Abstract
The EU relies on bonds of loyalty that create a political community amongmember states and citizens. The relevance of the social dimension for bothpolity contestation and polity maintenance has, however, been neglected.We fill this gap by evaluating to what extent the EU’s (social) policyresponses to crises contributed to contain Euroscepticism – or failed to do so.We examine how EU polity challengers (radical parties both on the right andthe left) have capitalised on the weakness of the EU’s social dimension todiscursively oppose the polity in the euro, refugee, COVID-19 and Ukrainecrises. We argue that polity contestation goes beyond challengers’preoccupation with shrinking national sovereignty and includes compellingcriticism of the EU as an ‘uncaring’ actor. Thus, EU polity maintenance hingeson the ability of EU elites to put forth a positive vision of bonding and offerincreased social security for citizens.