Euroscepticism - Part 1

Even though the EU can be seen as one of the most successful formations in international cooperation, we know for a fact that Eurosceptic parties are on the rise, and support from its own citizens for the EU is considerably decreasing. In this series of posts, I will give 30 key points and try to explain why this shift is happening while also giving you the essentials of the concept of “Euroscepticism”.

1. The term “Euroscepticism”, which first appeared in the 1980s in England, can refer to a couple of things such as opposition to the EU's powers and the concept of European integration or to general hostility toward the EU and its achievements and so on. Until Margaret Thatcher's speech in Bruges in 1988, which strongly questioned the functioning of the EU and inflected a number of its principles, particularly economic matters, Euroscepticism was regarded as a marginal position. However, it has since become a persistent and growing reaction to EU policies and has spread like wildfire across the continent.

2. According to Eurobarometer data, trust in the European project has declined faster than growth rates. Trust in the European Union has fallen from +10 to -22 percent in France, +20 to -29 percent in Germany, +30 to -22 percent in Italy, +42 to -52 percent in Spain, +50 to +6 percent in Poland, and -13 to -49 percent in the United Kingdom since the start of the euro crisis. What is striking is that everyone in the EU has lost faith in the project, including creditors and debtors, as well as eurozone countries, prospective members, and "opt-outs".

3. The alleged existence of a democratic deficit within the EU was the old explanation for Euroscepticism. Critics claimed that decisions were made by unaccountable institutions rather than elected national governments.

4. The current crisis, however, is the result of a clash between the democratic wills of citizens in northern and southern Europe, the so-called center and periphery. And both sides are now utilizing EU institutions to further their objectives.

5. In the past, there was an unwritten rule that EU institutions would police the single market and other technology policy areas - from common standards for tomato paste composition to lawnmower sound emissions - while national governments would retain a monopoly on service delivery and policymaking in the most sensitive areas, where national elections were at stake.

6. Citizens in creditor countries have been averse to taking responsibility for the debts of others since the euro crisis began, owing to a lack of spending control systems. Eurocrats have crossed many red lines of national sovereignty with the fiscal compact and demands from the European Central Bank (ECB) for comprehensive domestic reforms, extending their reach far beyond food safety standards to exert control over pensions, taxes, salaries, the labor market, and public jobs. These topics are fundamental to welfare states and national identities.

7. To an increasing number of individuals in southern European countries, the EU resembles the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Latin America: a gilded straitjacket compressing the room for national politics and depleting the content of their national democracies. Governments come and go in this new situation, but policies remain essentially the same and are unassailable.

References and for further readings you can check:

Durand, F., Decoville, A., & Knippschild, R. (2017). Everything All Right at the Internal EU Borders? The Ambivalent Effects of Cross-Border Integration and the Rise of Euroscepticism. Geopolitics, 25(3), 587-608. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2017.1382475

Torreblanca, J., & Leonard, M. (2013). THE CONTINENT WIDE RISE OF EUROSCEPTICISM [Ebook] (pp. 1-2). European Council on Foreign Relations.

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