Abstract

In the academic literature and the media the positions of political parties on European politics are represented as a field polarized in pro-European and eurosceptics. Euroscepticism is thus considered a dimension of the political competition that absorbs the left-right cleavage. Is it appropriate to include in a single political front parties which are alternative to each other on the ideological and programmatic angle? The article addresses this issue by comparing the manifestos for the European elections of 2014 of three political forces differently positioned along the left-right axis: the Front National, the Five Star Movement and The Other Europe with Tsipras. Evidence of this analysis goes in a different direction from that currently prevailing in literature: euro-criticism and opposition to the integration principle cannot be overlapped, and the differences between left and right are not reabsorbed by an europeanism or anti-europeanism cleavage. The criticism towards EU stated by the radical right, the radical left and a political movement that defines itself as extraneous to the traditional political categories, such as the FSM, takes on the traits of a request for a return of the political, opposed to the apparent becoming technics and administration of the national and supranational politics.