The role of religion in sovereignist narratives of European integration: symbolic thickening and identity marking

ABSTRACT

The sovereignist vision of European integration is becoming increasingly present in the debate on the EU, although it is difficult to build a compelling narrative on European integration accommodating radical sovereignist claims. We look at the role religion plays in the construction of sovereignist narratives, taking Polish right-wing populist parties as our case study. In the findings we highlight the identitarian role of religion and the mechanisms of othering built on religiously referred antagonising tropes. We also show how religion helps to symbolically “thicken” the sovereignist narrative. Finally, we demonstrate the intrinsic tensions in this discursive construction, leading to inconsistency in sovereignist claims.

KEYWORDS:

• Sovereignism
• European integration
• religion

Introduction

The sovereignist vision of European integration is becoming increasingly visible in contemporary debates on the future of EU, although it is not easy to build a compelling narrative on European integration accommodating radical sovereignist claims (Góra, Thevenin, and Zielińska 2023). The recent efforts by sovereignists are therefore different from claims characterising previously Euroreject and strong Eurosceptic groups (Borriello and Brack 2019; de Lange and Guerra 2009; Heinisch, McDonnell, and Werner 2021; Pirro, Taggart, and van Kessel 2018). This is because after Brexit many of these formations are searching for a narrative to transform the EU in a way that allows them to accommodate internal agonistic tensions between sovereignism and European integration understood in terms of pooling sovereignty (Fabbrini and Zgaga 2022). Brexit has forced many formerly Euroreject actors to reconsider their views on leaving the EU and instead focus on recreating a Union in line with their expectations, with maximum protection of national sovereignty (Kaniok and Hloušek 2018; Taggart and Szczerbiak 2018). Although the sovereignist vision of European integration draws from nationalism, populism and Euroscepticism, it is qualitatively different and forms a novel political phenomenon (Scopelliti, Bruno 2022). As Fabbrini and Zgaga argue:

It is different from nationalism although it derives from it, capitalizing on the latter’s idea of a national political community to protect. It is different from populism although populist critiques emerge in different degrees in all sovereignist leaders and parties, critiques however focused on supranational elites. It is different from Euroscepticism although it shares the latter’s mood that European integration might jeopardize models of life built over centuries. (Fabbrini and Zgaga 2022, 4)

Despite growing scholarship on sovereignism, so far the literature pays very little attention to the cultural aspects, while many scholars have engaged in detailed research on political and economic aspects (Fabbrini and Zgaga 2022; Góra, Thevenin, and Zielińska 2023; de Spiegeleire et al. 2017).

In our research, we focused on how cultural aspects, and specifically religion, have become crucial to achieving coherence in the narrative on European integration, and at the same time preserving sovereignist claims. Locating religion (and specifically Christianity) as an identity marker by right-wing groups is already a trend across the continent to create and enforce narratives on protecting Christian Europe from internal and external enemies (Foret 2014; Zielińska 2019). Viktor Orbán called for the protection of “Christian Europe” in the context of the migration crisis of 2015, while the Pegida movement utilised Christian tropes in defending “fortress Europe” against Muslim migrants (Murariu 2017; Volk 2020). Against that background, our article aims to further contribute to the body of research on cultural dimension of sovereignism by looking at the role religion plays in the construction of the sovereignist narratives on European integration.

The case study in the paper is Polish right-wing populist parties, which continue to hold power since 2015, not only promoting a sovereignist vision of European integration, but also being among the leaders in building the trans-European movement to strengthen their vision. The European party group of European Conservatists and Reformists (ECR) suits that purpose particularly well. Focusing on Polish politicians allows us to research the narratives of political actors who, while in power, have to navigate and construct a vision of European integration amid the debate on the future of Europe, which intensified after the White paper on the future of Europe (2017) issued by the European Commission. The empirical material for investigating this issue consists of politicians’ speeches in the eighth and ninth legislative terms of the European Parliament (EP) which was selected because the EP became a hub for the debate on the future of Europe and became a useful forum to promote specific visions of European integration (Thevenin and Umit 2023).

In this article, we explore the question of how religion is a part of sovereignist narratives on EU integration, what roles it serves, and how further research on this intersection can be conceptualised. We demonstrate that references to Christian Europe strengthen and support nation-states, and Christianity serves as the unifying element in these narratives, symbolically thickening them. In addition, we found that sovereignist claims activate various others – internal and external – in relation to the national context as well as in the European dimension. This results from strengthening the populist elements in that narrative and for which religion serves as a useful resource of strong in-group references, be it toward Muslims, LGBTQ + people, or secular European bureaucrats.

In the first part of the article, we discuss sovereignism as a new trend in narratives on the future of European integration as well as its links to populism and religion. We then present the attitudes of the Polish right-wing parties towards EU integration. The second part of the article presents both the applied methodology and the results of our analysis, focusing on demonstrating the role of religion and religious tropes in constructing sovereignist narratives on European integration.

New narratives for a new EU? Sovereignism, populist zeitgeist and symbolic thickening

Traditionally, the idea of sovereignty has been associated with the state and the Westphalian international system. The idea rests on a “particular national territory inhabited by a particular people with their particular history, expressed in the patterns of everyday life and in their laws, customs, and institutions, and the right of the people to defend all this against any challenge to it” (Johnson 2014, 1). The central claim of sovereignism is that “the people” are the holders of sovereignty (De Spiegeleire et al. 2017) and this builds the legitimacy of the state. The constitutive element of sovereignism is its defensive stance focusing on the protection of the national community from the destructive forces of globalisation. In that sense, sovereignist claims were long at the heart of right-wing and Euroreject and Eurosceptic groups (de Lange and Guerra 2009; Kriesi et al. 2008). At the same time, however, sovereignty in these narratives is an “idealized place and time, in which the people and the nation were allegedly deemed to hold the political power, disposing of full control over a given territory, its borders, policy-making” (Scopelliti, Bruno 2022, 194). Therefore, it also forms a useful founding myth by romanticising the past in opposition to the contemporary globalised reality which the EU and its institutions often epitomise.

Within a nation-state, sovereignist claims refer to cultural, political and economic dimensions:

a cultural one, dealing with the need to preserve national, ethnic, linguistic and religious identities; a political dimension, connected to the defence of people's sovereignty from the endemic corruption produced by the elites; and an economic dimension, mainly dealing with the protection of our prosperity from the demand of solidarity growing from the others. (Verzichelli 2020, 259)

The same elements are projected at the EU level, constituting key elements of sovereignism understood as a narrative on the desired shape of the EU. The cultural element of sovereignism stays at the focus of this article. It usually draws from “a holy alliance between nationalism and populism” (Fabbrini 2019, 62). There is a clear link between sovereignism and populism in which the former antedates the latter, and “while sovereignism might exist without populism, there is no populist discourse that does not include sovereignist claims” (Basile and Mazzoleni 2020, 6). At the same time, the construction of the “people” as a nation understood in nativist and ethnic terms helps to articulate a them-versus-us opposition (Betz 2005; 2018; Mudde 2019; see also Minkenberg 2000; Rydgren 2018). This implies rejection of pluralism (Müller 2017) and perception of non-native elements (i.e. persons, ideas) as threatening the homogeneous nation-state (Csehi and Zgut 2021; Pytlas 2021). The ideas of the nation are mobilised to capitalise on opposition to immigration and multiculturalism, as well as to advocate the “restoration” of national sovereignty. In the case of sovereignism, the people are also defined in distinction to the political or economic elites (Brubaker 2020). Yet they intersect, as:

In populist discourse, the space of inequality is always at the same time a space of difference. [ … ] “the people” are constructed not only vertically, as the “common” or “ordinary” people in relation to those who have more (the elite) or less (those on the bottom), but also horizontally, as a bounded cultural and moral community, defined not only vis-à-vis those who are unambiguously outside the polity but also – as a community of values, tastes, habits or way of life – vis-à-vis those who are unambiguously within the polity: the elite, those on the bottom and those at the cultural margins. (Brubaker 2020, 57)

At the centre of our attention is a sovereignist vision of European integration, which also involves intersections with nationalism and populism (Corduwener 2014; Basile and Mazzoleni 2020; Bellucci 2019; Fabbrini and Zgaga 2022; Góra, Thevenin, and Zielińska 2023; Jabko and Luhman 2019). Scholars claim that “new sovereignism refers to the belief in the primacy of the nation-state, governed according to the principle of popular sovereignty, over inter- and supranational governance structures and the “transnational” sphere of economic and social activity” (De Spiegeleire et al. 2017, 34). For the right-wing variety of sovereignists, which is of our interest here, the aim is to prevent deepening integration and preserve member states as the masters of integration. Yet their visions, intersecting with their ideological position on the domestic and European political scene, differ considerably (Sondel-Cedarmas and Berti 2022). As a result, the sovereignists, even those who occupy the same side of the political spectrum, have not yet managed to build a unifying and coherent narrative about the European integration.

The existing research on the role religion plays in unifying the Eurosceptic and right-wing populist political actors drew our attention to researching its use in building a sovereignist vision of European integration. The literature on the role religion plays in articulating Europe and EU integration reveals two dimensions of its role. Firstly, authors claim that, in a Western European context, Christianity takes on a role of an identitarian “Christianism” (Brubaker 2017, 1193) that serves to define “us” in relation to Islam, defined as “them” (Marzouki, McDonnell, and Roy 2016). At the same time, it is also used to distinguish “our” way of life – that of ordinary people – from the cosmopolitan, secular “elites” (Brubaker 2017, 1192). Thus, especially in Western European radical right-wing populist articulations, religion plays the role of an European identity or culture marker rather than one of religious belief or practices per se (Kolpinskaya and Fox 2021).

Secondly, as with populism which “mobilises itself in the name of the people” in order to defend the imagined “heartland”, an imagined space of commonalities often derived from a better past. Religion, within its identitarian role, serves as a vehicle connecting the imagined better past of the community and a signpost for the future. As Taggart claims, in right-wing populist claims “the people” are constructed as a homogenous entity, with any cleavages and division lines erased – members of the “heartland” (Taggart 2000). Religion often offers a discursive shortcut to and synonym of this fuzzy and safe past place. A specific relationship with the idealised mythical past is a common feature of right-wing notions of the nostalgic linkages with that past (Scopelliti, Bruno 2022). In declarations by right-wing political parties, such as the Warsaw Declaration from December 2021 (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość 2021), this heartland is embodied by Christmas – an important and popular Christian holiday. In the document, the right-wing leaders referred to what they (falsely) identified as the European Commission’s (EC) hostile position towards Christmas as an example of its ideological position to create a “European nation”. This aimed to make a binary opposition between the protection of conservative culture and heritage, including explicit Christian religious tropes and the (allegedly) secularist integration project promoted by the EC. As stressed above, the heartland is juxtaposed horizontally and vertically to the others, who are defined as distant from it, also in terms of the culture, values and way of life (Taggart 2000). Hence, the others aim at attacking and erasing (or cancelling) Christian roots.

Since this antagonistic element – populist in its origin – is necessary for sovereignist narratives on the European integration, the important role of religion is that of othering and juxtaposing the we-group from others (Lister 2004, 101). Indeed, research on populist radical right-wing populist parties in Europe shows how religion plays a role in constituting the divisions between the “natives” and the “them” at both national or European levels, as well as being used in “vertical” othering (Minkenberg 2018). Ultimately, the role of religion in othering takes the form of both antagonising the external European elites and othering from external others, especially Muslims. We therefore distinguish two-dimensional othering (Brubaker 2017), with an internal and external (European) level that often creates tensions within sovereignist narratives. On the horizontal axis, the othering juxtaposes pure people with Others, who are enemies. In narratives on the European integration, it often locates these enemies and others outside of the EU – such as in Islamic countries or among Muslim migrants at the borders. Vertically, othering on the one side locates the Christian nation-state against secular Europe, but at the same time conceptualises the Christian nation against internal and external (European) elites.

Against this backdrop, we claim that religion’s uniting and othering functions are crucial for sovereignist narratives. References to Christianity play a pivotal role in expressing “us”, the European “natives”. Its culturalised and identitarian form (Astor and Mayrl 2020) helps to build the commonality that serves as a “symbolic glue” (Grzebalska and Pető 2018), which unites otherwise diversified sovereignist narratives on European integration. Due to its generic character, Christianity serves as an overreaching system of meaning that can be shared by political actors that differ in many more specific issues. At the same time, Christianity, entwined with the historically established narratives on Europe, also represents the dense symbolic system that helps to symbolically thicken (Kotwas and Kubik 2019) the otherwise thin sovereignist narratives on European integration, which build on populist claims as well as on horizontal and vertical othering. We test our claim by studying the Polish representation to the EP.

Polish case study: populist right-wing eurosceptics in a religiously loaded context

The Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – PiS), in government in Poland since 2015 with minority coalition partners such as United Poland (Solidarna Polska – SP) is perceived as one of the key promoters and proponents of the sovereignist vision of European integration (Cianciara 2014; 2022; Góra and Zielińska 2019; Tosiek 2018; 2020), while at the same time serving as a poster child of the populist surge across the continent (Kotwas and Kubik 2019; Zielonka 2018; Zielonka and Rupnik 2020). Analysing the Polish case is therefore relevant because it is one of very few cases in which a sovereignist vision is promoted by a strong domestic and capable actor in power. In addition, Polish political actors are utilising European party groups such as the ECR to further promote the vision. Finally, the Polish government is engaged in a long and debilitating conflict with the EU institutions, particularly the EC, over the rule of law, using sovereignist claims for strategic reasons of enforcing its own position vis-à-vis the EU. However, the crisis has also revealed the intrinsic agonistic nature of tensions within the sovereignist narrative showcased during the Europe-wide debate on the future of European integration (Góra, Thevenin, and Zielińska 2023).

In addition, Polish society and its elites have been characterised by strongly pro-European attitudes over the decades since the fall of the communist regime. The dominant discursive constructions have depicted the EU as a community of values to which Poles want to belong. However, Eurosceptic views of the EU have also circulated since the pre-accession period, especially in the discourses of the right-wing circles (de Lange and Guerra 2009; Góra and Mach 2010; Leszczyńska 2017). Initially, such views were rather marginal, but since 2004, with the increasing political significance of the right-wing parties on the Polish political scene, Eurosceptic articulations have become more prominent, translating into clearer sovereignist visions of integration (Styczyńska 2018). The rising significance of Eurosceptic stances in the Polish context has paralleled a growing trend of politicisation of European integration in Polish politics (Góra 2021). This tendency has increased since 2015, when the PiS government launched a judicial overhaul resulting in a long-running rule-of-law conflict with the European Commission (Sadurski 2019) which contributed greatly to a growing polarisation of opinions in the domestic arena regarding European integration.

What makes the Polish case specifically valid for this research is the position of sovereignty in national narratives as well as the strong presence and role of religion in national politics (Zielińska 2018). In a nutshell, the Polish Eurosceptic, right-wing and populist stances draw on the traditional conceptualisation of sovereignty. Historically, religion (Catholicism) has played a central role in the construction of the Polish national identity (Casanova 1994, 92–93; Zubrzycki 2006, 36–39; Borowik 2002). As such, it also played a vital role in the debates on the European integration in the discussions on the Reform Treaty (Lisbon Treaty (LT)) and the role of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR). Christianity/Catholicism was used as the Polish identity marker, placing Poland in an antagonistic relationship with the EU, constructed as secular and liberal (Góra and Mach 2011; Góra and Zielińska 2014; 2019; Leszczyńska 2017; Zielińska 2018). This centrality of religion in the Polish debates on European integration in the first decade of the twenty-first century makes the country an excellent case for understanding the role of religion in constructing the sovereignist narratives in the more recent wave of right-wing Eurosceptic mobilisation.

The populist turn on the Polish political scene, similarly to other European countries, further empowered the Eurosceptic narratives by enriching sovereign claims with the vertical constructions of the people against the elite. The main locus of the power and execution of sovereignty is the nation-state, whereas the EU’s authority is questioned. The voices contesting the European integration have been raised not only at the national level, but at supranational level too. This is visible, especially in the EP. As an arena for arguing, bargaining, and claim-making, it forms a space for negotiating ideas, opinions and proposals as well as for the expression of the national and ideological preferences of political actors (Littoz-Monnet 2013, 949). As such, it also serves the populist right-wing parties as a space for articulating sovereign narratives. This was also specifically important since the EP became an arena for debate on the future of Europe with leaders of member states – including Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki from PiS – asked to present their visions followed by lively plenary discussions (Styczyńska and Thevenin forthcoming; Thevenin and Umit 2023). In addition, the EP was one of three central EU institutions pushing the Future of Europe debate and supporting the Conference on the Future of Europe initiated in 2020.

Methodological remarks and characteristics of empirical material

Since Poland’s accession to the EU, the majority of the country’s representation to the EP consisted of Members of European Parliament (MEPs) who define themselves as conservative, aligned with the Christian Democratic tradition and strongly emphasising the axiological dimension (and in some instances religion) in their political programmes. Their entry to the EP, along with similar voices in other representations from Central and European countries, strengthened both conservative and Eurosceptic voices in the EP (Góra and Zielińska 2014; 2019). Furthermore, the Polish representation along with MEPs from other CEE countries, due to their past experience and the fact that their identity and memory construction were bound up with religion, brought to the EU-level renewed interest in the religious and identity aspects of politics. As Katzenstein stresses, the enlargement infused “renewed religious vitality into Europe’s political and social life, thus chipping away at its exceptional secularism” (Katzenstein 2006, 2). Therefore, the empirical basis for our analysis is formed by the speeches of Polish MEPs in the EP’s eighth and ninth legislative terms.

Our research focuses on the role religion plays in the Polish right-wing populist parties’ sovereignist narratives on EU integration. Methodologically, it draws on the discursive approach and treats “the debates in the EP as social arenas constituted around contested issues, truth claims, and problematisations in which discourses compete with one another, attempting to impose the dominant interpretation of an issue in question” (Góra and Zielińska 2019). We consider the sovereignist narratives as parts of the wider right-wing populist discourses that tell the story about “the people”, nation-state and the EU and the relations between them.

The Polish representation to the EP in the most recent terms (2014–2019 and 2019–2024) further strengthened the role of conservative parties (see Table 1 for more detailed information on the Polish representation to the EP in both terms). In 2014 the main parties, Civic Platform (PO – Platforma Obywatelska) and PiS, gained the same number of seats in the EP (19 in each term). The former joined European People’s Party, whereas with its conservative and Eurosceptic agenda, PiS joined the European Conservatives and Reformists Group. The conservative and Eurosceptic dimension of the Polish representation was also strengthened by the Congress of the New Right (Kongres Nowej Prawicy – KNP), a far-right, populist party, which secured four seats in the EP, with its MEPs remaining independent. With their strong anti-EU views, they could be classified as Eurorejects. The 2019 EP elections reflected the political changes that took place in Poland in 2015. PiS won the majority of seats and continued to be part of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.

Table 1. Polish representation to European Parliament 2014–2019 and 2019–2024 per national parties and national affiliation.

National party	Number of seats		European affiliation
	2014	2019	2014	2019
Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS – Law and Justice)^a	19	26	ECR	ECR
Platforma Obywatelska (PO – Civic Platform)/ Koalicja Obywatelska (KO – Civic Coalition) in 2019	19	22 (3 for PSL & 5 for SLD)	EPP	EPP
Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL – Polish People’s Party)/ Koalicja Obywatelska (KO – Civic Coalition) in 2019	4		EPP	EPP
Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (SLD – Democratic Left Alliance)/ (in 2014 with Unia Pracy – UP, Labour Union)/ Koalicja Obywatelska (KO – Civic Coalition) in 2019	5		S&D	S&D
Wiosna (W – Spring)	–	3	–	S&D
Kongres Nowej Prawicy (KNP – Congress of the New Right)	4	–	Non-attached Members	–

Note: EPP – European People’s Party; S&D – Group of Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats; ECR – European Conservatives and Reformists Group.

Source: National results Poland | 2019 Election results | 2019 European election results | European Parliament (europa.eu).

^a PiS stood in both the 2014 and 2019 elections together with Solidarna Polska – SP (United Poland) and Porozumienie Jarosława Gowina – PJG (Agreement) as one PiS electoral committee. Since 2015, those parties also formed the governing coalition in Poland (in 2021 PJG left the coalition).

In the analysis, we were interested in mapping out and understanding the role that religion as well as its rejection (i.e. secularism, laicism) play in constructing such narratives. Our main units of analysis are individual speeches by Polish MEPs from the 2014 and the early part of the 2019 EP term (till June 2021). Initially we collected all the speeches of the Polish MEPs, excluding their technical interventions (e.g. when MEPs presided over meetings). The initial sample therefore included 11,939 speeches. In the next step, the sample was limited to the speeches of MEPs representing Polish populist right-wing parties (all MEPs elected from the PiS and KNP lists – 6,470 speeches). In order to identify the uses of (non)religion we applied a keyword search to this sample. The keywords included the following lemmas in both Polish and English: religi*/religio*, kości*/church*, chrześci*/christian*, katoli*/catholi*, islam*, muzuł*/muslim, prawosł*/orthodo*,protesta*, świeck*/secular*/secula*, wyznanio*/confession* żydow*/judai*, hind*.¹ By using keywords we were able to identify 340 speeches which constituted 5.26% of all contributions from the MEPs in question. The speeches consisting of such keywords composed the sample that we further analysed with the means of qualitative content analysis. We were interested in finding out how religion is used in sovereignist narratives on EU integration, i.e. how it is used to articulate “the people”, the nation and the EU, as well as how it is used in the constructions of horizontal and vertical othering.

Sacralising sovereignty? Religion as a thickening factor in the sovereignist narratives of right-wing Polish MEPs

Analysis of the material shows that the discourse of the populist right-wing parties in the EP often employs sovereign narratives to discuss the relations between the nation-state and the EU. They become particularly visible after 2015, in the context of clashes between the Polish government and the European Commission over, among other things, judicial reforms, the migration crisis, and women’s and LGBTQ + rights. The interventions of the MEPs from PiS in the EP reflect these tensions and disputes from the national level. The sovereign nation-state has a central role in their articulations, viewed as the primary institution that has a justified right to represent “the people”. The EU, on the other hand, is seen rather critically as an illegitimate limitation to the sovereign power. Consequently, the representatives of the parties in question pessimistically evaluate the European integration that goes beyond the economic sphere. As we presented in the introductory parts, we claim that religion plays a visible role in constructing the sovereign narratives, especially in the process of constructing both horizontal and vertical others who help to mark the significance of the nation-state’s sovereignty, but also the European borders. Below we present the uses of religion in construction of the sovereignist narratives in more detail.

The sovereign Christian state and its European “enemies”

The analysis of the material confirms that the sovereignist narratives of the Polish right-wing MEPs are built on both vertical and horizontal mechanisms of othering. In discussing the relations between the nation state and the EU, the speakers often imply a contradiction between the two. Whereas the former is presented as Christian and therefore represents traditional values, the latter constitutes the opposite. This is visible in the accusations formed in relation to the EU about the promotion of a unifying ideology that is foreign and threatening to the nation state’s own values and identity:

They are going after Poland [triggering Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union] because it is a bulwark of conservative, Christian values, the traditional family [ … ]. (Patryk Jaki, SP from PiS electoral list/ECR, 19.05.2021)

Support for this government, constantly harassed and criticised, and even threatened with the withdrawal of funds, is growing, and Poles are therefore asking themselves whether this is not more about persecution and resentment of the Catholic identity of the Polish nation, constantly subjected to neighbouring totalitarianisms, which hoped to enter the Union as a Europe of homelands. (Urszula Krupa PiS/ECR, 15.11.2017)

The above extracts show that the EU and its institutions are constructed as those who not only challenge the nation state’s sovereignty and competences, guaranteed by the treaties, but also pose a challenge to its very foundations, its normative order rooted in the Christian values. Thus, Christianity fulfils a twofold function in the sovereignist narratives. At an explicit level, it plays an identitarian role as it is used to mark the cultural distinctiveness of the state and its nation. However, it also undertakes a more implicit function of indicating the sovereignty of the nation state. Such constructions frequently featured the debates related to the rule of law in Poland.

The articulation of the antagonism between the nation state and the EU also implies a specific understanding of “the people”. Here, religion plays the role of an identity marker that allows us to define those who the Polish sovereignists in the EP as well as the Polish conservative government claim to represent and defend. The way sovereignists use Christianity or Catholicism suggests that it marks not only national identity, but also a larger conglomerate of the traditional values represented or even embodied by the nation state. The current EU initiatives, policies or agenda not only extend the EU competences as stipulated in the treaties or original visions but also pose a threat to such values as well as to the will of “the people”:

Putting pressure on member states in order to legalise abortion or to amend provisions concerning such important world-view issues is a clear encroachment on their competence and a breach of the subsidiarity principle enshrined in EU treaty law. I would like to remind the House that the role of the EU institutions is not to impose world views, but to respect the law laid down in the Treaties. Mr Panzeri’s report is a threat to the Christian values with which the majority of my compatriots identify. As a Polish Member of the European Parliament, I fulfil my mandate by the will of our citizens, the vast majority of whom do not wish the EU to interfere in issues of world view. (Beata Gosiewska, in writing, PiS/ECR, 11.03.2015)

The European Union should not interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign Poland. Schuman, the creator of the European Union, is turning in his grave, seeing how the idea of a community of nations, which was so wonderful in principle, is turning into a creation whose only goal is bureaucratic power over all states, accompanied by a fight against Christianity and the family and the promotion of homosexuality. (Stanisław Żółtek, Congress of the New Right/ENF, 13.04.2016)

The Christian or Catholic Polish nation and state are juxtaposed with the EU or its institutions, usually identified as leftist and neo-Marxist, whose main aim is to promote and impose their norms and impose “ideological inventions” (Joachim Stanisław Brudziński, PiS/ECR, 24.11.2020), in order to create “a person without ideology, without national identity and without Christian faith” (Elżbieta Kruk, PiS/ECR, 12.02.2020). The EU’s mechanisms are abused by such “leftist fractions” to “affirm leftist pseudo-values while also destroying any manifestations of Christian or conservative thought and action” (Joachim Stanisław Budziński, PiS/ECR, 05.10.2020). The positioning the Catholic or Christian Polish state and its “people” against the “leftist”, neo-Marxist and ideological EU inserts the antagonism between them into the broader dichotomy between the good and the bad. In this model, Christianity indicates the desired, rightful normative order, representing the moral superiority, in relation not only to the EU, but also to Western European countries. Interestingly, from such superior values MEPs also derive such norms as women’s or “homosexual people” rights. This is visible in the arguments stressing the Polish devotion to the Christianity helps to understand and offer support by triggering “positive changes in the situation of women” (Jadwiga Wiśniewska, PiS/ECR, 14.03.2017) or that “It was in Poland that homosexuality was never penalised and it was in your countries. In Poland there are more women in executive positions than in your countries” (Patryk Jaki, SP from PiS electoral list/ECR, 10.03.2021). The validation of this superiority happens through using references to progressive European values, i.e. women’s or “homosexual people’s” rights. On the contrary, by describing the EU as “neo-Marxism” and “leftist ideology”, the speakers aim to associate it with totalitarian regimes, especially communist, that in the past deprived Poland of its sovereignty and “the people” of their freedoms. Ryszard Legutko’s contribution to the debate on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall provides a good illustration of this mechanism:

Today we are more and more in the grip of one correct ideology, with political correctness running wild. We had a sample of it here, right here at this session. We tend to create a new form of de facto one party system which is called political mainstream. Again, we had a sample of it this afternoon. We have militant, aggressive, secularist and barbaric social engineering. Again, these were the trademarks of the communist system. We have a neo-Marxists very much alive and kicking today. (Ryszard Legutko PiS/ECR 13.11.2019)

References to the Polish collective memory of the past trauma aim to magnify the threat the EU poses to contemporary Polish sovereignty. Furthermore, linking the EU to communist totalitarianism may also suggest that European integration constitutes a step backward for humanity, whereas protection of the nation state is presented as the “right”, desirable future. This also justifies the need to reject the federalist visions of the future Europe as the European institutions use (or extend) the existing mechanisms and power arrangements in unjustified ways. It is therefore necessary to strengthen the role of the nation states and to hand power back to the sovereign people and the institutions representing them. The Europe of homelands, therefore, is presented as a solution.

The analysed material indicates that the sovereignist narratives not only imply vertical othering by identifying the EU as politically dominant, but are also built on horizontal othering. The latter implies the differentiation between the community of values, marked by the Christian identity of Poland, and those who are outsiders in both a political (outside of the polity) and a cultural (within the polity, but representing the cultural margins) sense (Brubaker 2020, 57). The EU, constructed as a cultural hegemon that uses political and institutional power to challenge the communal values, seems to play the role of external outsider. The role of the internal other is assigned primarily to “LGBT ideology”, which is positioned as a challenge to the traditional norms embodied in the Christian identity of the Polish state and nation:

The LGBT movement has made provocation its most potent weapon. During their numerous marches in Poland, acts of discrimination and blatant violations of the religious feelings of millions of Christians have frequently occurred. Insult, profanation and attempts to desecrate perhaps the most sacred image for Christians, which is the image of the Mother of God. Is this not discrimination and hate speech? After all, such acts encourage further brutal attacks on Christians, assaults on priests, defiling symbols sacred to Catholics. (Beata Kempa, SP from PiS electoral list /ECR, 26.11.2019)

Poland has the right to protect traditional and Catholic values, and the parents’ right to teach their children according to the rules they approve. Tolerance does not mean a lack of tolerance for traditional family patterns. That is what Poland is fighting for. (Patryk Jaki, SP from PiS electoral list /ECR, 26.11.2019)

The construction of “LGBT ideology” in the EP as the enemy of “the people” corresponded closely with the intensification of discursive constructions of the nation in heterosexual terms observable in recent years at the national level (Hall 2017; Żuk and Żuk 2020). It also draws on the implicit heteronormativity of the nationalist projects (Peterson 1999). Additionally, religion locates the antagonism between the nation state and the EU in the transcended thus unchangeable, inevitable order (Berger and Luckmann 1991). It therefore helps to articulate their incompatibility.

Christian or secular? The ambiguity of the European Union in sovereignist narratives

As discussed above, sovereignist narratives construct the EU and its institutions as secular, leftist, ideological, and therefore threatening to the independence of the nation state and its “people”. However, the analysed material reveals that the construction of the EU may take more ambiguous forms that further problematise its role in the sovereignist narratives. Religion still plays a pivotal role in the process. When discussing the EU’s past, Polish sovereignists stress its cultural foundations (i.e. Christianity, Roman law and Greek philosophy) (“there would be no modern Europe if not for Greek philosophy, Roman law and values stemming from the Old and New Testament, that is Christianity”, Joachim Stanisław Brudziński, PiS/ECR, 19.09.2019). They also very much emphasise the founding fathers’ Christian identity and their intensions regarding the European integration:

To what extent does [the EU] respect the catalogue of principles created by the founding fathers: Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi, Robert Schuman? These principles are respect for cultural and religious identity of national countries and adherence to the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. (Elżbieta Kruk, PiS/ECR, in writing, 10.07.2020)

In each case, Christianity not only serves as an identity marker and determinant of the European values but is also viewed as a basis for the shape of the current EU policies. This is clearly visible in the demands that the EU should, for example, take actions internationally as well as within the bloc to protect prosecuted Christians:

The European Union was founded by Christian Democrats. This predestines it not only to exhibit its Christian roots, but also to uphold Christian values and Christians, both on the continent and around the world. (Mirosław Piotrowski, PiS/ECR 13.11.2017)

The demand to embed the EU’s future in Christian values and faith implies that the prosperity of the European community, or even its very survival, depends on sustainability or restoration of this normative Christian order (“Civilisations fall when they stop believing in their own values”, Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski, PiS/ECR, 24.11.2015). Religion serves here as an imagined “heartland”, an imagined space of commonalities derived from the better past (see Taggart 2000). However, this past also determines the future. In the model of sovereignist narratives, only a return to such an order would allow the sovereignty and self-determination of the nation states to be restored:

Nations feel that their right to self-determination is slowly being taken away from them. So the European Union is becoming more and more a-European, turning away from its philosophical and religious traditions, from its past. We must make it European again in the proper sense of the word. (Zdzisław Krasnodębski, PiS/ECR, 17.06.2020)

As illustrated above, Christianity not only represents the appropriate vision for the prosperous future of the EU, but it also corresponds with a specific vision of the European integration, based on the sovereignty of the member states. Namely, “the EU can only develop when it is a union of homelands, when it values the richness of their diversity, when it values its own culture and identity”, based on the Christian tradition that inspired the European founding fathers (Elżbieta Kruk, in writing, PiS/ECR, 10.07.2020).

In the analysed narratives, this kind of vision of the EU is juxtaposed with the alternative one, constituting the antagonism not only towards Europe based on Christian tradition, but also to the independence of the nation states. The current European forces and institutions are accused of promoting the policies that endanger the Christian culture, the Christian legacy of the founding fathers and, consequently, the future of the EU. Such policies also pose a threat to the Europeans and to their values and norms. The MEPs refer in this context to multicultural policies (“as the grand project of multiculturalism is implemented, Europeans are expected to disavow themselves, support the decline of European culture, tradition and religion”, Elżbieta Kruk, in writing, PiS/ECR, 10.07.2020), also linked to the policies of migration (“In all this [the way of dealing with the migration crisis] it is not about solidarity, but about imposing multiculturalism on those countries that have previously had the fortune to avoid it”, Marek Jurek, 02.02.2016). The equality polices of the EU, often interpreted as ideological promotion of “gender ideology” and LGBTI, are seen in a similar way, as discriminatory to “traditional families”, who are considered by such policies as “non-European” (Jadwiga Wiśniewska, PiS/ECR, 02.02.2016). Such policies challenge “the model of the traditional family” and “Christian values”, and consequently promote “a new social system where there is no father or mother and education blurs children’s gender identity” (Beata Gosiewska, in writing, PiS/ECR, 10.03.2015). The activities of the European institutions are seen as directed against the will and norms of the European people. This other EU, opposed to the Christian Europe, thus plays the role of the other, placed in opposition to the European people for the traditional values. Religion helps to articulate this vertical othering between the vision of Europe as promoted and articulated by political (also seen as leftist) elites and experiences by “the people”.

In the sovereignist narratives, the desired vision of the EU, based on Christianity, is not only challenged by the elitist visions of Europe or their policies but also by Islam. These narratives make Islam part of the logic of the horizontal othering, thus presenting it as incompatible with the European values and norms, embodied by Christianity. The frequent conflation of Islam with terrorism aims to further magnify its threatening and distinctive “nature”:

But can you really not see that it is the presence of millions of Muslims that has created the subsoil for terrorism in Europe, which is already today, unfortunately, a European phenomenon, and not an exotic one or an imported one? (Marek Jurek, PiS/ECR, 26.01.2016)

Our civilization based on Christian culture is under attack, and it is not being attacked by an abstract force, but by radical Islam. This must be made clear, and not in order to discriminate against anyone. (Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski, PiS/ECR, 24.11.2015)

The deficient reaction of European institutions or elites or acceptance of Islam and migrants (supposedly Muslim believers) in the EU is viewed as proof that the current EU acts against the prosperous – meaning based on Christianity – future of Europe and the nation states. The antagonism created between Christian Europe and Islam not only signifies a difference but also implies hierarchical relations between the superior European Christian culture and the barbaric culture of Islam. Interestingly, in this configuration of meanings, even women’s rights can be used to signify the above-mentioned hierarchy. Along such lines, the Christian values of Europe “do not consent to shameful treatment of girls”, i.e. allow for the marriage of children, a practice taking place among the migrants (implicitly Muslim) in the EU. This problem is overlooked by the EU in the name of the political correctness of, we can assume, the European elites (Jadwiga Wiśniewska PiS/ECR, 03.10.2017). This suggests that this antagonism signifies a difference at more abstract conglomerates i.e. nation state, Christian Europe/civilisation, superior culture, EU of nation states versus ideological, federalist Europe, accepting barbarian cultures.

The analysed sovereignist narratives of EU and EU integration prove that religion primarily functions as an identity marker. It helps to articulate “the European people”. It is also utilised to draw the line of exclusion and identify the others, in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Its primary role is therefore identarian and othering. However, analysis of the construction of “the people” at the EU level shows an additional function of religion. The antagonism between the sovereignty of the nation state and the EU as an illegitimate usurper to power constitutes the central point of the analysed narratives. On the one hand, religion helps to articulate and strengthen this antagonism. On the other hand, however, it helps to build commonality by highlighting the shared religious/cultural identity and indicating a certain vision of European integration. Paradoxically, the Christian tradition and culture allow common ground to be constructed and for the nation state to keep its cultural sovereignty.

Concluding remarks

The sovereignist vision of European integration constitutes the most recent attempt by right-wing movements to construct a cohesive narrative, attractive for their constituencies, on the future of the EU. As we demonstrated, the references to religion (primarily Christianity) serve several functions in the emerging vision focusing on the cultural and identitarian dimensions.

Drawing heavily from nationalism (and nativism), religion is in this vision an identity marker delimiting the we-community. It strengthens and anchors the sovereignty of the nation state in the past – the key actor in the European integration for the sovereignists. Additionally, albeit less significantly, Christianity is a constituting element of the EU identity, especially in the roots and founding ideas of the bloc. This intrinsic Christian nature of the EU also serves as a criterium for inclusion that ultimately allows for the (Christian) nation state to participate in the European project. Christian Europe therefore strengthens and supports nation-states, and Christianity serves as the unifying element. More recently, however, especially in the context of differentiated integration, in some MEPs’ statements the reference to Christianity serves as an argument for further segmentation of the EU’s political system into those obeying conservative values and the others. This would require further analysis, as the empirical material only signals that tendency.

As we demonstrated in our analysis, religious tropes are also a key antagonising element empowering the othering. This is the populist element in sovereignism. The othering, however, is constructed in a dual sense. On the one hand, it constructs the EU’s internal others, placing primarily secular European bureaucrats in this position. On the other hand, it constructs the external Muslim others. This duality, however, results in internal tensions and conflicts within the sovereignist vision – Europe is a Christian bloc, as visible in its positioning in global affairs, and at the same time it is governed by hostile secular anti-Christian elites. Ultimately, for sovereignists religion plays both an integrative function – unifying Christian actors within Christian Europe – as well as a distinctive one – constructing the others and antagonising. As long as that othering was aimed at internal and external Muslims, the internal contradictions were less visible. Sovereignists have recently added secular European bureaucrats to the othering practices. This narrative scheme causes significant internal tensions within the vision. If narratives are to be consistent and coherent stories responsible for providing a compelling vision for citizens, the perspective of religious uses shows the difficulties in navigating these internal contradictions.

The interesting aspect revealed in our analysis also concerns the fact that various others – internal and external – are activated in relation to the national context. For instance, during the migration crisis of 2015/2016 the PiS MEPs focused on Muslim others (in both an external context, as migrants, as well as an internal one, with Muslim EU citizens). In time, migrants were replaced by LGBTQ + and gender issues with a strong axiological othering stressing animosities between conflicting value systems. Recently, in the context of the increasing conflict between the Polish government and the EU’s institutions over the rule of law, the leading othering practice is antagonising the Christian government against the secular, Marxist Brussels elites. This demonstrates, firstly, that the local context is relevant for the articulation of the sovereignist narratives in the supranational arena of the EP. Furthermore, the populist element that requires the other selects those serving in this function in each moment. Secondly, one can see that this nationally bound populism can be an obstacle in building a pan-European narrative since sovereignist movements across the continent may not agree or accept specific others. This concerns specifically the role of gender and LGBTQ + issues, since many European sovereignists are not characterised by extreme conservatism as regard these issues.

Finally, our research focused empirically on Polish MEPs. It seems to be fundamental to further investigate the role of religion in the sovereignist narratives on the EU in a comparative perspective, also covering other national cases. This would further deepen reflection on the role of the cultural dimension of sovereignist narratives on the EU, also opening questions about other systems of meanings that could symbolically “thicken”, and hence strengthen, the overall coherence of such visions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Collection of the empirical material used in the publication was funded by the Priority Research Area Society of the Future under the programme “Excellence Initiative Research University” at the Jagiellonian University. The theoretical framework was developed within the EU3D: EU Differentiation, Dominance and Democracy project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 822419.

Notes on contributors

Magdalena Góra

Magdalena Góra is Associate Professor of political science and European studies at the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University. Her research deals with legitimacy and contestation in the European Union’s external relations, EU actorness in international relations, especially in the EU’s close neighbourhood, and democracy challenges in the EU. She has published numerous journal articles (Cambridge Review of International Relations, East European Politics & Societies, European Security, Religion, State & Society), book chapters and co-edited volumes

Katarzyna Zielińska

Katarzyna Zielińska is Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology of Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her academic interests focus on the intersections of gender, religion and politics in Central and Eastern Europe. She has published numerous articles in Polish and international academic journals (e.g. Culture, Health & Sexuality, East European Politics and Societies, Religion, State & Society), (co)authored three monographs and co-edited several multi-author monographs.

Notes

1 Most of the Polish MEPs contribute to the plenary debates in their native language, but from time to time they also use English.

Appendix. List of Polish MEPs speeches quoted in the article

Table

MEP’s name	Date of debate	Title of debate	EP group	National party	EP term	Gender	Link to speech
Beata Gosiewska	10.03.2015	Progress on equality between women and men in the EU in 2013 (A8-0015/2015 – Marc Tarabella)	ECR	PiS	8	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2015-03-10-INT-2-298-070_PL.html
Beata Gosiewska	11.03.2015	Annual report on human rights and democracy in the world 2013 and the EU policy on the matter	ECR	PiS	8	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2015-03-11-INT-3-700-375_PL.html
Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski	24.11.2015	Prevention of radicalisation and recruitment of European citizens by terrorist organisations	ECR (until April 2018) / NI (from April 2018)	PiS [until January 2017]	8	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2015-11-24-INT-2-660-0000_PL.html
Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski	24.11.2015	Prevention of radicalisation and recruitment of European citizens by terrorist organisations	ECR (until April 2018) / NI (from April 2018)	PiS [until January 2017]	8	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2015-11-24-INT-2-660-0000_PL.html
Robert Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz	25.11.2015	Prevention of radicalisation and recruitment of European citizens by terrorist organisations (A8-0316/2015 – Rachida Dati)	NI (until 19 October 2014) / EFDD (from 20 October 2014)	KNP [until January 2015] / Liberty	8	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2015-11-25-INT-3-466-0968_PL.html
Marek Jurek	21.01.2016	Increased terrorism threat	ECR	Right Wing of the Republic (PR)	8	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2016-01-21-INT-4-014-0000_PL.html
Marek Jurek	02.02.2016	Refugee emergency, external borders control and future of Schengen – Respect for the international principle of non-refoulement – Financing refugee facility for Turkey – Increased racist hatred and violence against refugees and migrants across Europe	ECR	Right Wing of the Republic (PR)	8	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2016-02-02-INT-2-700-0000_PL.html
Jadwiga Wiśniewska	02.02.2016	New Strategy for gender equality and women's rights post-2015 (B8-0148/2016, B8-0150/2016, B8-0163/2016, B8-0164/2016)	ECR	PiS	8	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2016-02-02-INT-2-747-0000_PL.html
Stanisław Żółtek	13.04.2016	Situation in Poland (B8-0461/2016, B8-0463/2016, B8-0464/2016, B8-0465/2016)	NI (until 14 June 2015) / ENF (from 15 June 2015)	KNP	8	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2016-04-13-INT-3-478-0000_PL.html
Jadwiga Wiśniewska	03.10.2017	Ending child marriage	ECR	PiS	8	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2017-10-04-INT-3-385-0000_PL.html
Jadwiga Wiśniewska	14.03.2017	Equality between women and men in the EU in 2014–2015	ECR	PiS	8	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2017-03-14-INT-2-426-0000_PL.html
Mirosław Piotrowski	13.11.2017	The persecution of Christians in the world	ECR	Elected on the PiS list but did not join the party	8	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2017-11-13-INT-1-155-0000_PL.html
Urszula Krupa	15.11.2017	The situation of the rule of law and democracy in Poland	ECR (from 24 June 2016)	Elected on the PiS list but did not join the party	8	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-8-2017-11-15-INT-3-327-0000_PL.html
Joachim Stanisław Brudziński	18.09.2019	Importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe	ECR	PiS	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2019-09-18-INT-3-368-0000_PL.html
Ryszard Antoni Legutko	13.11.2019	30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall	ECR	PiS	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2019-11-13-INT-1-016-0000_EN.html
Beata Kempa	26.11.2019	Public discrimination and hate speech against LGBTI people, inc	ECR	SP	9	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2019-11-26-INT-2-311-0000_PL.html
Patryk Jaki	26.11.2019	Public discrimination and hate speech against LGBTI people, inc	ECR	SP	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2019-11-26-INT-2-331-0000_PL.html
Elżbieta Kruk	12.02.2020	Humanitarian situation of refugees at EU external borders	ECR	PiS	9	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2020-02-12-INT-3-556-0000_PL.html
Zdzisław Krasnodębski	17.06.2020	Conference on the Future of Europe	ECR	PiS	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2020-06-17-INT-1-176-9531_PL.html
Elżbieta Kruk	10.07.2020	Cultural recovery of Europe	ECR	PiS	9	F	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2020-07-10-INT-3-051-0000_PL.html
Joachim Stanisław Brudziński	05.10.2020	Rule of Law conditionality in the framework of the MFF 2021–2027 and Next Generation EU	ECR	PiS	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2020-10-05-INT-1-094-2500_PL.html
Bogdan Rzońca	11.11.2020	Multiannual Financial Framework (including Own Resources), Rule of Law Conditionality Mechanism and the Recovery Fund for Europe	ECR	PiS	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2020-11-11-INT-1-089-0000_PL.html
Joachim Stanisław Brudziński	24.11.2020	Situation of Fundamental Rights in the European Union – Annual Report for the years 2018–2019	ECR	PiS	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2020-11-24-INT-2-069-0000_PL.html
Patryk Jaki	10.03.2021	Declaration of the EU as an LGBTIQ Freedom Zone	ECR	SP	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2021-03-10-INT-3-210-0000_PL.html
Patryk Jaki	19.05.2021	The conflict of interest of the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic	ECR	SP	9	M	https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CRE-9-2021-05-19-INT-3-119-0000_PL.html

Notes: PiS – Law and Justice; SP -United Poland; KNP – Congress of the New Right.