Co-Sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies at UW-Madison and the Center for German and European Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Lunch lecture with Catherine Guisan. Register here to join online.
This lunch lecture will examine the ambiguous role of the European Parliament (EP), the only directly elected institution of the European Union (EU), in the development of right-wing populism across Europe. How is it that the EP empowered influential right-wing populist politicians, such as Nigel Farage in the UK and Marine Le Pen in France to pursue their anti-EU agenda? How has the EP also helped challenge the right-wing populist governments of Hungary and Poland? This presentation will also examine the changes brought by the 2024 EP elections and the divisions between right-wing populist groups at the EP today. The majority of EP parliamentarians, who are centrist, face a crucial dilemma: Should the EP protect the rights of right-wing populist and anti-system actors in the name of democracy? Or, to the contrary, should the EP “protect democracy against democracy” with exclusionary measures such as the cordon sanitaire?
Bio: Catherine Guisan is Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of MN. She is the author of Un sens à l’Europe: Gagner la paix (1950-2003)(Odile Jacob : 2003), A Political Theory of Identity in European Integration: Memory and policies (Routledge 2011), and many articles. Currently she is completing a book entitled Making and Unmaking Peace in Europe (1947-2024) (Agenda 2026). Beside the University of Minnesota, she has also taught in France, the Netherlands, and on a Fulbright Fellowship in Russia. She has helped organize several CGES programs, including a 2017 Fall 6-lecture series, co-sponsored by the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center and the Institute for Global Studies, “Peace-Making in Post WWII Europe and Germany: Successes, Failures, and Future Prospects”.