Over the past years, populist radical-right (PRR) parties across Europe and beyond have received much scholarly attention. The literature has mainly analysed their ideology, electoral performance and discourse. Similarly, recent scholarship has focused on the mainstreaming of PRR’s discourse and the consequences for liberal democracy. However, less attention has been paid to the way in which civil society organisations have framed and reacted to the rise of populism. This paper explores the way in which organised civil society (CSOs) at the EU-level have interpreted the rise of PRR parties across Europe, by taking two recent crises as case studies: the 2015 refugee crises and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on a content and frame analysis of a series of publications by key EU-level CSOs over the periods 2015-2016 and 2020-2021, this paper explores how civil society discursively constructs these two recent crises and the surge of PRR parties. This paper aims (a) to investigate the salience and variation of the populism-nationalism-sovereignism compound in these crises, and (b) to assess the way CSOs position themselves towards the rise of PRRs and the societal challenges arisen from it. The paper discusses both the empirical data and the theoretical implications which emerge from the discourse analysis it carries out.