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Abstract

Drawing on sociological and anthropological approaches, this doctoral research deals with the rise of the far-right in the European Union (EU) and the reactions it triggered within EU institutions. More specifically, I focus on the European Parliament (EP) as one of the main institutions of the EU. At the core, I ask how the EP has protected itself institutionally against those it deems far-right outsiders at the EU level. To answer this question, I trace the nature of confrontation between EU institutional actors and the far right in the EP since 1979. The chapters show how individuals in their everyday institutional practices negotiate and renegotiate the rules of interaction with the far right, as well as the extent to which far-right activism has become a fully supranational phenomenon. What started out as a small European Right movement in the mid-1980s came to something as troubling as a legal and political battle over the rule of law and liberal democracy in the EU. The far right has become an integral part of EU politics with the backing of mainstream political parties. It has also managed to shake the very foundations upon which the EU is built. My analysis helps explain the future of the EU from the standpoint of the EP yet implicating the EU institutions in its entirety. The methods I used for data collection, analysis and writing are grounded in the tradition of political ethnography: I conducted participant observation in the EP, non-participant observation, a wide range of interviews with Members of the EP and other institutional actors, as well as archival research.

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