The European Union (EU) is once again in the midst of a storm. After two decades of treaty revisions which transformed the European project into a political system, the EU is now facing a new and multifaceted crisis. The ongoing economic crisis, the migration crisis and the Brexit have reopened debates and provoked tensions on the nature and âraison dâĂȘtreâ of European integration. With the economic and financial crisis, it seems that the EU is no longer able to deliver one of the key promises of the integration process, i.e. prosperity. But more than that, the EUâs scope of intervention as well as its legitimacy is increasingly challenged. These crises, combined to the current context of democratic malaise, provide fertile ground for the success of radical, populist and Eurosceptic parties. In the 2014 European parliament elections, parties such as the UK Independence Party, the National Front in France, the Alternative For Germany Party, the Five Star movement in Italy and Syriza in Greece had an unprecedented electoral success (Brack and Startin 2015; Hobolt 2015, Hobolt and De Vries 2016). More importantly, the integration has reached a critical point as it has been fundamentally called into question with the Brexit referendum on the 23rd of June 2016. As a small majority of British citizens voted to leave the EU, they signalled their rejection of the European project and contributed to a partial disintegration of the EU. Although it is too soon to fully evaluate the consequences of this vote, it undeniably reflects the growing discontent of citizens towards the EU and will maintain a momentum for the Eurosceptic agenda in the coming years. 1
This opposition to the European project is far from new. European integration has always been a contested undertaking that has given rise to fears and oppositions within public opinions and among political elites (De Wilde 2010; Katz 2008). While these oppositions have long been seen as marginal or temporary, today there is a wide consensus that Euroscepticism has become a stable and persistent phenomenon across Europe (Usherwood and Startin 2013). Indeed, almost every party system has at least one Eurosceptic party competing in elections, and Europe has become an issue, if not a divider, in most European political arenas (Harmsen 2005, p. 79). These oppositions to the EU soon became evident in the European parliament (EP). Indeed, if the EP is often presented as a bastion of Europhiles, there have been Eurosceptic MEPs since the 1970s who have used it as a forum to actively defend and promote their points of view. Initially dominated by socialists, Christian-democrats and liberals who are universally in favour of European integration, the EP came to include new political groups representing the opposition of an increasing number of segments of the population. The pro-/anti-Europe axis quickly became particularly salient and remains even more so today (Hix et al. 2007; Otjes et al. 2016).
Eurosceptics face an interesting paradox: they achieve their greatest electoral success in European elections, but once elected, they must operate within an institution and, more generally, a polity they strongly criticize or even simply oppose (Benedetto 2008). This situation creates tensions not only for these actors but also for the parliament and the EU. Their presence inside the EUâs institutions can trigger existential questions as to how they should carry out their representative mandate. In addition, the existence of these dissenting voices has implications for the EP and raises the issue of their impact on the institution, its functioning and its image. More broadly, the reality of Eurosceptic MEPs questions the place of political conflict within the EU as a political system which relies on consensual interactions. One may wonder the extent to which the persistent presence of Eurosceptics at the heart of the Union is an asset or a threat to its democratic legitimacy.
Surprisingly, only limited attention has been paid to Euroscepticism within the EP. Since Taggartâs seminal article (1998), the study of Euroscepticism has become a well-established interdisciplinary subfield within European studies (Flood 2002b). This literature seeks, first and foremost, to understand the nature of the policy positions of political actors and the factors underlying them. Scholars have highlighted the heterogeneity and complexity of attitudes towards the European project and the influence of institutional, cultural, ideological and strategic factors (Hooghe and Marks 2007; Leconte 2010; Mudde 2011; Szczerbiak and Taggart 2008). Generally, however, they have neglected the analysis of these actors once elected to parliament (Jensen and Spoon 2010), and the field of research remains the national political arena. Apart from a few recent exceptions (Brack 2013; Brack and Costa 2012; Katz 2008; Lynch et al. 2012; Whitaker and Lynch 2014), scholars ignore the supranational level, while EP specialists tend to overlook Eurosceptic MEPs who are considered to be a weak minority with very limited opportunities within the EU institutional system (Neunreither 1998). As a result, studies of the strategies of Eurosceptic MEPsâ are still comparatively scarce. In other words, Eurosceptic actors are frequently dismissed from the analysis because they are not numerous, organized or sufficiently integrated in the EP to really influence its deliberation. Their attitudes, motivations and strategies at the supranational level remain largely understudied.
This book aims to address this gap. Rather than investigating the source of Euroscepticism, it seeks to understand and explain how Eurosceptics, once elected to the EP, conceive and carry out their mandate. More specifically, the ambition of this study is to determine how these actors cope with the tension between the Eurosceptic platform on the basis of which they were elected and the tasks and expectations arising from their European representative mandate. It stresses that the interaction between the institutional context and individual preferences is a key to understand these anti-system actors. In addition, this book also analyses how the institution has managed them. Doing so, it offers a more general reflexion on the impact of the presence of Eurosceptic MEPs for the EU and its democratic legitimacy.
1 An Analysis of Eurosceptic Members of the European Parliament: What for?
Eurosceptics have constituted a persistent minority in the EP for more than 40 years and, until recently, did not seem to have had a major impact on European integration. The EU has a remarkable integrationist track record: it has faced multiple crises, has weathered them and continued to integrate (Fossum 2015). The institutions, though in persistent turmoil, are still standing; integration has widened as a result of several enlargements and deepened through successive treaty reforms which have considerably empowered the EP. Although so far Eurosceptics have not been able to stop the integration process, they can claim victory with the results of the June 2016 referendum in the UK which will lead to the first exit of a country from the EU. In the short run, the Brexit caused a surge in support for the EU and the values of integration. But it is likely to have tremendous and more negative consequences in the longer term. As noted by Usherwood (2016), the Brexit will act as an icebreaker for Eurosceptic movements: leaving the EU is no longer a purely theoretical option but can be presented as a real possibility on the basis of the Brexit.
If the Brexit is the first obvious and direct victory of Eurosceptics, it should actually be seen as the result of a more gradual and latent process. Eurosceptic actors have played a significant role as agenda-setters on European issues and have progressively contributed to the mainstreaming of their views. Through their success in national but mostly in EU elections, these parties have gained legitimacy, visibility and the means to pressure governmental parties, notably to demand the organization of referenda in relation to the EU but also a shift in other partiesâ stances on European integration. The long duration and complexity of the crises have led to the blossoming of contestation against the EU and have reinforced the power of Eurosceptics in many Member states. While in the past, the solutions to crisis were framed between the status quo and more Europe, in contemporary debates, less Europe has emerged as a real option (Young 2016, p. 5). Euroscepticism is no longer a fringe phenomenon, and with its mainstreaming , we are witnessing a slowing down of the integration process (Brack and Startin 2015; Taggart and Sczerbiak 2013; Usherwood and Startin 2013). Against this backdrop, it is essential to understand Euroscepticism, not only at the national but also at the supranational level. More particularly, an analysis of Eurosceptic MEPsâ strategies marks a contribution on two fundamental issues.
First, this research adds to the still limited literature on anti-system opposition within democratic institutions by providing a framework for the analysis of this type of actors (Berger 1979). This framework can be applied to other dissenting actors in other parliaments, such as regionalists within the national parliaments of several European countries. The EP is considered here as a convenient laboratory for the study of the strategies of anti-system actors. It is the only directly elected institution of a political system in a state of quasi-permanent crisis, where the tensions regarding the nature and the finalité of the EU are reflected. As noted by Mény (2012, p. 159), in the absence of a shared vision of what the EU could or should be, a permanent tension results from the persistent uncertainty about the nature of the European beast. The EU is a specific case of a deeply contested polity whose legitimacy remains questioned and in which constitutional issues are numerous, recurring and perceived as problematic (Neunreither 1998, p. 428). This is not a unique situation as several nation states also face strong contestations such as Belgium, Spain and the UK. However, the EU is a magnified example of a political system whose very existence is frequently challenged and in which the debate not only deals with the choice of preferred policies but also with how and at which territorial level decisions are to be made. In oth...