This paper investigates how a historically sedimented moral grammar becomes a portable legitimising language inside EU institutions by analysing European Parliament (EP) deployments of “Christian Europe” within the Patriots-for-Europe milieu (2024–2025). The puzzle is not whether civilisational rhetoric exists, but how it is operationalised as a purposive strategy of legitimation: how common identity is constructed to stabilise coalition coherence, de-legitimate liberal-democratic opponents, and maintain political authority while acting within the Union’s parliamentary arena.

Research question: How does the “Christian Europe” frame function as an identity-based legitimation strategy in Patriots-for-Europe EP performances that contest the normative foundations of the European project from within? I argue that the frame operates as a compact justificatory grammar that divides a civilisational “we” from a liberal-democratic “they,” enabling three linked effects: (1) coalition bonding by supplying shared nominations of “Europe” as inherited Christian civilisation; (2) de-legitimation of opponents via predications of decadence, relativism, and anti-tradition; and (3) authorisation of resistance – including sovereigntist and obstructionist claims – through recurring argumentation topoi (threat, responsibility, history).

Methodologically, the study applies the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to reconstruct strategic meaning-making across actors and genres. Empirically, it builds a bounded, transparently sampled corpus with the EP as the primary site: (a) plenary interventions by multiple Patriots-for-Europe–affiliated MEPs in 2024–2025 that invoke “Christian Europe” and close equivalents (“Christian civilisation/culture,” “Christian roots,” “Christian West,” and national-language variants), and (b) Patriots identity communications (official statements and core messaging) to capture routinised coalition narratives. “Coalition coherence” is treated as an empirical outcome and demonstrated through cross-actor repetition of a shared strategy bundle – convergent nomination/predication patterns and topoi – across speakers from different national delegations and across parliamentary and organisational texts. A concise reference-repertoire module draws on pre-2024 Hungarian programmatic discourse (including Orbán) solely to specify motifs later recontextualised in EP performance, without expanding the paper into full intellectual history.

The contribution is a mechanism-focused account of legitimation by common identity: DHA specifies how civilisational framing becomes actionable in an EU-institutional setting by producing coalition coherence and authorising contestation over EU authority and democratic norms.

Brexit was an epochal moment of political and cultural change for the UK and its four constituent nations. While extensive scholarship has examined the causes of Brexit and its political and economic ramifications, comparatively little attention has been paid to how the referendum and subsequent withdrawal from the European Union (EU) have impacted conceptualisations of English identity and its relationships to British and European identities, especially amongst young (18-30) English people. This paper utilises Q Methodology (QM), a mixed-methods research design, to uncover and analyse the prevailing conceptions of English identity that exist among 65 young (18-30) English people five years after the UK formally left the EU. Ten case studies representing the nine former EU Parliamentary Constituencies in England were included. The findings of this research produced three English identity archetypes: The Cosmopolitan Idealists, The Pragmatic Britons, and The Cautious Anglo-British Sovereigntists. These identity archetypes reflect some of the possible identity combinations of English, British, and European identities that exist amongst young (18-30) English people. The implications of these findings are significant for debates on European integration, British unionism, post-Brexit UK–EU relations, and the future political orientations of younger generations in England. This paper also demonstrates the utility of employing QM in studies of national identity.

The Euro currency, as the most tangible pillar of European economic integration, can serve as a glue cementing European societies. However, a quarter of a century after the creation of the Euro, several EU countries have still not adopted it, suppressing the everyday experience of the Euro for millions of Europeans. Meanwhile, public debate on the Euro attitudes focuses on institutional and economic considerations, with less attention being paid to the social factors, such as collective identities. While previous studies suggested the positive role of people’s European identity in forming favorable attitudes towards the Euro, the behavioral mechanisms standing behind this effect remain understudied, which limits our understanding of the determinants of Euro attitudes and our capacity to enhance them. Therefore, our research investigates the effects of European identity, along with global and national identities, on Euro attitudes. We involved an identity-related mediator - self-congruence with everyday Euro users - and two additional mediators: economic beliefs regarding the Euro, and trust in EU institutions. Survey data from online-representative samples in two differently developed countries that have not yet adopted the Euro - Poland and Sweden - were analyzed with Structural Equation Modelling following our preregistered hypotheses. In line with them, European identity was found in both countries to be positively related to all three mediators, which were, in turn, positively related to Euro attitudes. The effects of global identity on the mediators were also positive, albeit less pronounced. Moreover, the negative effects of national identity on all three mediators were visible in the Polish sample. Additionally, we will present an ongoing experimental study, in which we attempt to activate the European identity of study participants using multiple techniques, including visual cues and self-reflection, and check its effect on Euro attitudes and the above mediators. We will discuss theoretical and practical implications, focusing on possible approaches to promote and enact European integration in countries that have not yet adopted the Euro, building on European identity and self-congruence with everyday Euro users.

This paper is about contested process of freedom of expression and how Muslim identities are made, narrated and resisted in public discourse in Central Europe, particularly in Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. In recent years, nationalist politics and strong cultural narratives in these countries have put Muslim communities in uncomfortable and contesting situations, where freedom of speech is often invoked selectively, mainly to justify majoritarian views (Cesari, 2013; Paternotte, 2020). My theoretical approach is based on discursive construction of identity and power relations drawing from scholars like Stuart Hall (1996) and Laclau & Mouffe (2001), which help to understand how political and media discourse produce social meanings of “Muslim” and “Europeanness” simultaneously. The central research question guiding this study is: How do nationalist frames and public debates in these three Central European societies shape the limits and possibilities of freedom of expression for Muslim minorities?

Methodology of this research is qualitative discourse analysis of political speeches, mainstream newspapers, and social media debates between 2018–2025 in these states, complemented by semi-structured interviews with activists and community members (Fairclough, 2013; Wodak, 2015). This combination allow us to see not only what official narratives are but also how everyday actors negotiate these narratives in their lived experiences. The study shows that public discourse frequently frames Muslim presence as “threat” or “other”, and then redefines freedom of expression in ways that marginalize dissenting voices — especially those that challenge nationalism and cultural majoritarianism (Bleich, 2011; Cesari, 2013). This paper contributes to European Studies by bringing Central European perspective on identity politics, freedom of speech and minority inclusion at a time when Europe is being reimagined in diverse national discourses. Ultimately it argues that these discursive practices not only shape public opinion but also affect civic rights and social inclusion of Muslim citizens in Central Europe (Paternotte, 2020).

References:

Bleich, E. (2011) Fundamentalisms and the State: Islam, Christianity, and Modernity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cesari, J. (2013) Why the West Fears Islam: An Exploration of Muslims in Liberal Democracies, New York: Palgrave.

Fairclough, N. (2013) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, 2nd edition, London: Routledge.

Hall, S. (1996) Questions of Cultural Identity, London: Sage.

Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 2nd edition, London: Verso.

Paternotte, D. (2020) Muslims in Central Europe: Politics, Identity, and Belonging, Brussels: Peter Lang.

Wodak, R. (2015) The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Discourses Mean, London: Sage.

The EU has been treated as a crisis born system (Cross 2017) that emerged as a structure to maintain peace, actualizing warfare among European states as a trauma. Such ideas are rooted in theories of EU integration. This paper tries to answer the question “how EU identity is shaped by antagonized political forces from inside?”. Nowadays the EU finds itself in crisis, with increased affective polarization, the Russian-Ukraine conflict and Trump’s recent demarche. Our research aims at finding the core units of the European identity in the public discourse of “liberal” and “right-wing” political forces, and how they assemble different “Europes”. The paper states that such an ideological dimension is not simply a wrong dichotomy that neglects other actors, it mostly endeavours to encapsulate two major political forces that shape public EU discourse making other powers to adopt.

Moreover, we discover the role of collective memory in constructing common European identities, and how it is used by both “EU-sceptics” and “EU-positivists”.

In order to achieve such aims, we apply content-analysis of parties’ manifestos prior to European Parliamentary elections in 2024, and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MMDA) of selected TikTok videos, which represent the recent “Save Europa” trend and the opposite ones, which promote unity and liberal values, echoing the programmes of parties. Therefore, we cover both official and unofficial discourses. We have identified the most referenced events for both sides, and showed how they are utilized for evoking the collective memories, and attempts to establish hegemony over European identity.