INTRODUCTION
Beyond the Pro/Anti-Europe Divide: Diverging Views of Europe within EU Institutions
NATHALIE BRACK* & OLIVIER COSTA**
*Centre dâEtude de la Vie Politique, UniversitĂ© 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 âempty chairâ strategy (1965â1966) 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.
Various entangled factors explain this pro-European orientation of the actors within European Union (EU) institutions. Analytically, we may understand why these actors have promoted European integration through the analysis of three key factors: ideas, interests and institutional logics (Hall 1997; Heclo 1994; Palier and Surel 2005).
As far as ideas are concerned, we must remember that the European institutions were, at first, led by the âfounding fathersâ of the treaties, or their spiritual heirs. Leaders such as W. Hallstein and J. Delors for the Commission, A. Spinelli and S. Veil for the European Parliament, and P. Pescatore and P-H. Teitgen for the Court made no secret of their deep Europhile convictions and of their desire to contribute, as Commissioner, MEP or judge, to the deepening of European integration. Similarly, there have been generations of European officials such as E. NoĂ«l and B. Olivi, who have openly worked to strengthen the institutions they served in the pursuit of federal goals. The first generation of politicians, judges and officials who chose to work in the European institutions and make their careers at that level took a gamble. Other options were available to them at the national level, the choice of Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg was an act of belief, from people who wanted to serve their European ideal. Later on, these institutions often played with ideas such as federalism, the fight against the democratic deficit or the promotion of a functional and performance-driven model to convince the member states to move forward in the European project. But this pro-European commitment cannot be explained by ideological factors only: personal and institutional interests as well as institutional logics played a role. Indeed, even if these actors were motivated by federalist/supranationalist ideals, they also had a rational interest â given their position â in the success of the European project and the strengthening of the supranational institutions, in terms of power and resources. In a way, their ideals and interests combined to encourage them to promote a deepening of European integration. If any actor in an institution is generally interested in the survival and the empowerment of his/her institution, this problem is particularly acute in the case of the EU, given the fundamentally evolving nature of the political system and the uncertainties that initially surrounded the future of the European institutions.
Moreover, the pro-European positions of those actors within EU institutions became gradually crystallized because of the institutionalization and socialization processes at work within any organization. Although studies on socialization in EU institutions have ambiguous results,1 most research show the emergence of an esprit de corps among civil servants as well as the emergence of supranational allegiances and a pro-integration bias (Hooghe 1999; Lewis 2000; Egeberg, Schaefer, and Trondal 2003; Shore 2000; Trondal 2004). European elites seem thus to have some supranational loyalties and members of supranational institutions were encouraged to take ownership of a pro-European discourse.2 So, in the Commission, the spill-over effect and the demand for extending its competence to meet the objectives set by the treaty and increase the efficiency of the EUâs actions also involve a continued strengthening of the powers and resources of the institution. In the EP, the objectives of deepening European integration and the fight against the democratic deficit have been consistently translated as a need to empower the assembly, while other solutions were possible (intergovernmental integration, independent control bodies, involvement of national parliaments and participatory democracy mechanisms) (Costa and Magnette 2003). As for the Court, through a strong promotion of a supranational and consistent European legal order, it has in fact placed itself at the top of this order, greatly increasing the role the treaties gave it originally (Alter 2001).
These three main and interrelated factors contributed to the pro-integration bias of EU institutions: ideas (deepening of European integration per se, federalism, the fight against the democratic deficit, etc), interests (strengthening/sustaining the institutions to which the actors belong, desiring to increase oneâs power through the empowerment of the institution, etc) and institutional logics (socialization processes, historical positions of the institutions on integration issues, etc).
But if one assumes that the actors of the European institutions were intrinsically pro-European, is this still true today? Beyond the institutional reflexes, which generate a certain commitment to their institution on the part of its political and administrative actors, to what extent are EU actors still driven by pro-integration motivations?
One can indeed expect that the rise of Euroscepticism witnessed in Europe over the last two decades will eventually be reflected within the European institutions through two mechanisms. First, it seems logical that the national and European elections lead Eurosceptic MEPs and ministers in the Council and in the EP. We can also expect that governments with Eurosceptic parties or members appoint to the Commission, the Court, the Committee of Regions or the Economic and Social Committee officials who are not necessarily Eurosceptic but who do not share the pro-European enthusiasm of the first generations of EU actors. Moreover, the dissemination of Eurosceptic or Eurocritical ideas within the national political spaces, and the fact that the concours for the European civil service become more common (i.e., less and less a vocation and more and more a career option among others) inevitably lead to the entry into the European institutions of actors who are no longer militants of the European cause. Second, the actors of the European institutions have had to take into account the emergence and permanence of diverging views on European integration and Eurosceptic ideas at the national level, from the citizens to the highest political level in some member states. After having denied the problem or challenged the relevance and the legitimacy of resistance to European integration, institutional actors have eventually sought to address them. As Euroscepticism became an integral part of the political landscape of most member states, and as some traditional parties realign themselves in this new political context, the pro-integration bias of EU institutions appeared to be problematic, including within these institutions. That has led to a process of institutional and administrative reforms initiated in the mid-1990 to answer criticism against European institutions and their functioning. It also led to a moderation of the pro-European discourse within European institutions, which is perfectly evidenced by the current political cautiousness of the Commission and the low profile of its president, by the moderation of the major groups of the EP on the federal question and by the self-restraint of the Court of Justice (Magnette 2009).
There are several elements attesting the coexistence of diverging views of Europe within EUâs institutions. First, there have been Eurosceptic MEPs for the last 30 years and Euroscepticism in the EP seems to have become an embedded phenomenon. Although they often remain at the margins of the daily functioning of the assembly, these MEPs have been quite active in the promotion of their views and they have loudly voiced their criticism of the European project itself, its institutional system, its leaders and its policies. The main European parties (EPP, PES) have also moderated or even removed references to a federal ideal in their statutes to accommodate parties and parliamentarians from Central and Eastern European countries during the latest enlargements. Second, within the Council, there has recently been a succession of presidencies led by heads of state and government more or less openly âEuroscepticâ or âEurorealistâ. Within the Commission and the Court, for institutional reasons, one does not find stances that are openly hostile to European integration. That said, it would be hard to demonstrate that judges, commissioners and officials from both institutions have recently taken positions particularly favorable to further European integration.3 Moreover, research conducted since the mid-1990s demonstrated that civil servants and officials of the Commission have indeed various visions of the European project, among which intergovernmentalist and institutional pragmatist stances (Hooghe 1999, 2002, 2012).
However, this phenomenon has received surprisingly little attention from scholars. If a rich literature on the attitudes towards Europe has developed, especially since the mid-1990s, the field of research remains largely in the national sphere. Scholars have attempted to understand the various levels of support for and opposition to the EU among political elites and citizens, to classify the various reactions to the European Union and their impact on national elections and actors (de Vries and Edwards 2009; Fuchs, Magni-Berton, and Roger 2009; Hooghe and Marks 2007; Kopecky and Mudde 2002; Taggart and Szczerbiak 2008). Recently, some scholars have stressed the need to go beyond the binary vision of pro/anti Europe positions (Crespy and Petithomme 2009; Kopecky and Mudde 2002). They showed that even if there have always been competing views concerning the nature, scope and ends of the European project, the increasing extension of the EUâs competences over time multiplied the potential sources of tension, leading to various kinds of criticism throughout Europe (Coman and Lacroix 2007; Harmsen and Spiering 2004). The attitudes towards Europe have thus become more complex and the scope and the range of both Europhile and Eurosceptic positions have broadened (Hooghe and Marks 2007; Krouwel and Abt 2007; Mudde 2011).
Support for and oppositions to European integration and/or its implementation can have numerous motivations, ranging from a purely utilitarian position to an idealist position (Lubbers and Scheepers 2005). Similarly, the form of support or opposition can vary greatly, from strong and vociferous action to passive acceptance or even mere indifference. Both Europhiles and Eurosceptics are very heterogeneous groups, with very different ideas and ideals about what is acceptable or necessary for the future of the EU and European integration (Katz 2001; Milner 2006; Navarro 2009). Finally, actors may develop multiple identities and allegiances that are not necessarily mutually exclusive (such as national and supranational ones) (Diez Medrano and GutieÂŽrrez 2001; Diez Medrano 2003; Risse 2003). But apart from a few exceptions (Brack 2011; Costa and Brack 2009; Hooghe 2002; 2012; Katz 2008); scholars rarely analyze these attitudes towards Europe at the supranational level and their implications.
This special issue therefore aims to fill this gap. It will investigate empirically the divergence in views of EU actors about the European project and lend insight into its consequences for the functioning of the EU and its institutions but also for European integration more broadly. Indeed, we argue that since Euroscepticism has become an integral part of politics in Europe, it is necessary to explore these diverging views of the European project, not only at the national but also at the supranational level. The EU is not only a contested polity but is also a âmoving targetâ, an âongoing processâ and an institutional system comprising actors that have diverging views on European integration (roots, objectives, institutions, structure, means, geography, political priorities, values...), who are sometimes not favourable to further inte...
