Viktor Orbán has repeatedly threatened to block EU sanctions imposed on Russia. In Austria, the far right, (FPÖ – the Freedom Party, led by Herbert Kickl) has set out to form a new government. Another Freedom Party, PVV in the Netherlands, led by the very vocal leader Gert Wilders, is already in power, part of a ruling coalition. In the European Parliament, Diana Șoșoacă causes a scandal, wearing a muzzle, being disciplined later and barred from attending plenary sessions for seven days. Finally, in Germany, Elon Musk is beating the drum of AfD, the Alternative for Germany, by attending one of the party’s meetings by video-link. A new word is gradually gaining traction across media and political debates: “sovereignists”. How does it all impact liberal democracy? To what extent can sovereignists influence EU politics?
The EU’s sovereignists: from “approachable” conservatives to the SOS party, turned down even by the most radical groups in the EP
In fact, it is inaccurate the designate the entire far and/or radical right as strictly “sovereignist”. For instance, whereas AUR has built such a reputation in Bucharest, in Brussels the party is affiliated to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. The self-proclaimed “sovereignists” are part of the Patriots for Europe (the PfE group, also known as Patriots.eu), the successor of ID (Identity and Democracy). Founded on June 30, 2024, after the European Parliament election, PfE prides itself in being the third-largest group in the European Parliament, after the Populists and Socialists. However, PfE does not include, for instance, “scare-mongering” parties like the AfD, which founded a smaller group, a little further to the right than PfE, the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), or SOS-Şoşoacă, which was turned down by both PfE and the ESN.
Roughly speaking, European sovereignists can be defined as a political current 1) without access to decision-making (which rests mainly in the hands of the Populists, the Socialists and Renew, the coalition that appointed the president of the European Commission) and 2) with what we could call an lenience, openness or history of relations with Russia and Putin – and possibly other shady regimes incompatible with liberal democracy. These two characteristics distinguish sovereignists from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a group that is lodging its claim for power and is negotiating with central authorities more or less overtly. Thanks to the efforts of Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia, Italy’s current ruling party, the group secured a European Commission Vice-President office, now held by the more moderate Rafaele Fitto, a former Christian-Democrat with a good economic reputation.
In other ways, “sovereignist” is simply a euphemism the media traditionally assigns to “right-wing populist extremists”.
The PfE “elite” is made up of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, expelled from the EPP in 2021, commonly considered the founder of the group, Marine le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Matteo Salvini’s Lega, the PVV in the Netherlands, the Spanish Vox, and the Czech ANO-2011 (“DA-2011”), a populist party with a peculiar trajectory (a former member of Renew). If we think about Orbán’s trip to Russia, which shocked public opinion during the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union, Matteo Salvini’s Putin T-shirt, and Marine Le Pen’s campaign flyer which featured her next to Putin, the PfE’s “openness” towards Russia is obvious. However, the parties that are part of this group claim to have or actually do have conflicting attitudes towards the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin. Le Pen tried to deny her ties with Putin, condemning the war in Ukraine; Orbán tries to pose as a lucid diplomat and a successful negotiator; and Salvini's Lega disavowed any agreement signed with Putin's United Russia in 2017. Of course, the “center” is hardly convinced by any of it.
Still, what does sovereignism stand for? Euroscepticism – the common link between ECR, PfE and ESN
All of the above shows who sovereignists are and what they do, rather than what they are or want. The word “sovereignism” is a reference to sovereignty, a political concept as old as the national emancipation movements. In the current European context, however, the concept must be approached in opposition to the collaborative governance of Brussels, characterized by direct legitimacy, offered by means of elections for the European Parliament and national leaders forming the European Council. Allegations of corruption and arbitrary governance against the European Union, often justified by conspiracy theories about a Brussels “cabal”, are common knowledge. In this respect, AUR can also be considered a sovereignist party, the same as the group it is affiliated to, ECR, although the latter rejects this designation. The same is true of Șoșoacă’s unaffiliated SOS, the Young People’s Party (POT) and other similar parties.
Otherwise, when it was launched shortly after the European Parliament election of June 6-9, the PfE was considered a “motley” group, hastily put together by Orbán. One of the arguments was the group's manifesto, which has only two pages, outlining political ideas that at best might be considered summaries. The PfE fights against “federalism”, that is, a more cohesive structure of the EU, which the rest of the political spectrum rather prefers to the current system of governance of Europe. Sovereignists, however, claim EU federalism is already here. Hence the sovereignist idea of a supposed European “superstate” that diminishes the rights of nation states. Moreover, philosophy of law expert Jaap Hoeksma argues that sovereignists prefer a “Europe of diplomacy” to a “Europe of democracy”, in the sense that the representative legitimation mechanisms at EU level (the European Parliament) should be superseded by negotiations between the leaders of member states. The efficiency of such a system is transparent in negotiations or diplomatic talks in the European Council, where initiatives and proposals repeatedly stumble.
In the European Parliament, the PfE’s activity is just as noisy and inconsistent. It often consists of inconsequential statements in plenary sessions and provocative emails with various bizarre and brief draft resolutions. A typical such example is the attempt by two PfE MEPs, Virginie Joron and Catherine Grisset, to drag the European Commission into a scandal in France, where Marine Le Pen decried a “banking fatwa” on a personal account and the party account of the Rassemblement National. According to protocol, the Commission must respond in writing to two pressing questions: whether “he Commission look into which banking operators in Europe discriminate against political opponents or their children” and whether such account closures “fall in line with EU consumer law”. Beyond the assumption that there are banks that discriminate against political opponents (of banks?!) and the preposterous idea that consumer law could contain any kind of discrimination, the absurdity of this story lies in the fact that the scandal occurred in 2017, and the Rassemblement National MEPs are only now submitted a written inquiry, on January 14, 2025. And so, again, the Commission will waste time investigating and answering, as protocol dictates.
This type of “political activity” is typical of populism: self-victimizing and posing as the voice or defender of the people, with no clear-cut results to show for it.
In other words, the sovereignists in the PfE represent the third parliamentary group in Europe, but in everyday life they remain on the fringes of the political spectrum, playing by the same rules that earned them their current approval rating – beguiling slogans targeting a frustrated segment of the population, which never result into political action. Is that all? No. Should we be worried? Yes.
Will Orbán take advantage of his relationship with Trump to become the ideologist of the “sovereignist international”?
Back in 2022, Politico.eu published a news story about the launch of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium Brussels, the Brussels branch of Orbán’s university in Budapest, part of the so-called National Cooperation System, a structure that destroyed liberal democracy in Hungary. In itself, Mathias Corvinus Collegium is more of a partisan think-tank than a university proper, an illiberal version of “Ștefan Gheorghiu”. Then, in 2023, two publications, The European Conservative and Brussels Signal were launched which (whatever is left of) the Hungarian investigative media linked to Orbán, according to Politico.eu. The two publications started with sizable budgets, of 651,000 and 250,000 EUR, respectively.
Corelated with the information that depicts Orbán as the “instigator” of the PfE, the abovementioned details create the impression that Viktor Orbán is using not just the media and propaganda channels listed above, but also the Patriots group itself as his geopolitical tools. From the point of view of the sovereignist or illiberal “international”, Orbán has a major strength: he is a politically cultivated figure (educated at Oxford, among other institutions) and the advocate of a “turnkey” ideology, successfully tested in Hungary for nearly 15 years. This holds particular appeal to his fellow idealists, whose defining signature is populism, in other words ideological inconsistency. And at this point, it is worth mentioning another great victor, who lacks ideological substance and consistency, Donald Trump. The good relationship and mutual exchange of congratulatory messages between Trump and Viktor Orbán are notorious. To the extent that “Trumpism” or MAGA are not exactly detailed and coherent constructs, Hungary could become a great exporter of ideology to the USA, but also to other countries where extremists who were springboarded into the political big league by frustrated voters fail to confirm their high approval ratings after taking office.
In other words, whereas right now the sovereignists are caught offside in Brussels, and in member states they rarely seize power, the premises for the emergence of a more coherent and influential political current are there. One of the events announced by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Brussels for the end of January 2025 is called “Why the Cordon Sanitaire cannot hold”. It’s about the kind of centrist coalition that excluded extremists from the ruling coalition in Romania as well. “The elites see democracy as a virus”, an anonymous voice protests on the website of Orbán’s ideology factory, praising himself and other illiberal Russophiles for being “democratic”. In fact, sovereignists will stop being regarded as a virus when, and if, they stop behaving as such - not exactly a cheerful outlook.
