Recent research has shown that Eurosceptic parties in times of normality do not mobilize claims in favour of a European Union (EU) exit and they exhibit rather a qualified and context-bound scepticism picking on specific EU policy dimensions (Van Kessel et al, 2020). These parties are sensible to contextual changes both in regard to public opinion and changes in global economic and political conditions (de Vries and Hobolt, 2012). It is generally expected that Eurosceptic parties frame their criticism of the EU in terms of resources scarcity and cost-benefit strategies during times of economic crisis. By contrast, in contexts of border management conflicts, these parties tend to focus on migration – one of their emblematic issues – to criticize the alleged inability of the EU to respond in a unitary and effective way to this type of crisis.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, there were less discursive opportunities for these parties to directly politicize EU conflicts. Although there was certainly a management crisis and resources scarcity problems during the pandemic, the EU responded in a different manner with the approval of the Recovery Funds. This response has been qualified in the literature as an unprecedent expansion of fiscal solidarity (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs, 2021: 365). Likewise, the war situation in Ukraine and the potential military threats to the EU have led to greater cohesion and a unitary response during this crisis.

The paper argues that crises representing unfavourable discursive opportunities to Eurosceptic parties lead them to increasingly rely on conspiracy theories, whereas crises conducive to fragmentation within the EU offer more discursive opportunities to challenge its policies. The paper develops this argument and explore it empirically with the analysis of the party Alternative für Deutschland in Germany. Drawing on a corpus of party manifestos and speeches between 2014 and 2022, this paper seeks to identify these patterns in the transition from a qualified Euroscepticism towards a conspirative Euroscepticism.