‘This is Not Europe’: Investigating the Commission’s Anti-Populist Articulation of ‘European Values’

Whilst ‘populism’ is often considered antithetical to ‘European values’, how this contrast shapes the very meaning of such ‘values’ remains underexplored. This article investigates the European Commission's anti-populist articulation of ‘European values’, which constructs ‘populism’ as their constitutive outside. Using a corpus-assisted approach to discourse analysis, the findings suggest that the Commission's anti-populism produces an inclusionary/exclusionary binary through a set of spatial metaphors: ‘populism’ is exceptionalised as closed, divisive and reactionary, in contrast to the inclusionary nature of open, unifying and progressive ‘European values’. Consequently, this exceptionalisation conceals the EU's own exclusionary practices, particularly regarding migration policy, shifting attention away from the Union's failures to uphold its stated principles. In turn, the Commission reinforces the fantasy that, because of its adherence to ‘European values’, it stands as a bulwark against exclusionary politics. This article, therefore, makes both an empirical and theoretical contribution. Empirically, it shows how the meaning of ‘European values’ is produced in response to the perceived threat of ‘populism’. Theoretically, it highlights the ways in which anti-populist discourse can obscure the complicity of Europe's liberal mainstream in the very exclusions it attributes to ‘populist’ actors.