ABSTRACT
As an integral part of any democratic system political parties have been at the helm of European integration from the beginning, and also – paradoxically – are now leading the opposition to it. The increase of Eurosceptic parties across the continent since the 1980s, as well as their wide ideological and operational diversity, indicate a seismic shift in the rise of this phenomenon. The analysis is complicated further by the evolving role European integration plays within manifestos of marginal parties, which indicates not just a steady entrenchment of the integration issue as a salient electoral topic, but it also strongly hints to its instrumental nature as an electoral strategy (Sitter 2003; Topaloff 2012).
