Converging or diverging patterns of Euroscepticism among political parties in Croatia and Serbia

Abstract

This article is a comparative study on the patterns of Euroscepticism encountered among the political parties of Croatia and Serbia. Primary attention is paid to the employment of Euroscepticism from within the halls of power by the ruling parties of Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ and the Serbian Progressive Party/SNS. Secondary attention is paid to the employment of Euroscepticism by smaller parties with a populist and/or a radical right-wing orientation. This article demonstrates that whereas Euroscepticism among Croatia’s political parties appears to be rather multifaceted (with a focus on domestic minority issues, gender-related themes, and economic anxieties), the Euroscepticism of Serbian political parties has become ‘single-issue’ with a major stress on geopolitics. Nevertheless, the governing apparatuses of Croatia and Serbia converge in their adaptive and pragmatic employment of Euroscepticism. This consists of the occasional employment of soft versions of revisionist Euroscepticism in Croatia and a gradualist Euroscepticism, which is contested by the rejectionist voices of the radical right, in Serbia. This phenomenon demarcates the tactical and situationally adaptive adjustments of HDZ and SNS from the more ideological and pervasive dominance of socially conservative agendas among ruling parties of the conservative right in the Visegrad Four states (e.g., FIDESZ and PiS).