Nathalie Brack - Euroscepticism Within the Eu Institutions: Diverging Views of Europe

Since its origins, there have been competing views concerning the nature, scope and objectives of the process of integration and of the European Union. Attitudes towards Europe and European integration, both among political elites and citizens, have been much studied over the last 15 years. But there is no comprehensive analysis of these competing views of Europe at the supranational level.

The existence of radically diverging views on the European political system within the EUs own institutions is problematic at both theoretical and practical levels. Little is known, however, about this phenomenon, its impact on the EUs agenda and policymaking as well as on constitutional reform. This book aims therefore at investigating the divergence in views about the European Union in order to lend insight into its consequences for the functioning of the EU and its institutions. It will focus on the main EU institutions, i.e. the Council, Commission, Parliament and Court but will also deal with the visions of various European elites on the EU.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

Nathalie Brack is Research and Teaching Assistant at Universit libre de Bruxelles (CEVIPOL). Her research priorities are euroscepticism, the European Parliament, legislative studies, role sociology and political opposition in democracies.

Olivier Costa is CNRS Senior Research Fellow at the Centre Emile Durkheim (Sciences Po Bordeaux). He is also Visiting Professor of EU studies at the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium), the Institute for European Studies of the Universit libre de Bruxelles and the European Institute of the University of Geneva. His priorities in research include European Parliament, comparative legislative politics, EU policymaking and policies, and national laws Europeanization.

Diverging Views of Europe

Edited by
Nathalie Brack and Olivier Costa

First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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First issued in paperback 2014

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business

2012 Taylor & Francis

This book is a reproduction of the Journal of European Integration , vol. 34, issue 2. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.

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ISBN13: 978-0-415-50349-5 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-75486-6 (pbk)

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Publisher's Note
The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book may be referred to as articles as they are identical to the articles published in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.

NATHALIE BRACK
Centre dEtude de la Vie Politique, Universit libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium;
University of Bordeaux, Centre Emile Durkheim, UMR 5116, 33600 Pessac, France

ABSTRACT This general introduction aims at explaining the rationale behind this special issue. EU institutions have long been seen as bastions for Europhile actors and they indeed seem to have, over time, promoted further European integration. This pro-integration bias is here examined through the analysis of three interrelated factors: ideas, interests and institutional logics. But this introduction also shows that there have been diverging views of Europe among EU elites and therefore we argue that it is necessary to explore these views and their impact on EU institutions but also to go beyond the binary pro/anti-Europe divide. It exposes the main research questions that structure the special issue and briefly presents the different articles.

European institutions, and more specifically the supranational ones (European Commission, Court and Parliament), have long been considered as bastions for Europhile and pro-integrationist actors. Indeed, both the history and the theories of European integration seem to attest the activism of supranational institutions in favour of further integration and of supranationalism. Neo-functionalists strongly insisted on that dimension of the integration process, with concepts such as shift of loyalty, epistemic communities and the central role of elites and of supranational institutions as conveyors of integration dynamics. They also counted on the socialization of actors and attitudes changes to further integration. Intergovernmentalists were more cautious about the scope and impact of this unanimous consensus on the European ideals among supranational institutions but did not dispute its existence. Both theories thus generally assume that supranational institutions have the tendency to pursue a federal Europe (Haas 1958, 1964, 1992; Lindberg 1963; Schmitter 1969; Garrett 1992; Taylor 1991).

The history of European integration also tends to attest to the activism of the European institutions to promote further integration. The European Commission has always taken seriously its mission of inspirer of the integration process and of guardian of the treaties (Foret 2004, 157). It has often called for a deepening of the European project and a further development of the common policies although it has no control over the agenda of treaty revisions or over treaty negotiations. The European Parliament, especially after its first direct election in 1979, has also strongly promoted a more ambitious political union and more integrated policies at the supranational level. For example, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) adopted numerous resolutions on constitutional issues, starting with the Spinelli Report in 1984, and have urged the Council, the Commission and the member states to move forward on European integration to build a European polity (Corbett 1998; Costa 2001; Jacobs, Corbett, and Shackleton 2007). The Court of Justice has also played a crucial role in this process. As Weiler among others has shown, this role was even more crucial because law has been the instrument by default of a process that could not be political (Weiler 1982, 1994, 1991, 1996). Through several bold rulings such as the van Gend and Loos case (1963) and the Costa vs. ENEL case (1964), the Court gave a far-reaching scope to European law and extracted from simple texts general principles and fundamental rights in order to strengthen the protection of citizens. By doing so, the Court largely contributed to the establishment of a quasi-federal European legal order (Alter 2001; Dehousse 1998; Stone Sweet 2004; Wincott 1995). This activism from the supranational institutions is further attested by the various tensions and crises it provoked with the national level. Indeed, from the 1950s to the 1990s, it led to some strong, although most of the time isolated, reactions from member states. The most striking one was the reaction of Charles De Gaulle, whose empty chair strategy (19651966) was a sign of protest against the federalist trends of European integration and more particularly, the attitude of the President of the Commission W. Hallstein, the perspective of qualified majority voting in the Council and the proposal to create a system of EC own resources.