Nacionalismo, europeização e formação do centro dos sistemas partidários Europeus

In line with recent studies, this article argues that a party’s attitude towards the European Union (EU) derives from its main ideological goal, which is primarily of a domestic character. The EU is evaluated on whether it contributes to achieve the party’s main objective in domestic terms. For example, social democrats evaluate integration on its impact on the redistributive economic regime, nationalists on the impact on the sovereignty of the national political community. The article then investigates how enlargement changed the composition of the centre of European party systems and argues that the decline of Christian democracy and the rise of nationalism after enlargement makes opposition to political supranationalism a characteristic of the centre- right, while in the centre-left social democrats, from East and West, have adopted a pro-European attitude.