Does Eurosceptic Campaigning Influence Mainstream Parties?: A Comparative Analysis of the Netherlands and France in the 2014 European Parliament Elections

Since its inception European integration has been a political project advanced predominantly by mainstream parties, left and right of centre. Indeed, the integration process was marked was marked by a considerable degree of consensus among the various executives. In the last decade, however, the elite-driven project of European Union has increasingly come under pressure as Eurosceptic parties successfully emerged from the fringes establishing themselves increasingly at the centre of the political debate.  Using Euroscepticism as an independent variable, this article examines whether the emergence of Eurosceptic parties matters for the future of European integration. This paper examines whether Eurosceptic fringe parties are capable of influencing mainstream parties’ attitudes towards European integration during election campaigns. In a comparative quantitative analysis of the 2014 European Parliament election campaigns in France and the Netherlands, it is examined whether challenger parties’ campaigning affects the way mainstream parties talk about European integration. Departing from the notion of ‘discursive leverage’, it is examined whether far left and far right fringe parties influence which mainstream parties differently and whether these findings hold in both countries.