On 23 June 2026, it will be ten years since UK citizens voted to leave the European Union. The standard reading of the aftermath is reassuring for EU institutions: given the costs of Brexit for the UK, the public has concluded that leaving is not viable. That reading is not wrong, but it misses the more consequential story. Brexit did not defeat European sovereigntism; it strengthened it, by teaching sovereigntist parties to work from inside rather than threaten to leave. 

That shift had domestic drivers too, including electoral normalisation and a decade of EU institutional crisis, but Brexit reinforced it by making the prospect of an exit look catastrophic. This made sovereigntist parties more electable, and harder to counter, because the tools built to fight exit campaigns do not work against internal disruption. 

The reassuring reading rests on good evidence. The Autumn 2025 Eurobarometer recorded that 74% of EU citizens said their country benefits from membership, the highest result since 1983.  

What that reading captures is a shift in public opinion. What it misses is a parallel shift in party strategy. The parties that once threatened to leave have concluded it is more useful to weaken the EU from inside. The French National Rally abandoned its Frexit commitment, the Dutch PVV dropped its Nexit pledge, and the AfD now frames a German exit as a last resort. Le Pen has said this outright, pointing to Brexit when explaining her own shift: in a 2020 interview, she noted it “still took three years” and that EU leaders had “barely hid wanting to make the divorce as difficult as possible.” This pattern is clearest in Western Europe; the European Conservatives and Reformists pragmatism on Ukraine, and Meloni's earlier pivot in Italy, show the sovereigntist family isn't monolithic. 

Dropping the exit commitment removed the most politically costly element of the sovereigntist platform, the one voters could most easily be warned away from by pointing to the UK. Moderated parties could compete for a broader electorate without abandoning their critique of EU institutions. They are now frontrunners in the next French presidential election and the third-largest force in the European Parliament. 

Why is staying inside the harder problem 

A referendum requires securing a majority to support a radical proposal. Internal disruption requires only accumulating enough institutional power to block, dilute, and redirect policy. An exit is at least a bounded loss, with a clear before-and-after. Internal obstruction has no comparable endpoint — which may be what makes it harder to fight, even if it's not obviously worse. Parties that have won elections can coordinate from a position of strength in ways isolated fringe movements cannot. As EPC research on the far right's continued growth has shown, these parties have developed strong electoral bases, which means their institutional presence is not going away. The Patriots for Europe’s (PfE) demands, including stronger borders and rolled-back environmental standards, are to be achieved through EU institutions rather than outside them. 

EU institutions and mainstream parties have been slow to adapt. The frameworks built to contest exit movements, like reassuring publics about membership benefits, are ill-suited to countering internal reform. Gridlock is the clearest sign that the inside strategy is working. Some of this reflects the EU’s longstanding struggles with unanimity, but what is new is the deliberateness with which sovereigntists exploit it. Hungary’s veto record reflects a government exploiting unanimity rules; the PfE’s successin diluting the Green Deal depicts a parliamentary group bargaining within coalition politics. 

Hungary blocked a new sanctions package and a €90 billion loan facility for Ukraine in February 2026. From 2011 to 2025, Hungary accounted for 19 of the EU’s 46 vetoes, more than twice that of the next member state. The PfE has also worked to dilute the Green Deal and oppose the Migration Pact. The resulting gridlock becomes campaign material: a government can block a budget while positioning itself as the defender of national interests against Brussels’ bureaucracy. Voters frustrated with EU inaction are not tracking which delegation cast which vote; they see dysfunction and hear sovereigntists offering the most vivid diagnosis of it. 

The current revision of the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework, setting the budget for 2028 to 2034, will be the clearest test yet. It requires unanimity, raising the bar for obstruction while handing any sovereigntist government a veto. A drawn-out or diluted outcome would suggest the inside strategy is working; a deal that passes largely intact would suggest its limits. 

A decade on, Brexit’s more consequential effect receives less attention than it deserves. It did not inspire imitators or trigger a wave of exits, as initial fearmongering suggested. Instead, it taught Europe’s sovereigntists that the EU can be more effectively weakened from within. Brexit did not convince them they were wrong about the EU; it convinced them that leaving was the wrong way to fight it. 

Fenja Tramsen is a Programme Assistant in the European Politics and Institutions Programme at the European Policy Centre.

The support the European Policy Center receives for its ongoing operations, or specifically for its publications, does not constitute an endorsement of their contents, which reflect the views of the authors only. Supporters and partners cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.