ABSTRACT
As a potential catalyst of political dissent, European integration has provided radical right parties with a new and powerful issue to compete on. Notwithstanding their nation-centred profile and their ideological propensity towards Euroscepticism, radical right parties have been able to draw political capital from the developments promoted by the emerging European polity. The European level has not only opened an additional arena of political competition in which peripheral parties have experienced a series of electoral successes, but it also represents a reservoir of political resources for radical right parties to invest on the domestic level. The mobilisation of radical right parties at the European level raises relevant and so far unexplored questions: Were the transient attempts to form common party groups in the European Parliament only a means to gain additional resources? Or were they a product of a genuine positional convergence of radical right parties on the European issues? Do radical right parties expect to draw symbolic capital (e.g. increased legitimacy) from their membership to European party groups? How does the involvement of radical right parties in European structures relate to domestic party strategies?
