The recent surge of radical right-wing populism has become the main engine of Euro-skepticism in the last two decades. Whether a reaffirmation of the latent nationalist popular psyche, or a novel ideological development, it is a political trend to be reckoned with. An academic project is therefore needed, which would explore the main causes for this ailment, and provide asalient analysis of this phenomena, from the perspective of the history of ideas and ideologies.  The CEU Center for European Enlargement Studies, together with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Budapest has organized this event as an attempt to answer some of the questions raised. The conference features an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together political scientists, histororians and representatives of NGO's.
The project is according to spatial and temporal coordinates. The approach is not a sweeping regional one, as some countries are omitted due to their historically and presently weak and isolated extreme right wing. Also, most of the post-Soviet space does not concern the project, since our approach gravitates around the European Union’s east and its newest member states. This is due to the possible applications of our research conclusions. Consequently, the following countries shall be included in our analysis: the Visegrad 4 (Hungary, Slovakia,Poland and the Czech Republic) and Romania. The shared and contiguous histories of these countries also argue for this format. The conclusions shall  have implications upon describing how the enlargement process of the European Union has been perceived by the societies in new member states, and how some of these processes may be repeated in the case of candidate countries.