Читать книгу Europeanisation and Renationalisation - Группа авторов - Страница 10

Polarising debates on European integration are by no means new in France. The country looks back on a rich history of highly divisive debates on Europe, the most important of which were the battle fought in 1954 on the European Defence Community (EDC), the Maastricht referendum in 1992, won by a narrow margin (51 per cent yes against 49 per cent no votes), and the referendum on the ‘Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe’ in May 2005, rejected by a clear majority of Frenchmen (55 per cent).

Today, the conditions for the politicisation of European issues and for the spread of Eurosceptic attitudes could hardly be better. For several years, the EU has found itself in a deep crisis mode, a situation referred to as a ‘polycrisis’ by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker:

“This European Union has faced its worst economic, financial and social crisis since World War II. And it is still struggling with the consequences. I have often used the Greek word ‘polycrisis’ to describe the current situation. Our various challenges – from the security threats in our neighbourhood and at home, to the refugee crisis, and to the UK referendum – have not only arrived at the same time. They also feed each other, creating a sense of doubt and uncertainty in the minds of our people” (Juncker 2016).

The European Union’s (EU) political and economic performance in dealing with the Eurocrisis and the below average performance of euro area economies compared to the rest of the EU have raised doubts in the minds of many citizens. The traditional narrative of European integration as a project producing more prosperity for all has been questioned. Economic integration in general and the way the euro area crisis was handled in particular have created winners and losers and redistributed wealth and opportunities.

Moreover, citizens could observe in 2015 the collapse of the Dublin regime assigning responsibilities to member states for handling asylum seekers. They [22] also saw the failure of the Schengen regime to avoid external border controls and to uphold internal freedom of movement in 2015. A more or less uncontrolled number of asylum seekers entered the territory of the European Union. This has put a big question mark over one of the core European achievements that had been highly valued by citizens according to all opinion polls: the freedom of movement inside the Schengen area.

This European ‘polycrisis’ has fed Eurosceptic tendencies both in French public opinion and in French political parties’ discourses. Recent developments have to be seen against the backdrop of a longer-term drop in French mass public support for European integration and a rising salience of European issues in inter-party competition. Citizens and parties tend to blame the French economic decline and the persistently high unemployment rates of the last decade at least partly on the European Union and its responsibility for the ‘austerity policies’ that successive French governments had to adopt.

To what extent does the executive face tighter domestic constraints on its European policy-making since the breakdown of the ‘permissive consensus’ at the time of the Maastricht Treaty? And how did the current polycrisis affect domestic conflicts on Europe in France? In order to find answers to these questions, we first look at the evolution of public opinion on issues of European integration. In a second step, we assess the politicisation of European issues in French party politics by looking at the salience of ‘Europe’ for the main French parties, at the evolution of their overall stances towards European integration and at the level of intra-party conflict on Europe. Finally, we will assess in how far European integration constitutes a major issue dimension that will structure domestic political conflict in a more durable way.