The populist radical right (PRR) in the European Union so frequently evokes sovereignty as one of the indispensable rights of the people(s) that it becomes urgent to examine the relationship between the concept of sovereignty and the concept of rights in PRR political discourses. The chapter explores how in practice the PRR discursively instrumentalises references to rights to construct its vision(s) of sovereignty in the EU context(s). By applying instruments of critical discourse analysis to the electoral speeches of Marine Le Pen and Jarosław Kaczyński, the leaders of two very dissimilar EU PRR parties, the Rassemblement National and the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, the chapter outlines concrete discursive strategies containing references to rights used by the PRR in the EU. The analysis shows that the PRR uses references to rights to advance exclusionary conceptions of popular (the right of the people) and national (the right of the peoples) sovereignty built upon the idea of a monocultural and ethnically homogenous majoritarian democracy, thus discursively challenging the foundational legitimacy of today’s European project as well as its current institutional configuration.

This article explores how the concept of democracy is constructed, conveyed, and instrumentalised in the discourses of the populist radical right in the current EU context. The comparative analysis of the speeches of the leaders of two dissimilar PRR parties in government (Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) and in opposition (French Rassemblement National) in the run-up to the 2019 European elections using tools of the discourse-historical and discourse-conceptual approaches to CDS highlights the common core of PRR interpretations of democracy, influenced by the shared axiological, institutional, and discursive framework of the EU. It shows that in the EU the PRR constructs the concept of democracy as an ideological complex, by diluting its essentially populist interpretation of democracy with liberal democratic elements. Only by advancing nativist and authoritarian interpretations of the people, does the PRR bring the concept of democracy in line with its ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism.

The article explores how the European populist radical right uses references to rights and freedoms in its political discourse. By relying on the findings of the existing research and applying the discourse-historical approach to electoral speeches by Marine Le Pen and Jarosław Kaczyński, the leaders of two very dissimilar EU PRR parties, the Rassemblement National and the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, the article abductively develops a functional typology of references to rights and freedoms commonly used in discourses of European PRR parties: it suggests that PRR discourses in Europe feature references to the right to sovereignty, citizens’ rights, social rights, and economic rights. Such references are used as a coherent discursive strategy to construct social actors following the PRR ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. As the PRR identifies itself with the people, defined along nativist and populist lines, rights are always attributed to it. The PRR represents itself as the defender of the people and its rights, while the elites and the aliens are predicated to threaten the people and its rights. References to rights in PRR discourses intrinsically link the individual with the collective, which allows to construct and promote a populist model of ethnic democracy.