Euroscepticism of Dutch and Luxembourgian Political Parties on the Example of their Campaigns against the Adoption of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe

This thesis entitled "Euroscepticism of Dutch and Luxembourgian Political Parties on the Example of their Campaigns against the Adoption of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" compares campaigns of Dutch and Luxembourgian opponents of adoption of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe before the referendum on the adoption of that document in the first half of 2005. This thesis finds out that during the campaign against the adoption of that treaty the Dutch political parties were more active than the Luxembourgian parties and the Dutch Socialist Party and the fraction WildersGroup (which consisted of the only member Geert Wilders) were the most involved in the debate. The second aim of this study is to compare the arguments of the political parties to that treaty, in terms of euroscepticism using Paul Taggart's and Aleks Szczerbiak's theory dividing euroscepticism to hard and soft. The arguments indicating hard euroscepticism were held by Luxembourgian party the Left and two Dutch orthodox protestant parties the ChristianUnion and the Reformed Political Party. In general arguments protecting national interests (which is one of the features of soft euroscepticism) prevailed in both countries. Only non- governmental parties from the edge of the political spectrum both..