European Union in the language of the Slovak far-right

The article analyses the communication strategies of the far-right representatives in a diachronic perspective. The aim is to find out how the far-right reflected Slovakia’s membership in the European Union, what narratives and arguments they used, and what themes they emphasised. I start from the assumption that the far right presents the EU as one of the enemies of the Slovak “people”. I state my findings through discourse analysis. The corpus comprises different types of speeches, ranging from statements on social networks to speeches in parliament, to public events at which representatives of the far right expressed their views on the EU. From a diachronic comparison, we can argue that in 2016, when the ĽSNS entered the parliament for the first time, the party advocated Slovakia’s withdrawal from the EU. After two terms in the national parliament and winning seats in the European Parliament, the new far-right Republican Party is pushing for the reform of the EU to strengthen economic cooperation between member states and minimize political integration. Despite the shift in views on the EU, representatives of the Slovak far-right present the EU in a mostly negative light.