Contesting EU Authority in the Name of European Identity: the New Clothes of the Sovereignty Discourse in Central Europe

Journal of European Integration

ISSN: 0703-6337 (Print) 1477-2280 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/geui20

Contesting EU authority in the name of European identity: the new clothes of the sovereignty discourse in Central Europe

Ramona Coman & Cécile Leconte

To cite this article: Ramona Coman & Cécile Leconte (2019) Contesting EU authority in the name of European identity: the new clothes of the sovereignty discourse in Central Europe, Journal of European Integration, 41:7, 855-870, DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2019.1665660 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2019.1665660

Published online: 30 Oct 2019.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=geui20 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 2019, VOL. 41, NO. 7, 855–870 https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2019.1665660

ARTICLE Contesting EU authority in the name of European identity: the new clothes of the sovereignty discourse in Central Europe Ramona Coman a and Cécile Leconteb aCevipol, Institute for European Studies, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium; bPolitical science department, SciencePo Lille, Lille, France

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS In recent years, government officials in Hungary, Poland and Austria Sovereignty; values; rule of have contested the authority of the EU in areas linked to core state law; discursive strategies; powers, such as democracy and the rule of law and migrations. Central Europe; Hungary; Analyzing the discursive strategies displayed by conservative and/ Poland; Austria or right-wing governments in these countries, the article shows how the old conflict line over sovereignty that has traditionally shaped the integration process – supranational vs domestic sovereignty – is being complemented by a new discourse which consists in disparaging EU ‘interference’ in the very name of European values and a common European identity, defined in opposition to multiculturalism and political liberalism. Pioneered by Viktor Orban, this discourse has been circulating among other Central European heads of government and incumbent parties’ officials in the wake of the refugee ‘crisis’, which opened up a discursive opportunity structure for its diffusion.

Introduction Over the course of the EU-integration process, sovereignty has been pooled or delegated from the domestic to the supranational level (Moravcsik 1998). The EU has expanded the scope of its action to a wide range of policies to embrace more and more core areas of national sovereignty, as member states agreed, in particular since the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty, to coordinate their policies in sensitive policy areas such as socio- economic governance, justice and home affairs and defence and security (Puetter 2014). Thus, although the EU has never claimed a sovereign status (Werner and De Wilde 2001, 304), it poses ‘sovereign rights’ exercised collectively by EU institutions, with corresponding limitations on state sovereignty (Petersmann 2003, 155). Despite this gradual process of pooling and delegating sovereignty, the integration process has created a favorable ground for conflicts of sovereignty, as one the one hand it brings together a plurality of sovereignties without an EU sovereign (Hayward 2012) and, on the other, more importantly, because sovereignty involves a ‘speech act’ (Werner and De Wilde 2001;Walker2003), it is a claim to power. Over the last years sovereignty conflicts have acquired new dimensions in the EU

CONTACT Ramona Coman [email protected] Cevipol/Institut d’études européennes, Université libre de Bruxelles, 44 avenue Jeanne CP 124, Brussels 1050, Belgium © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 856 R. COMAN AND C. LECONTE polity: not only do they apply to a wide range of policy areas, but they also erupt concomitantly in different national contexts. This article analyzes two contexts in which claims to sovereignty have been expressed by the executives of Hungary, Poland and Austria: one is related to situations when democracy and the rule of law – common values enshrined in article 2 TUE – have been put under considerable strain in Hungary (2010- . . .) and Poland (2016- . . .) or when their possible violations have elicited concerns at EU level (in Austria in 2000); the other one is related to the criticism that the three governments levelled against EU supranational institutions after the 2015 refugee ‘crisis’1. Analysing the discursive strategies displayed by conservative Hungarian, Polish and Austrian governments during these two controversies, the article shows how the old conflict line over sovereignty that has traditionally shaped the integration process – opposing supranational to domestic sovereignty – is being complemented by a new discourse. The latter consists in contesting EU authority over the rule of law and supranational decision- making on immigration in the very name of European values and European identity (defined in opposition to multiculturalism, pluralism and political liberalism). This contrasts with pre- existing argumentation repertoires, which consisted in claiming the lack of common values and of a European identity in order to question the legitimacy of EU authority and supranational decision-making. Whereas Margaret Thatcher was contesting EU authority over policy areas other than the governance of the internal market with the argument that neither a European demos, nor a European identity ever existed, current Central-European (CE) governments contest EU authority in the name of ‘another Europe’, thereby limiting the ability of critical actors to ‘other’ them as mere Europhobes. Pioneered by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from 2010 on, this type of argumentation repertoire has been emulated, albeit to varying degrees, by the Polish Prime Ministers Beata Szydlo and Mateusz Morawiecki and by the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz2. It is argued that the 2015 refugee ‘crisis’ especially opened up a discursive opportunity structure for Orbán’s discourse, facilitating its transnational circulation. In that respect, whereas a classical comparison allows to highlight similarities and differences between the three countries regarding how the sovereignty debate has evolved across time, it does not capture the phenomenon of cross-fertilization (of argumentation repertoires, of self-presentation techniques) that is at play between the different countries during the period under study3. Certainly, there are significant differences distinguishing the Hungarian and Polish cases from the Austrian one: whereas conservative governments in the two former communist countries have set up, over the last decade, ‘competitive authoritarian regimes’4, the Austrian government coalition that was sworn in 2017 abstained from undermining the rule of law, while Chancellor Kurz himself displayed a principled, although ambiguous, pro-European commitment. However, his government included a party – the Freedom party or FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) – whose democratic credentials are at least disputable (Pelinka 2002). Despite these differences, the discursive strategies articulated by the three governments on issues of sovereignty and EU- integration look increasingly similar, as they portray themselves and what they do as the true expression of common, European values, which they pit against a soulless EU, grounded on elitist principles and mercantilist values. Analysing the discourses of the executives (prime ministers and members of the government) corroborated with party JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 857 statements, the article shows some degree of convergence in the discursive strategies on issues of sovereignty and in the self-presentation techniques of the heads of government involved. The article is organized as follows: we first illustrate how debates over sovereignty in Central Europe evolved since the end of the Cold War (section 1). Then we analyse two contexts in which the three governments have articulated claims to sovereignty in relation to democracy and the rule of law (section 2) and migration (section 3).

The awakening of a ‘sleeping giant’5: the sovereignty debate in Central Europe While in normal times sovereignty is ‘dormant’, being invoked when ‘the ability of states to ensure eﬀective internal rule and freedom from external interference is called into question’ (Werner and De Wilde 2001, 294), historically, debates about sovereignty have been well and alive in Central Europe both before and after WWII. This historical over- view is necessary in order to understand how current claims to non-interference tap into pre-existing, collective perceptions related to self-determination and sovereignty.

Sovereignty in Central Europe until the end of the Cold War The main ideologies of the 20th century defined and redefined the concept of sovereignty in Central Europe, both in political and constitutional terms. They shaped the nature of political regimes when new liberal Constitutions were adopted on the ruins of World War I, stressing their democratic, republican and national character. These liberal values eroded in the 1930s, as fascism and ethnic nationalism gained ground in Austria, Hungary, Poland and other countries of the region (Mazower 1998). After World War II, while Austria partly regained its sovereignty after allied occupation, Poland and Hungary established popular democracies following the socialist constitutional model of the USSR. The constitutions of these two countries accentuated the sovereignty of the working class vis-à-vis the nation and the state. The real sovereign was the Communist Party supported by the Soviet State (Mik 2003, 394). Whilst state sovereignty did not exist in the newly established communist regimes, Austria regained its sovereignty on the condition that it remains a permanently neutral state, which de jure restricted its ability to participate in the early stages of Europeanintegration.This non-membership in the EC had several advantages: it allowed Austria to protect large segments of its economy and to engage in a decade-long process of nation-building6, whose cornerstones where permanent neutrality (allowing the country to present itself as a ‘bridge’ between East and West) and Opfermythos7, a widely shared belief that allowed large segments of Austrian society to fend off international criticism related to the country’sNazi past8. Therefore, while domestic sovereignty was simply non-existent in Hungary and Poland, in Austria political elites did enjoy a certain room of manoeuvre in foreign affairs, while cultivating the idea of a largely constrained sovereignty. Asleep in the decades that followed WWII, claims to sovereignty structured political debates in Central Europe since the 1990s, as they were exacerbated by the accession to the EU. In 1989, in Poland and Hungary, political and constitutional actors embraced ‘the traditional language of sovereignty’ by delineating internal and external sovereignty (Albi 2005). In addition, although being culturally and ethnically homogeneous countries, Poland 858 R. COMAN AND C. LECONTE and Hungary adopted an ethno-cultural understanding of the nation in their post- communist Constitutions, in order to strengthen popular sovereignty (Albi 2005,132), while in Austria, after having experienced a relatively liberal period, the main opposition party, the Freedom Party, went back to its roots under the leadership of Jörg Haider and defended an ethnic definition of the national identity.

The awakening of the sovereignty issue after EU-accession As the end of the Cold War lifted obstacles to EU-membership for post-communist and permanently neutral countries, EU-accession initially enjoyed a high level of support in the three countries, illustrated by the accession referenda held in 1994 and 20049. In Austria, wide approval for EU-accession in the 1994 referendum was secured by avoiding a wide-ranging debate about the costs and gains of accession, as neo- corporatist institutions and consociative practices helped marginalize EU-critical voices among trade-unionists and within the two parties that had hitherto dominated Austrian political life, the conservatives (ÖVP) and the social-democrats (SPÖ). The only party to oppose EU-accession during the referendum, the FPÖ had turned ‘hard Eurosceptic’ (Taggart 1998) in the early 1990s, as it shed its liberal features and opted a more radical, protest-based proﬁle. It was one of the ﬁrst parties to combine a ‘classical’ opposition to the EU based on a center-periphery rhetoric with the defense of a common, Christian European identity, based on ‘Western civilization’. Against the EU, it claimed a recht auf Heimat (a ‘right to one’s homeland’, a notion inspired from the French Nouvelle Droite10), while accusing ‘Brussels’ of trying to impose, on Austrian citizens, a liberal, multicultural society model. Despite this Eurosceptic turn, as EU-accession further eroded the foundations of Austrian consociative democracy, the FPÖ came to be seen as a possible coalition partner for both traditional parties, especially for the conservatives. By the end of the 1990s, support for EU-membership had started to decline sharply in Austria. In Poland and Hungary, in the 1990s, resistances to integration increased after the much awaited ‘return to Europe’. While social democrats and liberals – the Polish Alliance of the Democratic Left, Civic Platform and the Hungarian Alliance of Free Democrats – were to a large extent in favour of European integration (Millard 1999, 195), conservative and far right parties advocated ‘a national path of development’ basedoncultureandnationalidentity while supporting the ideal of European integration (Neumayer 2007, 161). In Hungary, by the late 1990s, the ‘FIDESZ was transformed into a centre-right ‘catch-all’ party, espousing ‘conservative and nationalist values at least as much as liberal ones’ (Alpan 2007, 152). Cultural references and conservative ideas constituted the core of its discourse about Europe. In Poland, without invoking anti-European stances per se, several parties saw European integration as an attempt to strengthen the ‘Europe of nations’ and to ‘re-Christianize Europe’ in the name of the ‘true Christianity’ (Millard 1999, 201). The League of Polish Families, the Polish Peasant Party and the Law and Justice sought to defend the country’s identity and culture, religion, family and national traditions. Over time, their conservative stance and critique of the EU became more popular. Both PiS and the FIDESZ denounced the federalist vision of Europe which is, in their view, threatened national sovereignty. They promoted the idea of an intergovernmental Europe whose aim should be to foster free trade, while keeping national sovereignty intact and maintaining the independence of domestic economies (Neumayer 2007, 172). In Poland, PiS won parliamentary elections in JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 859

2005 (26,99%) and in 2015 (37,58%), while FIDESZ became the main party, re-elected in 2018 for a third term (with 49% of the vote). In the three countries, the right to self-rule became a key aspect of debates on the EU after accession. Pre-existing perceptions of a previously non-existing or largely constrained sovereignty were again activated, as an increasingly value-laden EU tried to interfere in domestic aﬀairs, amidst concerns over the preservation of the rule of law.

From the claim of the right to self-rule to the promotion of an ‘alternative’ understanding of democracy In the 1990s, the collapse of communism, successive enlargement waves and uncer- tainty about the robustness of democratic transitions in post-communist countries opened up a window of opportunity to deﬁne the EU’s raison d’être and its foundations as a community of values. The Maastricht Treaty sough to strengthen the bonds between the peoples of Europe by enshrining in Article 2 TUE a set of principles such as the ‘respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality’ and ‘respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities’ as common values of the member states in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail’. To safeguard these values, the Amsterdam Treaty introduced the Article 7 which provides the possibility to sanction a member state that fails to respect the values enshrined in Article 2. This section shows that, while the politically misguided sanctions against an Austrian government coalition in 2000 were a milestone in the emergence of a discourse centred on states’ rights, the increasing role of the Commission in safeguarding the common values in general and the rule of law in particular came under increasing criticism from the Hungarian and Polish governments from 2010 on. The comparison between the two situations also highlights diﬀerences: whereas in both cases EU interference was criticized in the very name of democracy, in Austria critics of EU-level sanctions simply referred to the right of Austrians to self-rule, whereas in Hungary and Poland governments rebuked EU-level concerns by pretending to be standing for an ‘alternative’, non-liberal understanding of democracy11.

The 2000 sanctions against the Austrian government and the rise of ‘value-based Euroscepticism’ In 2000, the possibility of triggering Article 7 against Austria was seriously considered for the ﬁrst time, following the building of a coalition government including the conservatives of the ÖVP and the far-right FPÖ. However, as there was no suﬃcient legal ground to trigger Article 7, the other fourteen EU governments adopted bilateral diplomatic sanctions against Austria, in order to symbolically state their disapproval of a party known for its ambivalence towards Nazism. Politically misguided, these sanctions actually gave a wide echo to the FPÖ’s anti-EU discourse, as even opponents of the ruling coalition condemned what they saw as a violation of Austrians’ sovereign right to self-rule. However, the consequences of this diplomatic crisis within the EU did not end there: in a context where crucial legal texts, such as the EU Charter for fundamental rights, were being negotiated, the idea that the EU was trying to impose, on Austria, a pluralistic and multicultural type of society was voiced by conservatives and right-wingers alike all over the 860 R. COMAN AND C. LECONTE

EU, from Bavaria to Demark, from Hungary to Finland. More decisively even, criticism against the other fourteen EU governments turned against the EU itself, as conservative and right- wing politicians, notably in Italy, Germany and Central and Eastern Europe (especially Hungarian Premier Viktor Orbán), harshly criticized the sanctions as an illegitimate interference in domestic aﬀairs. The right to self-rule, they argued, should apply most crucially to all those policy choices related to issues of collective identity (‘Who belongs to the nation?’) and ‘ways of life’ (Leconte 2005). In that respect, the diplomatic crisis involving the 2000 Austrian government coalition was crucial in the development of ‘value-based Euroscepticism’, an attitude which consists in the perception that EU institutions unduly interfere in matters where value systems and deeply divisive normative choices are at stake (Madeley and Sitter 2003).

Contesting EU authority in the name of ‘illiberal democracy’ in Hungary and Poland Since the beginning of the Eastern enlargement in the 1990s, de iure and de facto, the European Commission has progressively gained new powers on issues related to the implementation of the Copenhagen political criteria, in particular the establishment by the candidate countries of functioning democratic institutions and independent judici- aries (Kelemen 2012; Magen 2016; Coman 2015). The independence of the judiciary became a sine qua non condition for accession. After the 2004 enlargement, the FIDESZ and the Law and Justice Party came to power with a discourse pointing out the need for change at the domestic level and the idea of a ‘renewal’ of the political regimes established after 1989. The two parties portray the years following the collapse of communism as a failure and put forward a discourse emphasizing the ‘unjust consequences of the transformation of 1989ʹ (Spiegel Online, 20/ 02/2018). Soon after their accession to power, the governments led by the Fidesz and PiS decided to replace a considerable number of judges before the termination of their mandate, in order to increase political control over the nomination of judges and to limit the independence of the judiciary. In Hungary in 2010, the new Fundamental Law constitutionalized a ‘hybrid’ political regime which weakens checks and balances and the role of the Constitutional Court to strengthen the role of the main party (Halmai 2018, 97). Moreover, it constitutionalised the values at the core of FIDESZ’s ideology, that is ‘the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood’ as well as the religious traditions of the country, as mentioned in the preamble. Critics saw the limits on the judicial institutions as a ‘broader assault on the “liberal consensus” achieved among the new Member States in the 1990s’ (Krastev 2007). These measures have given rise to heightened tensions between EU’s supranational institutions such as the Commission and the Court of Justice of the EU and the concerned governments. After accession, the power of the European Commission to deal with in matters related to the organisation and the independence of the judiciary has been contested tacitly or openly by the Hungarian and the Polish executives. Not only the Commission but also the European Parliament have been depicted in dark colours by the former Polish Prime Minister Szydlo and Viktor Orbán. Drawing on a state-centred approach to sovereignty, they reject any recommendation coming from the EU or any other supranational/international actor. In 2012 Viktor Orbán stated that ‘Hungary will JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 861 not be a colony and that the Union will not tell Hungarians how to conduct their domestic aﬀairs’ (Politico, 27/3/2012). In the same way, in 2016, Beata Szydło, declared in from of the EP that ‘the dispute over a Constitutional Court in Poland is a political, not a legal one’,itis‘an internal Polish matter’ (EP, 19/01/2016).

‘Currently, Poland does not deserve to be assessed by the European Commission, as neither human rights nor the principle of a democratic state in which the rule of law applies are violated in Poland (. . .) We are a sovereign state and a free nation (. . .)’. She added that ‘freedom, equality, justice and sovereignty are inalienable values to Polish citizens’ (EP, 19/01/2016).

The former Prime Minister Szydlo repeatedly rejected any ‘ultimatum’ from the Commission (The New York Times, 1/06/2016), claiming in her speech in front of the Polish Parliament ‘The right to self-determination, the belief that power can only come from the democratic will of the people, these are principles for which Poles gave their lives for’ (Polish government, 25/05/2016). Declarations of this type are countless, going from contesting the authority of the Commission to denouncing Commission’s evaluations under the rule of law framework in the case of Poland as ‘a personal crusade by Timmermans’, as the Polish Foreign Minister declared (Politico, 2/6/2017). In December 2017 the Commission triggered article 7 against Poland and in September 2018 the EP voted to trigger article 7 against Hungary. Contesting the authority of the EU on issues related to the organization and the independence of the judiciary, the Hungarian and Polish governments do not only embrace classical sovereigntist arguments. They also pretend to be acting in the name of a different understanding of democracy, which they depict as a possible model for other EU countries. For instance, commenting on the adoption of a non-liberal Constitution in Hungary in 2010, Prime Minister Orbán proudly declared that his government sought to build ‘an illiberal democracy in the heart of Europe’ (Interview with PM Viktor Orbán, Kossuth Rádió, 5 July 2013). The Hungarian and Polish governments indeed claim that there are different models of democracy and different ways to organize the functioning of the judiciary. While reducing the power of judges, the Hungarian government has issued a considerable number of declarations to ‘reinforce its commitment to be a state under the rule of law’ (Hungarian Government, 20/04/ 2011). It contends that ‘there is no such a thing as uniform democracy’ (Tibor Navracsic, 6 November 2011). Similarly, the Polish authorities insist on the diversity of models in Europe to claim that ‘Poland is as devoted to the rule of law as the rest of the EU’ (Radio Poland, 20/12/ 2017). However, many have argued that these comparisons are ‘misleading’,as‘no European democracy would let the government sack andreplacetheentiresupremecourt,andthe powers PiS proposes for the justice ministry are far greater than in other countries’ (The Economist, 29 July 2017). While, domestically, the executives of Poland and Hungary intend to irreversibly change the features of their political regimes by restricting the principles of separation of power, rejecting pluralism and imposing limitations on rights and freedoms, they are reclaiming the idea of ‘Europe’ as a community of values in order to legitimize what is, in fact, a systematic dismantling of the rule of law, as well as a reactionary social and cultural revolution. Although the Austrian government coalition that was sworn in in December 2017 did not attempt to undermine the rule of law, it did share with its Polish and Hungarian counterparts a common narrative, questioning the authority of the EU over migration in the name of ‘another’ Europe. 862 R. COMAN AND C. LECONTE

The refugee ‘crisis’ as a discursive opportunity structure for the ‘two Europes’ narrative Claims to sovereignty were, from early on, rooted in the rejection of EU’s interference in issues relating to the definition of the nation and to the type of society people want to live in. The novelty, we argue, lies in the fact that this type of contestation against EU’s (actual or potential) authority is now articulated in the very name of a European identity – only, a different, non-liberal identity. This discursive strategy is similar to the one developed by the French Nouvelle Droite in the 1970s. In his study of the Nouvelle Droite12,Taguieff (1984) showed how ‘neo-rightists’ reclaimed notions or references associated with ‘the Left’, in order to revamp the discursive software of the far-right and make it appear more palatable – a discursive strategy that he described as ‘the retaliation argument’.The‘retaliation argument’ consists in reclaiming the ideological references of your political adversary, while spinning them around so that they eventually convey a message that is the opposite of their original meaning13. This is what Orbán’s is doing, by creating two ‘Europes’: a civilizational, Christian Europe rooted in history and a mercantile, technocratic and elitist EU that does not speak to average Europeans’ hearts and souls. By doing this, Orbán and those who emulate his discourse do not only pit domestic sovereignty against supranational sovereignty; they also pit the sovereignty of the people (as represented, in their views, solely in parliamentary majorities) against unelected bodies, be they the Commission, the central banks or, most importantly, the judges. As is argued below, the 2015 refugee ‘crisis’ created an unexpected discursive opportunity structure for this discourse on the ‘two Europes’, facilitating its circulation beyond Hungarian borders.

Orbán’s self-portraying as gatekeeper of a European society model The discourse on the ‘two Europes’ is very present in Orbán’s statements, as he contrasts, on the one hand, those ‘authentic’, grounded values that he attributes to European ‘average’ citizens (security, family life, national pride, etc.) and that he himself claims to embody and, on the other hand, the ‘elitist’ values, devoid of social depth, that he attributes to ‘Brussels’. He declares for instance:

‘European values are often mentioned in Europe, but frequently as if they were kept in a safe somewhere in Brussels, with only a few privileged having access to the key. The truth is that these values are in the hearts of European citizens’14.

Portraying EU-Europe as a merely materialist enterprise which has lost, together with any spiritual content, any relation to values as such, he echoes an old topos, that of the ‘Europe of the merchants’, once articulated by high-profile leaders as different as Charles de Gaulle and Vaclav Havel. The core of Orbán’s discursive strategy, thus, lies in the ‘othering’ of liberal, Western Europe (Bridge 2017) – a Europe that betrayed its original, concrete Christian values such as ‘courage, honesty, loyalty and mercy’ (Bridge 2017, 39). In his view, the ‘other Europe’ is the Europe of the ‘homo brusselicus’, the individuals ‘wrenched out of cultural, national, religious and gender identities, and reduced to the aggregation of their instincts’ (Hungarian Government, 13/11/2016). Beyond Christianity (which is for him, rather than a religion, a culture), Orbán even portrays himself as the true heir to Europe’sEnlightenment JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 863 heritage. Indeed, like most Western radical-right parties in the post-9/11 context, he articulates an ‘identity liberalism’ (Akkerman 2015)15 based on a dramatized and alleged opposition between values portrayed as typically European (freedom of speech, gender equality) and Islam. As he was participating, together with 40 other heads of state and governments, in the Paris march organized after the terror attack perpetrated against the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, he declared indeed that ‘Europe’ is ‘a way of life that incorporates the freedom of opinion and religion, equal rights, the equality of men and women – these are cultural values that need to be protected’ (Bridge 2016, 39). Orban’s discourse is echoing another topos widely circulating among radical and conservative segments of the right in today’s Europe: that of a ‘Europe’ victim of ‘reverse colonization’, of an alleged ‘replacement’ (of ‘natives’ by non-Christian fellow citizens and refugees). In his fight against this alleged ‘replacement’ and in his attempt to stop migrants from entering Hungary, Orbán ironically presents himself as a freedom fighter, a gatekeeper fighting for the survival of European values:

‘What is at stake today is whether Europe, the way of life of European citizens, European values and European nations will remain or disappear, or whether they will change beyond recognition’ (Bridge 2016, 39).

‘EU-Europe’ is an open society whose evolution the Hungarian government seeks to stop. Viktor Orbán claims to protect Hungarian citizens against a ‘horror scenario’ where ‘migrants who arrive in Hungary will be aﬀorded everything that taxpayers who have been working here for decades are eligible to receive’ (Hungarian Government, 9/04/ 2018). In the view of the Hungarian authorities, migration is not a fundamental right as, according to the Minister of Foreign Aﬀairs and Trade Szijjártó,

‘nobody has the right to get up in the morning, point to somewhere on the map and decide to move there, and then set out and go there over hedge and ditch. This is at odds with all kinds of international regulations and is not a fundamental right.’ (Hungarian Government, 21/03/2018).

In this narrative, the Western experiences of welcoming refugees and migrants are depicted as ‘mistakes’ and ‘lessons to be learned’,as‘the mixing of certain cultures will not lead to a higher order of life but will instead lead towards a society of a much worse quality’ (Hungarian Government, 8/12/2017). FIDESZ leaders have often lamented that ‘most of the countries in Western Europe give up their traditions of two thousand years, Christianity, and increasingly open the way for Islam’ (Hungarian Government, 1/03/2018). Viktor Orbán portrays himself as ‘pro-European’, opposed to the United States of Europe but in favour of a ‘free alliance of European nations’ (Hungarian Government, 13/ 11/2016). In the ‘other Europe’ for which they are ﬁghting, Hungarians have to be proud of their ‘motherland’. He defends a ‘Europe of nations’ against the EU where CE citizens allegedly feel as ‘second order European citizens’. He pretends to be putting forward ‘new ideas for Europe’ (Spiegel Online, 20/02/2018) to defend ‘Europe and Western culture’ (Hungarian Government, 9/11/2017). 864 R. COMAN AND C. LECONTE

Orbán, Morawiecki and Kurz as gatekeepers of EU borders and popular sovereignty The 2015 refugee ‘crisis’ opened up a discursive opportunity structure for Orbán’s discourse on the ‘two Europe’, facilitating its circulation among other Central European government actors. The notion of discursive opportunity structure refers to the potential of specific claims or framings to resonate within pre-existing ideological and cultural repertoires, thereby gaining visibility in the public sphere16. In this respect, the framing consisting in presenting the unusually high numbers of migrants trying to get into the EU in the summer of 2015 as a threat to Europe’s identity could not but resonate in a wider European context where immigration has been increasingly politi- cized and framed as a cultural threat to host societies (Van der Burg et al 2015). We illustrate this by analyzing how, in the wake of the crisis, the Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki and the the Austrian conservative party leader (later to become Chancelor) Sebastian Kurz modelled their discursive strategies on Orbán’s. Certainly, the three countries initially displayed very different reactions to the so- called migration crisis, even though, since the building of the Austrian government coalition including the far-right Freedom party in 2017, they all converged towards a fierce opposition to any Commission’s attempts at solving the crisis in a supranational way17. Both the Hungarian and the Polish Prime Ministers contended that the EU’s migrant quota system was an assault on national sovereignty (DW, 03/ 01,2018): ‘In terms of migration and quotas that were to be imposed on (EU) member countries we strongly reject such an approach as it infringes on sovereign decisions of member states’, Morawiecki said (DW, 03/01,2018). Compulsory immigration quotas, they argued, undermined ‘the very foundations of national sovereignty’ (15 May 2018). Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reminded the right of Poland ‘to decide who will come to Poland and who will not’, claiming the state’s ultimate authority in dealing with this issue (Politico, 2 June 2017), while Viktor Orbán claimed the right of Hungary to oppose to its transformation into an immigration country. Unlike Hungary and Poland, Austria welcomed a high number of immigrants in 2015–2016. However, while Austrian government officials initially celebrated the Austrian Willkommenskultur18, the tone of public debate quickly changed. Whereas the Hungarian government’s refusal to welcome refugees was initially disparaged as a counter-model, alien to Austrian and European values, the building of the Hungarian border fence in June 2015 was progressively presented by the Conservatives (and by segments of the social- democratic party) as a model, as ÖVP politicians started to ponder on the necessity to build a ‘fortress Europe’. Securing a tight border in order to ‘protect’ Austria from the migration flow was progressively framed as a question of moral responsibility, of courage and ‘honesty’ (Rheindorf and Wodak 2018). In this context, the then Conservative party leader and Foreign Minister Christian Kurz emulated the self-presentation technique19 displayed by the Hungarian Prime Minister, moulding his leadership strategy in the steps of Orbán. In view of the incoming parliamentary elections in Fall 2016, Kurz started to present himself as a ‘freedom fighter’ protecting Europe from foreign ‘invasion’ (The Guardian, 13/09/2015) and accu- mulated political capital by self-stylizing himself as ‘the man who sealed off the Balkan route’ in March 2016. Disparaging the EU, unable to find a common solution to tackle JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 865 the migration flux, as a ‘human trafficker’, Kurz declared that there was ‘no higher value case’ than securing Austrian borders. He managed to present himself, domestically, as ‘Mr Balkanroute’ (Der Standard, 16/08/17), as ‘the spearhead of European borders’ gatekeepers’,as‘the savior of Europe’20 – and as the opposite (like Orbán) of a “careless”, “irresponsible” German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Following the closure of the Balkan route, Kurz was celebrated, for instance, in German neo-conservative media as a “wonder-diplomat” (Cicero, 11/07/17). As “a late child of the Austro-Hungarian empire”, he was portrayed by the conservative magazine Cicero as someone who, “unlike Merkel” and German liberal elites, has learnt something from European history’ and knows that “multiculturalism and liberalism would undermine European societies”. Similarly to Orbán, Kurz portrayed his “gate-keeping” action as a way to protect European values – for instance when he stated that, in view of incoming migration, “it is time to defend firmly our Europe shaped by Judeo-Christianity and Enlightenment” (Die Presse, 17/02/ 18). Kurz, like Orbán, presented himself as the true advocate of European, popular sovereignty, restoring states’ ability to reaffirm their borders. Moreover, as the following subsection illustrates, Kurz did not only emulate Orbán’s discourse; his 2018 presidency of the EU, while strategically used to highlight the ‘Europeanness’ of his own coalition government, also legitimized the discourse of the Visegrád countries and their refusal to tackle the migration issue with supranational solutions.

Reconciling the two ‘Europes’ and giving up supranational solutions: the storytelling of the 2018 Austrian EU presidency Kurz’ government coalition with the FPÖ was sworn in on 18 December 2017. Despite including a far-right party with dubious democratic credentials, the new Austrian government coalition was unambiguously hailed as totally ‘EU-compatible’ by domestic and European leaders, from French president Emmanuel Macron (Le Monde, 23/01/18) to Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker21 and European Council president Donald Tusk22. Although the FPÖ now enjoyed a much more senior position in the Kurz government than was the case in 2000, with the Vice-Chancellorship, five ministries including key ones (such as Interior and Defence) and two key portfolios (Foreign Affairs, Constitutional Reforms and Justice)23, its participation in government barely met with criticism at EU-level, which stood in striking contrast with the strong reactions that had followed the building of the previous ÖVP/FPÖ coalition in 2000. Starting on 1 July 2018, the Austrian presidency of the rotating Council of the European Union raised little to no concern among other member states’ governments and EU institutions. Besides, it contributed, to a certain extent, to a subjectively per- ceived ‘normalization’ of the Hungarian and Polish governments. Indeed, what Kurz announced as the cornerstone of the presidency – namely, the ‘refocus’ of the EU from the supranational refugees’ reallocation scheme to the hardening of the EU’s external borders – was an objective that clearly addressed one the Visegrád countries’ main concerns, while certainly not displeasing other Member States’ governments24. One week after his coalition was sworn in, Kurz had already announced that dropping the discussion about the supranational reallocation scheme for migrants from the EU agenda would be a key step in what he called the ‘reconciliation process’ between 866 R. COMAN AND C. LECONTE the ‘two Europes’ (Der Spiegel, 24/12/17). By doing so, the Austrian presidency actually ‘proved’ the relevance of its own storytelling, which aimed at stressing the ‘Europeanness’ of the ÖVP/FPÖ governing coalition. Indeed, the core idea underlying the 2018 Austrian presidency’sstorytellingwasthatof acountry– and a government – that, being located at the heart of Europe, had a special mission – namely, to ‘reconcile’ Central and Western Europe. In that respect, Chancellor Kurz, thereby reactivating a collective self-understanding dating back to the Cold war, had been insisting, since the beginning of the year 2018, on Austria’s ‘bridging’,even‘reconciling’ function between two ‘Europes’,thatoftheVisegrádcountriesandtherestoftheEU.Such a narrative was echoed by Viktor Orbán himself, during a state visit to Vienna, as he stated that Austria, ‘due to its history’, ‘is in a position to understand both parties’ (Oberösterreichische Nachricten, 30/01/18). As a matter of fact, thecoremottoofthepresidency–‘aEuropethat protects’–referring to the idea of enhanced control at the EU’s external borders, appeared to find support among governments as different as the French and Hungarian ones. During the Austrian Chancellor’s state visit to France in January 2018, President Macron underlined the ‘common ground’ between his and Kurz’s agendas for Europe, especially with regard to the motto ‘aEuropethatprotects’ (Le Monde, 23/01/18). Moreover, the hardening of the EU’s external borders (and the concomitant giving up of the supranational solution) was justified by Kurz in the name of shared EU values: according to him, the freedom of the circulation of persons within the Schengen area was only possible if the tightness of the EU’s external borders was secured (Die Presse, 17/02/18) – an argument that was strikingly similar to that of Orbán when he declared, during a state visit to Vienna: ‘Without the strengthening of the EU’s external borders, the freedoms of circulation within the EU are threatened. This is precisely the contrary of what we understand as Schengen’ (Die Zeit, 30/01/18). In terms of debates about sovereignty, this last section shows that the refugee crisis opened up a key discursive opportunity structure for conservative leaders like Orbán and Kurz, allowing them to portray themselves as those who restore European, popular sovereignty; by securing the sealing off of domestic (and thus European, external) borders, they pretended to symbolically reaffirm European citizens’ right to self-rule. In this storytelling, it is not only the Commission’s supranational relocation scheme which was accused of violating European citizens’ right to self-rule (the vertical dimension of sovereignty conflicts); it was also Chancellor Merkel’s initial decision to welcome refugees to Germany that was framed as an abdication of popular sovereignty in the name of liberal, elitist values (the horizontal dimension of sovereignty conflicts).

Conclusion Since the creation of the European Communities, scholars have sought to understand why states have transferred sovereignty to supranational institutions and how this transfer led to the transformation of sovereignty in Europe. While in the past, member states agreed to pool and delegate their sovereignty to supranational institutions (Moravcsik 1998), in the post-Maastricht era and more acutely since 2010 onwards, new conflicts erupted between domestic and supranational institutions. What these conflicts have in common is the struggle for ultimate authority. Central Europe is JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 867 a case in point, as over the last ten years claims to sovereignty have been constantly invoked there, at least by the Visegrád countries. The editors of this issue have argued that ‘beyond the traditional contentious (re)distribu- tion of competences between nation-states (national sovereignty) and the EU (and its embryonic forms of supranational sovereignty), new conflicts of sovereignty involve two other key types of sovereignty belonging to the democratic tradition, namely parliamentary sovereignty and popular sovereignty’. Analyzing discourses on sovereignty in two specific contexts – one related to the respect of the common values enshrined in Article 2 TUE, the other referring to the collective management of migration since 2015 – the article shows that the old conflict between state and supranational sovereignty is not replaced by a new one, although parliamentary and popular sovereignty were mentioned during these controversies. What is new is the discourse with which the governments of these member states questioned the authority of the EU and the legitimacy of supranational decision-making in issues related to the rule of law and migration. They did not do it, as Margaret Thatcher used to do, by claiming that there is no European entity in the name of which sovereignty can be pooled; they did it in the very name of European identity and values. That these values clearly depart from a pluralistic, liberal, secular understanding of European identity and therefore strongly differ from the ones enshrined in the Treaty on European Union is clear. However, as the unfolding of the 2018 Austrian EU presidency also made clear, opposition to a multicultural and strongly supranational EU is by no means limited to the governments under study. Especially interesting in that respect are discursive strategies allowing these actors to ‘export’ and ‘normalize’ their discourse. Key in that respect is the narrative about the ‘two Europes’, pioneered from 2010 on by Viktor Orbán and later emulated, to varying degrees, by his Polish and Austrian counterparts. Understanding these legimization strategies is all the more important since actors like Orbán (and, to a lesser extent, his Polish counterpart) aim at changing the liberal foundations of the EU. Similarly to parties of the populist radical right, these governments do not want to leave the EU; they aim at using existing EU institutions in order to implement their own understanding of European values (a ‘Europe that protects’,a‘fortress Europe’), while promoting an authoritarian form of government (in the Polish and Hungarian cases), where political pluralism is limited. While stagging an opposition between domestic and supranational sovereignty is nothing new, what is new here is to claim sovereignty in the name of a common identity, in order to alter the liberal foundations of the EU – an agenda which might represent a more serious challenge for the EU than Brexit itself.

Notes

1. By ‘crisis’, we refer here to the inability of the EU to come up with a common response in the face of a surge in incoming migration ﬂows that peaked in the summer of 2015. 2. The article examines discourses pronounced by the Prime Minister of Hungary during the Orbán’s governments (29/05/2010-6/06/2014; 06/06/14 – 11/12/17; 18/05/18 – . . .); the Prime Ministers of Poland during the Polish Szydlo’s government (16/11/15 – 11/12/17) and Morawiecki’ government (11/12/17- . . .), as well as those of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz during his coalition government (18/12/17-28/05/2019). It includes also discourses of other members of these governments and governing parties’ statements. 3. Although further research would be required to actually substantiate more systematically this cross-contamination. 868 R. COMAN AND C. LECONTE

4. These regimes combine formally democratic rules such as free elections with authoritarian forms of governance (such as measures aimed at limiting media pluralism) (Levitsky and Way 2002). 5. We refer here to an article by Franklin and Van der Eijk (2007), who compare the electoral potential of dissatisfaction with European integration among European electorates to a ‘sleeping giant’. 6. The fact that the Freedom party, an heir to the all-German movement, was at the time the strongest advocate of Austria’s full EC-membership and of a federal Europe, illustrates that non-participation in the EC was central in the Austrian nation-building process. 7. The Opfermythos or ‘myth of the victim’ refers to the idea that Austria was the first victim of Nazi Germany as a result of the Anschluss in 1938. 8. As in the Waldheim affair in 1986, during which the main presidential candidate and former SG of the United Nations Kurt Waldheim’s war activities were uncovered. 9. It was supported by 82% of those who voted in Austria (with a turnout of 66%), 58% in Poland (with a 77% turnout) and 83% in Hungary (with a 45% turnout). 10. The Nouvelle Droite developed in the early 1970s as a loose galaxy of intellectuals who wanted to revamp the fascist, extreme-right, in order to make it more palatable. 11. Keeping in mind that a non-liberal understanding of democracy is actually a contradiction per se. 12. See footnote 7 on the Nouvelle Droite. 13. A good illustration of that is the ‘right to difference’: initially articulated by left-wing actors in order to defend minorities’ rights, it was later reclaimed by the extreme right in order to advocate for a nativist and anti-pluralistic agenda. 14. Orbán on 20 May 2017 quoted on www.miniszterelnok.hu/660=2/. 15. That this ‘identity liberalism’ only serves the anti-Islam discourse is quite obvious, as Orbán keeps equating liberalism with individualism, i.e. something that eventually undermines the nation. 16. Koopmans and Olzak (2004)define discursive opportunity structures as ‘the potential of issues to resonate within existing cultural repertoires’. 17. In 2015, EU states voted through a legally-binding relocation scheme to relocate asylum seekers from the major entry ‘hotspots’ of Italy and Greece to other member states. The system, proposed by the Commission, was launched following a majority vote among member states, overruling dissenting capitals like Budapest. 18. The ‘culture of hospitality’, refers to the welcoming, by Austria, of refugees from communist countries during the cold war and from the former Yugoslavia from 1991 on. 19. We use this term with the meaning given to it by the US sociologist Goffman (1956). 20. ‘ Sebastian Kurz, der Flüchtlingskrise-Supermanager’, Die Zeit, 14/06/17. 21. Receiving Kurz in Brussels, Juncker declared that his government program ‘suits us almost 100%’ Die Presse, 19/12/17. 22. Tusk declared that he saw the new Austrian government coalition as a reliable partner, ‘without any hesitation’. https://www.rtbf.be/info/monde/detail_le-chancelier-autrichien- recoit-la-confiance-des-dirigeants-europeens? 19/12/17. 23. They were entrusted with individuals who had very close ties to the party, namely Foreign minister Karin Kneissl and Justice minister Josef Moser. 24. At least those, like the French one, that had welcomed much fewer refugees than what the Commission’s relocation scheme implied.

Disclosure statement

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors. JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 869

ORCID

Ramona Coman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0735-2071

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