Exploitation Opportunities for Distant Crises: Political Framings of Brexit in the Czech Republic and Hungary

Abstract

Brexit has been a major crisis facing the European integration process. The paper examines how Brexit was framed and exploited by two EU member state governments, Czechia and Hungary. We conceptualize Brexit as a “distant crisis” for these two countries: although it is likely to have significant impacts, these are uncertain and not immediate. Building on the crisis-framing literature, we apply frame analysis to examine governmental rhetoric and find that both governments have instrumentalized Brexit for internal purposes by pragmatically adapting their discursive positions on it to fit their political calculus on both domestic and European issues.