A POPULIST MOMENTUM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?
A POPULIST MOMENTUM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?

Summary/Abstract: Populism is one of the most used terms in political discourse, most often with a pejorative connotation, but the meaning of the term is ambiguous. The European public opinion thinks populism is on the rise in the EU. Can we therefore speak of a populist momentum in Europe? In order to answer this question, we need to clarify a few preliminary aspects: what is populism? Is there a conceptual framework of populism? What parties can be labelled populist and on what grounds? Is an anti-EU or anti-immigration stance enough to label a party populist? Inside the EU, is Western populism similar to its Eastern variety? Which would be the accurate threshold to ascertain that populism is more successful now than 5 or 20 years ago at the EU scale?

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