This case study examines the relationship between populism and Euroscepticism in Switzerland, a non-EU country that is nevertheless deeply integrated into the European economic and legal order through a dense network of bilateral agreements. It asks how political actors connect “Europe” to broader narratives about popular sovereignty, migration, neutrality, and distrust of elites. The study maps the main political actors in the Swiss debate and analyses the narratives through which European integration is politicised. The findings show that the populism–Euroscepticism nexus in Switzerland is strongest where opposition to closer ties with the EU is framed as resistance to elite-driven constraints on direct democracy, national self-government, and border control. This linkage is most visible on the populist radical right, particularly in the discourse of the Swiss People’s Party, but related concerns also appear among other political and societal actors, albeit without the same anti-elite intensity. The Swiss case further shows that Euroscepticism is not reducible to simple opposition to the EU: in a country outside the Union, it is often expressed through contestation over specific institutional arrangements, especially free movement of persons, dispute-settlement mechanisms, and foreign-policy coordination. The study argues that Switzerland illustrates a contingent and selective relationship between populism and Euroscepticism, shaped by direct democracy, a consensus-oriented political system, and the country’s unusual position of high functional integration without EU membership.
Ursprung et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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