Where Have All the ‘Exiters’ Gone? Contextualising the Concept of Hard Euroscepticism

Abstract

The article analyses the impact of Brexit on hard Eurosceptic discourses in the Visegrád Group countries from 2015 to 2023. As the negative implications of Brexit for the UK economy became clear, many hard Eurosceptics softened their rhetoric, using the referendum as a proxy for a ‘hard’ exit. Whilst the classical soft–hard typology remains dominant amongst scholars in the study of Euroscepticism, the case of Brexit shows that long‐term principled opposition to the European Union (EU) can hide behind equivocal rhetoric. The article suggests studying the changing tactics of Eurosceptics by matching current EU and domestic contexts together with the long‐term points of departure of hard Eurosceptics.