Abstract
This chapter argues that although Poland appeared to be one of most overwhelmingly Europhile countries, Poles became increasingly instrumental in their approach towards EU membership. It shows that the first three Polish European Parliament (EP) elections did not conform to the second-order election thesis entirely; the 2004 poll did so the most, and the one in 2014 the least. The 2019 election was seen as the first stage of the country’s autumn first-order parliamentary campaign and there was a high turnout, the main governing party celebrated a stunning victory, fringe parties did not perform especially well and there was a great deal of media interest in the campaign. Moreover, in spite of the fact that the Soft Eurosceptic government had been in an ongoing conflict with the EU political establishment since 2015, Euroscepticism actually featured very little in the 2019 campaign.
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Notes
- 1.
A total of 54 were elected in 2004, 50 in 2009, 51 in 2014 and 52 in 2019, although in the case of the last election the fifty-second would only take their seat after the UK left the EU. See: TVN 24 (2019, May 24).
- 2.
For more on the 2004 EP election in Poland, see Szczerbiak (2005).
- 3.
For more on the 2009 EP election in Poland, see Szczerbiak (2010).
- 4.
For more on the 2014 EP election in Poland, see Cześnik and Kotnarowski (2014).
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Szczerbiak, A. (2020). Poland. In: Hloušek, V., Kaniok, P. (eds) The European Parliament Election of 2019 in East-Central Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40858-9_9
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