The Foreign and Defence Policy of the Far-Right in the European Parliament: Between Ideology and Agency

Far-right parties are increasingly gaining more influence in Europe as they are reaching positions of power in many countries. The fact that currently the European Parliament is composed for the first time by a rightwing majority, with a substantial representation from far-right political forces, is strong evidence of this trend. Furthermore, following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the conflict in the Middle East, foreign and defence policy became highly salient policy domains for political parties in Europe. My research proposes to contribute to the literature on the foreign policy of political parties in Europe, by focusing on the far-right party family. 

I operationalize the foreign policy ideology of the far-right according to an original analytical framework that is based on two dimensions: a dimension that accounts for their positions towards international institutions, in particular the EU and NATO, and a dimension that accounts for external relations, specifically their positions vis-à-vis the military conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East. 

My research project therefore moves on two lines: on one side, it seeks to study what characterizes the ideology of far-right parties for what concerns foreign policy and defence, and then, on the other, it seeks to understand what is the influence that far-right parties exert over the EU decision-making process in these domains. To answer these research questions, I adopt a mixed-methods approach, where I analyze roll-call votes in the European Parliament and transcripts of parliamentary debates from the 9th and 10th legislative term, and then triangulate this data with interviews with far-right MEPs, APAs and policy advisors, as well as interviews with European Parliament civil servants and political actors coming from non-far right party families.