A tale of two memberships: analysing post-2004 official governmental discourse on the EU in Czechia and Slovakia

Despite their similar contexts, the Czech and Slovak memberships in the EU have developed in fundamentally different ways. Whilst Czechia has cast itself as a somewhat half-hearted, reluctant EU member state, Slovakia’s approach to the union has been more positive, with enthusiasm for deepening integration with the EU. Our analysis reveals that, despite some similarities, these differences also pertain to the patterns of discursive legitimisation of the EU within the official Czech and Slovak governmental discourses, underscoring the complexity and multifaceted nature of these processes in post-communist contexts. Working with a comprehensive dataset of official Czech and Slovak government documents, we investigate how, and interpret the ways in which, the EU has been discursively legitimised in the two countries between 2004 and 2023. To that end, we draw on insights from discursive institutionalism theory and adopt the general orientation of discourse historical analysis. We show that while the procedural legitimisation of the EU is a key element in the discursive practices of both the Czech and Slovak governments, the ideational dimension of legitimisation manifests especially within the Slovak discourse.