Lecture Abstract:

Since the 2014 elections for the European Parliament, the issue of populist, radical and Eurosceptic parties has been high on the research and political agenda. The success of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) in the British referendum to leave the EU and the subsequent increase in the vote shares of similar populist parties in other European states raised concern on the future of European integration and enlargement, as well as, for some, bringing about an almost existentialist crisis of the European Union.

I argue that the rise of populism and Euroscepticism in Europe is being handled rather simply, throwing all such movements and parties into the same basket. Each of these parties employs populist tactics, but their vision on the future of Europe and their type of Euroscepticism is radically different. Furthermore, by looking at the inner functioning of the European Union, I also claim that the potential effect of the rise of populism is not limited to Europe, and that, overall, the EU is handling the situation better than most tend to portray.

In the lecture, I will elaborate on the similarities and differences on the European vision of the selected populist parties, the potential path of the Brexit negotiations, and dwell upon the expanding literature on differentiated integration touching on the impact of Brexit on the future of European integration.

About the Speaker:

Özgehan Şenyuva is an Associate Professor in the International Relations Department at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, where he works extensively on public opinion, Turkey-European relations and the politics of European football. He has extensive experience in research projects, and was the Principal Investigator for the FREE: Football Research in an Enlarged Europe (free-project.eu), a pioneer FP7 project that was completed in 2015. He was also part of the FP7 SAHWA project (Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract) (sahwa.eu), publishing numerous policy papers, reports and articles on Arab-Mediterranean Youth. He is currently one of the Principal Investigators of a large scale Horizon 2020 research project: FEUTURE – The Future of EU-Turkey Relations: Mapping Dynamics and Testing Scenarios (feuture.eu).

Özgehan Şenyuva is also a member of the Pool of European Youth Researchers of the European Commission and the Council of Europe (http://pjp-eu.coe.int/es/web/youth-partnership/peyr).