1

The rise of nationalism within European countries, including the UK, has run in parallel with the wider, and at first sight contradictory, process of European integration. The interplay between the two phenomena is a particularly fascinating and topical object to analyse, as illustrated by UKIP’s striking results in the May 2014 European elections and the EU’s role in the debate about Scottish independence. Contributions in this issue of Graat On-Line focus on two very different types of nationalist parties, whose attitudes towards the European Union are also distinct. Parties from the different nations of the UK, the Scottish National Party (SNP), Wales ’ Plaid Cymru (PC) and Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) have all embraced Europe, although sometimes fairly recently, as a way to strengthen their case for self-determination vis à vis their central government. Instead one of the main policies of the far-right British National Party (BNP) and the populist United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is to withdraw Britain from the European Union in order to “regain sovereignty”. These two attitudes correspond more or less to the now traditional distinctio