A Thorn in the Side of European Elites: The New Euroscepticism

Abstract

The European project has recently reached a critical point, where a discussion on the fundamental objectives of the European Union has entered public debate. Currently there are considerable concerns about a new Euroscepticism arising in response to recent developments and a general feeling of malaise towards the European project from both national elites and ordinary citizens of Member States. This paper engages with the keyword ‘Euroscepticism’, which is somehow connected with both populism and extremism. The distinction between these two phenomena involves the ‘insider’ role of populists and the ‘outsider’ role of extremists, as related to liberal democracy. The connection to Euroscepticism does not mean that populists have anti-liberal features and goals that are a threat to immigrants, minorities and so on. Populism should not be discredited as unconstitutional from the outset. It does not undermine the cornerstones of the democratic canon of values. Populist ‘anti’ attitudes stem from a kind of goal-oriented opportunism, not from a systemic opposition. An anti-system party refuses to cooperate with the ‘system’ parties and has an agenda of destructive refusal within the political process; an anti-party party desires to integrate into the political process constructively, in its own way, and its fundamental traits include always being prepared to communicate and form coalitions. Populist parties operate not with anti-system feelings, but with antiparty feelings. The Treaty of Lisbon will be not the ‘end of the history’, but only an intermediate step for the EU between two permanent challenges: enlargement with more countries, as well as deepening. The European elections of June 2009 showed that there is still much work to do in convincing citizens, not only in the new but also in the old Member States of the EU. The integration process continues to be supported by the governments of Member States so that