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Analysing the Rospuda River controversy in Poland: rhetoric, environmental activism, and the influence of the European Union

The paper looks at the case of a large and widely publicised environmental controversy in Poland, and asks why the authorities chose the “pro-environmental” option in the end. Taking into account the wider political and social context of the controversy, we also try to show what the role of the European Union (EU) was in that conflict. We adopt a rhetorical approach to show the discursive struggle around the environmental protection norms, as well as the idea of participation. We engage in a theoretical discussion with constructivist research on normative change, arguing for the need to take domestic agency, as well as local ideational structures, into account while also questioning the usefulness of the concept of “socialisation” and the notion of “norm diffusion” in the debate on Europeanisation. Instead, normative change could be perceived as the empowerment and legitimisation of certain norms and values at the cost of a relative de-legitimisation of others. The EU, apart from its legal impact, can be seen as an important reference point, both as a source of powerful discourses and of legitimacy, while the agency is mostly on the domestic side. We contend, however, that such normative shifts are very context dependent and unstable.