Politicizing Europe: How the EU Affects Political Competition in Portugal
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the way Europe has become an issue in Portuguese politics from the perspective of political parties and voters, since membership. It begins by introducing the main milestones which have characterized Portugal’s relationship with the EU. An overview of parties’ positioning regarding the EU is provided alongside data from the Chapel Hill expert data on parties to understand the evolution of parties stance on this topic. The Great Recession does not seem to have catapulted the European Union (EU) issue as a major factor in party polarization or voting since 2009. While austerity did become a major political issue, Eurozone policy or EU membership did not. Yet, the Eurozone crisis led to a major change in party system dynamics, namely the socialists’ parliamentary coalition with the left parties in 2015. This paradoxically contributed to the depoliticization of the EU as a political issue, as the communists and the Left Block parties, the traditional bulwarks of Euroscepticism, became quasi government parties for the first time since democratization. At voter level, Euroscepticism continues to be predictive of a vote for the Communists as well as for the centre-right PSD in 2019.