STF’s accounts of the state-dominated club complicating regional self-government and neglecting sub-state minority protection were most prominent in this respect. This echoes past scholarship in that regionalist parties can decouple European integration as an emancipatory framework from its concrete form (Elias, 2009). The third and final pertains to ‘European’ principles: Alongside inclusiveness (PC) and regionalism (STF), all parties have associated self-determination with democracy as an intrinsic European value which should underlie any European integration.

The within-party variation has revealed that issues differ not only in salience but also in framing. While Europhile and Eurosceptic perspectives have always coexisted within the regionalist party family (Gómez-Reino, 2013), I find that contradictory positive–negative connotations commonly exist within the individual parties, for example, PC valuing European legislation but condemning the non-response to violence in Catalonia. Such varied framing is unsurprising, given the prior finding that regionalist parties judge the EU’s (Europe’s) capacity to meet their goals from issue to issue. Moreover, positive and negative undertones are occasionally present within the issues, for example, FaC welcoming EU development programmes per se but criticising their unfair administration. Additionally, the addressed issues differ in clarity: The parties are generally unequivocal about immediate matters but vague about the preferred form of European integration. Lastly, the parties appear internally consistent in their EU positioning, showing no competing views over individual issues.

The full scope and scale of the regionalist parties’ engagement with the European dimension teach us important lessons about these parties’ EU attitudes and their evaluation. Methodologically, the thematic variation identified in sub-state parliamentary discourse has exposed the limits of single-issue definitions of EU support as a proxy for the general EU position. Most manifestly, while PC has recently been categorised as Europhile, based on pragmatically supporting further integration (Massetti & Schakel, 2021) and demanding more competencies for the supranational level (Zuber & Szöcsik, 2019), I find that the deepness of integration represents not only a residual theme for this party but also a highly blurred one. Similarly, EU support assessed in terms of European funding (Gross & Debus, 2018) would capture some of FaC’s and PC’s reflections but miss most of STF’s.

This is not to say that past indicators reducing European integration to only one feature (or several predefined categories) are principally flawed. Consistent with themselves, and for compatibility reasons, these works simply do not account for other components of this complex phenomenon. However, as evidenced here, such analytical simplifications risk omitting the decisive features in a particular context, hence revealing very little about regionalist parties’ actual real-time EU support. What represents a novel finding in regionalist party research mirrors what we already know about their state-wide counterparts. Indeed, state-wide parties typically show different support for different EU policies (Hooghe et al., 2002; Jolly et al., 2022), as well as distinguish between the EU’s constitutive features and everyday policymaking (Braun et al., 2016). All this invites us to systematically re-evaluate regionalist parties’ EU attitudes on a more fine-grained scale. Before doing so, the Europhile–Eurosceptic split in the literature addressed in the opening of this paper (Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro, 2018, pp. 37–38) cannot be resolved.

On the empirical level, the analysis has revealed a clearly Eurosceptic tendency towards the EU’s decreasing willingness to assist regional empowerment, thus corroborating the Eurosceptic strand (Massetti & Schakel, 2021; Massetti, 2020, p. 75). Indeed, the EU’s unconcealed animosity towards an independent Catalonia and sub-state self-determination in general (Holesch & Jordana, 2021) marks the most prominent overreaching anti-European theme (despite different salience in each case), consistent with the ‘more-of-an-obstacle-and-less-of-a-facilitator’ narrative unfolding since the early 2000s (Massetti, 2009, p. 520). This study did not aim to establish the causal effects of the contemporary territorial crises on regionalist parties’ changing EU attitudes. However, some coherence is evident with the increasing Euroscepticism of secessionist activists (Portos, 2020) and pro-secessionist citizens (Wagner et al., 2019).

Supposedly to counter these region-unfriendly developments, the parties mobilise the ‘Europe of the Regions’ (or derivations). This indicates that the imagery of self-government within a territorial organisation considered defunct by the late 2010s (Hepburn, 2008) remains vivid and highly relevant today, though it is the fuzziest theme in each party’s corpus. We can nevertheless assume that this obscurity stems from lacking concrete parameters of such a hypothetical polity (whose materialisation is becoming increasingly unlikely) and not because parties may present unspecific information for strategic electoral reasons and rhetoric–action flexibility after gaining office (Han, 2020).

Most specifically, the findings challenge the existing literature on EU attitudes of the individual cases under analysis. For PC, linking independence to the European dimension only sporadically and vaguely contrasts what secessionist parties are generally believed to be preoccupied with vis-à-vis the EU (Boylan & Turkina, 2019; Massetti, 2020, p. 72), as well as the party’s two-decade strategy to become a fully fledged EU member state. In turn, FaC’s rich corpus (despite the low frequency of Corsica’s assembly sessions) counters that European integration is unimportant for Corsican nationalist parties (Elias, 2009, p. 110). Even more so, STF’s extensive engagement contradicts the general assumption that separatist fringe parties ignore or reject European integration (Boylan & Turkina, 2019, p. 1327). STF’s reflections also challenge the predominant reliance on party manifestos as conclusive sources of regionalist parties’ EU attitudes and the established praxis resulting, if no coverage is provided, in exclusion (Massetti & Schakel, 2021), reporting missing values (Zuber & Szöcsik, 2019) or labelling them as indifferent to Europe (Scantamburlo, 2016, p. 27). Nonetheless, follow-up research should clarify why STF downplays Europe in its party materials but is so eloquent during sub-state plenary sessions.

This analysis did not seek to explain intra- or cross-party variation in EU support nor the drivers of EU attitudes; it identified and categorised themes on the surface of the data disregarding anything beyond the explicit content (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 84). However, as regionalist parties view European integration through basic party ideologies (Massetti & Schakel, 2021), their left–right orientations consistently imbued the themes: equality, inclusiveness and social justice in the case of the left-wing FaC and PC – ‘many of our fellow country people in our poorest communities [voted] for Brexit  …  [in] a cry against poverty and powerlessness’ (PC, Senedd Cymru, 5 September 2019, 14:24:21); public utility, individual responsibility and common sense in the case of the rightist STF. This echoes past longitudinal studies in that non-centrist ideology may imply more nuanced positions: When centre-left and radical-left regionalist parties accepted European membership after years of animosity, they still opposed its institutional and economic framework (Gómez-Reino, 2013, pp. 153–156). Future research should explore the deeper (latent) level of the EU parliamentary discourse to substantiate the underlying linkages in the regionalist parties’ EU attitude formation process.

Regionalist parties’ EU attitudes are further contingent upon inter-party competition and government incumbency (Elias, 2009, pp. 141–149). As Bischof (2018, p. 315) pointed out, while the feasibility of follow-up action constrains the rhetoric of the governing parties, opposition parties enjoy greater freedom in this respect. We can only speculate whether the extensive utterances of the fringe opposition STF result from this reasoning. Inter-party dynamics could nevertheless explain why no diverging views in EU positioning have been identified in any of the parties. Whereas it would be difficult for STF to dissent as a two-MP party, FaC and PC would undermine their credibility and hegemonic position as the respective largest governing and largest opposition parties. The original insights into regionalist parties’ EU attitudes based on sub-state parliamentary debates definitely raise some additional questions.

6. CONCLUSIONS

This article’s starting point is the disagreement in the literature over the regionalist parties’ current levels of EU support and the tendency to reduce their attitudes towards European integration to one general position. To overcome the limited granularity of past scholarship, this contribution develops an in-depth qualitative approach to evaluate regionalist parties’ EU attitudes from parliamentary debates in regional assemblies. Applying framed thematic analysis to the EU-related interventions by PC, FaC and STF from 2016 to 2021, I identify the following patterns in the content and nature of their EU positioning: (1) the parties adopt a distinct position on multiple EU-related issues simultaneously and, importantly, construct their EU attitudes around issues that tie in with their regional empowerment strategy and the context-specific conditions of the region; (2) the parties consciously distinguish between various ‘layers’ of European integration (EU integration framework/EU region-oriented policies/Europe’s underlying principles); (3) the differentiated issue-positioning is reflected in the changing framing as each party adopts Europhile positions on some issues and Eurosceptic on others; (4) while the positions on issues here and now are generally clear, those concerning long-term visions of alternative integration frameworks are blurred; and (5) the parties display high internal coherence on individual issues.

The thematic content derived from the sub-state parliamentary discourse of three different regionalist parties in three territorial settings is theoretically and methodologically significant. Concerning the former, it provides new evidence of the full scope and scale of the regionalist parties’ engagement with the EU at a particular moment, as well as what these actors currently make of (and want from) European integration and how they justify their demands in relation to their regionalist project. Concerning the latter, it reveals the limits of past single-issue, standardised and ad hoc methodologies and their inclination to overstate the importance of some features of European integration for one’s position-taking and overlook the more central yet predominantly contextual ones.

The existing multidimensional variability poses a twofold dilemma for future comparative research. First, it is not the time-consuming data extraction and hand-coding (implying the researcher’s subjectivity) that preclude effective comparability but simply the sheer diversity of content within and across the cases. Therefore, some simplification seems necessary. However, can the complexity be scaled down to only a few indicators which maintain the key informative value, that is, to the ‘gold standard’ (Marks et al., 2007, p. 33) that scholars have been looking for? As this analysis evidenced, this would necessitate capturing the simultaneous positioning on (1) polity, that is, the EU institutional framework and its legitimacy (including the principled support for European integration); (2) policies, that is, region-oriented outcomes; and (3) politics, that is, decision-making processes through which decisions within the polity and about the policies are reached. Besides, any scaling of these dimensions for statistical inference should consider, rather than a simple several-point positive–negative placement, to what extent the parties’ regional empowerment goals are met. Second, to overcome the problem of the context-dependent impact of region-oriented policies, future research could combine universal, one-size-fits-all policy categories with region-specific ones based on knowledge about the regions’ concrete realities. Taking these steps could allow for a solid cross-regional comparison in times of the increasingly differentiated politicisation and polarisation of European integration.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for the insightful comments of Dr Anwen Elias on all versions of this article. I equally thank Dr Verena Wisthaler for her help during the early stages of data processing and coding.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 While most datasets measure the general importance of European integration for the party (Jolly et al., 2022; Ray, 1999; Zuber & Szöcsik, 2019), Benoit and Laver (2006) also assessed the relative importance attributed to each issue.

2 This limitation also applies to the Regional Manifesto Project (Alonso et al., 2013). This content analysis of territorial demands from regional-level election manifestos keeps the state as the core reference level in categories such as increasing the EU’s competencies or EU exit. Regional-level categories concern only representation within the European institutions and the perceived benefits of EU membership. Similar limitations apply to the Euromanifesto project (Schmitt et al., 2016).

3 The coalition was formed by Chjama Naziunale, Inseme per a Corsica and U Partitu di a Nazione Corsa. However, the latter refused to merge into FaC, but stayed part of the coalition.

4 Eight proceedings of the XV. Legislaturperiode (September–December 2018) could not be accessed, as their transcripts were missing during data collection.

5 The term ‘vocabulary’ avoids confusion, as a ‘dictionary’ usually denotes a codebook for computerised content analysis (Pagoaga Ibiricu, 2020). Corpus linguistics terms such as ‘keyword(s)’, that is, overproportionate frequencies within a text compared with a reference text, and ‘wordlist(s)’, that is, a generated list of words (in a frequency order), were equally shunned.

6 The search words are not search strings because they represent no predefined frames to be searched for in the data; they are building blocks for identifying relevant segments for further qualitative treatment. Wanting to capture all EU-relevant content, a search-string approach (Vliegenthart & Roggeband, 2007) would make theoretical saturation impossible before reading through every transcript.

7 It exceeds any scope to explain the exact reasoning behind every search word. Idiosyncratic to a particular author (Rooduijn & Pauwels, 2011, p. 1279), the vocabulary is a sound compromise between exhaustivity and likelihood of occurrence in real sub-state parliamentary talk while minimising the probability of missing a relevant frame.

8 Wordsmith Tools 8.0 reliably identifies all word derivates if programmed *stem*. Thus, no data pre-processing was necessary, such as decompounding, segmentation, stemming or lemmatisation.

9 A regional executive can speak on behalf of the party or the whole administrative unit (Proksch & Slapin, 2014, p. 103). I abstract from this methodological challenge and attribute all utterances of FaC’s regional ministers to the party.

10 Whereas (ii) needed nuancing from ‘strongly positive’, ‘rather positive’, ‘mixed’ and ‘rather negative’ to ‘strongly negative’ (while eliminating ‘neutrality’), the remaining dimensions are adequate as dichotomous. For clarity, I treat (ii) as dichotomous in the analysis but as a four-point scale in section 3 of the Appendix in the supplemental data online.

11 In qualitative research, the theme’s salience does not necessarily depend on quantifiable measures (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 83). Whereas a dominant theme is grounded in repeated occurrences, combined with a sense of ‘urgency’, a marginal theme is constructed from isolated instances.

12 The same applies to the Long-term–Short-term dimension, which proved unhelpful in all but the alternative integration framework theme.

13 Corsica remains the last insular region belonging to an EU member state not enjoying a treatment different from its mainland counterparts.