Euroscepticism in Southern Europe

A Diachronic Perspective

Susannah Verney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415448284
• eBook ISBN: 9781317996118
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Euroscepticism has emerged as a growing constraint on European integration, starting with the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, continuing with the mid-2000s constitutional debacle and intensifying with the eurozone crisis – a crisis in which Southern Europe has played a key role. But is opposition to European integration really greater now than in the past? The only way to answer this question is through diachronic studies, focusing on change over time. This is the gap in the literature which the present volume aims to fill, through an examination of the origins, evolution and prospects of opposition to integration, focusing on a region traditionally regarded as exceptionally europhile.

As a laboratory for the study of attitudes towards European integration, Southern Europe offers a particularly rich range of case studies, including a founder member (Italy), three 'second generation' states (Greece, Spain and Portugal), two recent entrants (Cyprus and Malta) and a negotiating candidate (Turkey). The volume traces the evolution of euroscepticism in each South European country, assessing its significance, identifying key turning-points and highlighting both continuity and change. Covering party and popular euroscepticism, the book illuminates similarities and differences between national experiences of euroscepticism.

This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

Euroscepticism in Southern Europe: A Diachronic Perspective

Susannah Verney

After laying out the rationale and framework of the issue, this introductory article offers a survey of party and popular euroscepticism in European Union member states, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and Malta and candidate Turkey, over several decades. Leonard Ray's criteria of ideological extremity, electoral unpopularity and opposition are used to assess whether South European euroscepticism has been a marginal phenomenon. The article investigates whether Maastricht constituted a turning-point for the rise of euroscepticism and accession for its decline. Finally, it asks whether euroscepticism in Southern Europe is moving towards a new ‘constraining dissensus’.

Euroscepticism really emerged as a significant issue on the EU agenda after the early 1990s. The event generally regarded as responsible for ‘uncorking the bottle’ (Franklin, Marsh & McLaren 1994) was the agreement of December 1991 on European Union. The Maastricht Treaty, as it is popularly known, was uniquely qualified to arouse opposition, due to its multiple challenges to national sovereignty, its economic prescriptions with their implications for national redistributive policies, and the fears of the erosion of national identity aggravated by the project for European citizenship. The crisis over the treaty's ratification first shook the cosy belief in a ‘permissive consensus’ in public opinion, under which a broad majority offered passive support for integration, allowing it to advance without significant opposition (Lindberg & Scheingold 1970). Further referenda crises followed over three of the four subsequent European Treaties. Within a seven-year period in the 2000s, voters in one or more member-states successively rejected the Treaty of Nice in 2001, the European Constitution in 2005 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. These repeated upsets both decelerated and delegitimised the integration process. In addition to opposition at the mass level, a reduction in consensus was also apparent among national governing elites, including in core EU states. A striking example was the stirrings of dissent in founder member, the Netherlands, long regarded as ‘one of the most enthusiastic supporters of European integration’ (Harmsen 2005, p. 99). Enlargement then added new eurosceptic elites from Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe to the EU equation.

The rising salience of euroscepticism is indicated by its central role in a new theory of European integration. ‘Post-functionalist’ theory was developed by Hooghe and Marks (2006, 2009) in the aftermath of the Constitutional Treaty failure. While the neofunctionalists traditionally emphasised the role of interest groups as potential drivers of integration, Hooghe and Marks identify popular euroscepticism as the new brakeman. They argue that public opinion, ignored by earlier theorists due to the development of integration as a series of elite bargains, now restricts elites' room for manoeuvre. The result, as Hooghe puts it (2007a, p. 5), is ‘a limited zone of acquiescence for policy choice’. Their analysis, that European integration has moved from the ‘permissive consensus’ to a new era of ‘constraining dissensus’, implies a pessimistic prognostication. This is far removed from the neofunctionalists' positive predictions concerning the forward march of integration, back in the latter's early days.

But how much have things actually changed? Down and Wilson (2008, p. 46) examining data from the European Commission's Eurobarometer surveys, suggested that the overall level of popular support for integration in the early 2000s, while lower than in the 1980s, was ‘little different’ from the 1970s—the era when Lindberg and Scheingold first proposed the ‘permissive consensus’. This raises the question as to whether there is really more euroscepticism now than in the past—or whether perhaps it is simply perceived to have a greater presence because, for example, there has been much more popular consultation on integration in the post-Maastricht era. The only way to answer this question is through diachronic studies, focusing on how euroscepticism has changed over time. As Szczerbiak and Taggart (2008b, p. 26) have noted, this currently constitutes a gap in the literature—one which this issue aims partially to fill through a study of Southern Europe (SE), chosen for reasons that will be explained below. After outlining the framework of the collective project, the article offers an overview of euroscepticism in Southern Europe from a diachronic perspective.

Project Framework

Scope and Time Line

The goal of the present project is to contribute to our understanding of euroscepticism by examining how it has played out in different national contexts. This is by no means the first comparative collection of country case studies of euroscepticism (see, for example, Milner 2000; Harmsen and Spiering 2005; Taggart and Szczerbiak 2008a). However, this is the first collection systematically to examine both the pre- and post-Maastricht periods in order to provide a fuller picture of eurosceptic change. It thus covers the era of the European Community (EC) as well as the post-Maastricht EU (with the term EC/EU used when referring to the whole time period). Rather than setting a uniform starting date for the national case studies, each contributor was encouraged to identify the point that seemed most meaningful in terms of their own country's integration, including pre- and post-accession periods. In terms of a chronological cut-off point, it was considered better not to cover beyond the onset of the international economic crisis in 2008–09, which seemed likely to open a new era in terms of attitudes to European integration in Southern Europe. To date, the study of euroscepticism has developed along two often separate axes, party and popular euroscepticism, concerned with elite and mass attitudes respectively. While most of the literature focuses on either one or the other,¹ the contributors to this project were asked to include both, again with the aim of providing a fuller picture.

Regional Focus: The Choice of Southern Europe

In terms of geographical scope, the collection edited by Milner focused on north-west Europe, while the other two comparative volumes cited above include a range of countries from both We stern and Eastern Europe, of different sizes and relative power profiles, and with different ages of membership, ranging from founder members to 2004 entrants. The present project also aims to emphasise diversity, but has chosen to do so within one particular region. As a laboratory for the study of attitudes towards European integration, Southern Europe offers a particularly rich range of case studies. In terms of membership age, it includes a European Community founder member (Italy), three ‘second generation’ members (Greece, Spain and Portugal), two recent entrants (Cyprus and Malta), and one negotiating candidate with a long-term relationship with European integration (Turkey).

Moreover, for the purposes of a diachronic perspective, Southern Europe is likely to be particularly fruitful, as all seven states have been closely linked to the European integration project since the era of the European Community, with four members of this group being the first states to sign Association Agreements with the EC in the 1960s and 1970s. (See Table 1 for a time line of South European relations with European integration.) The choice of SE thus offers a good basis to study euroscepticism over several decades. Meanwhile, euroscepticism in SE has to date been under-researched and for some of our case studies, notably Cyprus and Malta, the articles in this issue are pioneers in examining the phenomenon in their respective countries.

Perhaps the most important reason to choose Southern Europe, however, is the region's reputation, in the words of Hooghe & Marks (2007a, p. 13) as ‘the EU's most

Table 1 South European Countries: Association and Accession

Country	Association (date of signature)	Full Membership
Italy	–	1957
Greece	1961	1981
Portugal	–	1986
Spain	–	1986
Cyprus	1972	2004
Malta	1970	2004
Turkey	1963	–

pro-European’. According to Gómez-Reino, Llamazares & Ramiro (2008, p. 134), ‘the incorporation of Mediterranean countries into the European Union was preceded, accompanied, and followed by a wide consensus on the positive effects of European integration’. Examining popular euroscepticism in Greece, Spain and Portugal, Llamazares and Gramacho (2007, p. 212) note that respondents from these countries, together with the Italians, rank ‘among the most euro-enthusiast’ in Europe. In the case of Italy, Conti (2003) remarks that this ‘is a country that has for a long time been seen as one of the most Euro-enthusiastic among the member states’, while Quaglia (2008, p. 58) claims that ‘in the past, any reference to “Italian euroscepticism” would have been regarded as an oxymoron’, given the country's unremittingly pro-European image.

This picture largely refers to the ‘old’ SE, i.e. the four former dictatorships which joined the EC pre-Maastricht, where integration acquired especially positive connotations through its promotion as the route to democratisation. It applies less to the ‘new’ Southern Europe of Turkey, Cyprus and Malta, which do not necessarily share a strong pro-integrationist stance. Nevertheless, this europhile image suggests SE might be a particularly useful weathervane when considering the future of a ‘post-functionalist’ European Union. If euroscepticism has developed into a force to be reckoned with even in this region, or has at least grown there significantly in comparison with the past, this might confirm the ‘post-functionalist’ diagnosis of a ‘constraining dissensus’ likely to limit the further development of the EU.

Defining Euroscepticism

In establishing a framework for the issue, an important matter is how to define euroscepticism, a topic on which there has been a certain amount of academic debate. For example, Oliver Daddow (2006, p. 64), writing from a historian's perspective, has suggested the possible meanings of the term could include ‘a broader-brush populist scepticism about anything to do with Europe at all’. However, in everyday language, notably in the media, euroscepticism has acquired the rather specific meaning of questioning European integration and it is this usage that has also become established in political science. It therefore does not seem useful to broaden our working definition beyond this.

Nevertheless, as Nick Sitter (2001) has commented, ‘euroscepticism is not a single coherent stance on the EU as a polity’. Instead it covers a broad range of positions in which opposition can concern the whole concept of European integration or be confined variously to its current form, to particular present aspects or policies, and/or to future deepening, either in general or with regard to specific competences. This has led some authors to attempt to further narrow the definition. Notably Kopecky & Mudde (2002) suggested that the term ‘eurosceptic’ should apply only to one specific category of integration opponents: that of ‘europhile europessimists’, i.e. those who are positive about European integration but negative about its present or pessimistic about its future development. But this excludes the key group of hardcore eurodoubters—the ‘europhobe europessimists’ whom these two authors classify in a separate category as ‘euro-rejects’. It does not seem particularly helpful to our understanding of opposition to integration to suggest the phenomenon should be studied without including its most determined opponents.

The problem that concerned Kopecky & Mudde, of capturing the category of those who are positive towards integration in principle but opposed to its current practice, has also occupied other authors, such as Wessels (2007), who proposed a three-point scheme of ‘adamant eurosceptics’, ‘eurosceptics’ and ‘critical Europeans’. Moreover, eurosceptics and integration supporters are not permanent, mutually exclusive categories. Instead, the borders between these two groups may be fluid, changing according to circumstances and over time. Conti (2003) in particular has highlighted this problem with his category of ‘functional Europeans’, whose support for European integration is not based on fundamental commitment and therefore may be changeable.

Despite considerable sympathy with these classificatory attempts and the reasoning behind them, it was felt the most useful approach for the issue would be to use a definition which, while limiting euroscepticism to E...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• 1. Euroscepticism in Southern Europe: A Diachronic Perspective
• 2. ‘The Ebb and Flow’ of Euroscepticism in Italy
• 3. An Exceptional Case? Party and Popular Euroscepticism in Greece, 1959–2009
• 4. Room for Manoeuvre: Euroscepticism in the Portuguese Parties and Electorate 1976–2005
• 5. Spain: Euroscepticism in a Pro-European Country?
• 6. Malta: Euroscepticism in a Polarised Polity
• 7. Changing Patterns of Euroscepticism in Cyprus: European Discourse in a Divided Polity and Society
• 8. Euroscepticism in Turkey: Parties, Elites, and Public Opinion
• Index