{"id":276,"date":"2020-09-20T22:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-09-20T20:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/?p=276"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:01:05","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T11:01:05","slug":"euroscepticism-does-not-always-mean-hating-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/276\/euroscepticism-does-not-always-mean-hating-the-eu\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEuroscepticism does not always mean hating the EU\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
We may forget that not all twenty-seven European member states are one hundred percent satisfied with the decision-makers within the European Union (EU). This friction can lead to a changing dynamic which can be positive but also lead to more sceptics and a disturbed balance. It could feel like more far-right political parties are digging their way in the member states and show more and more criticism against the way of work. After the prolonged exit of Great Britain out of the EU, several countries such as Italy and France let their thoughts speak. They are \u2018waiting\u2019 for any benefit of the Brexit to consider leaving as well. Is this Euroscepticism something we have to worry about or is it more of a trend?<\/strong><\/p>\n Marta Lorimer<\/p><\/div>\n Marta Lorimer completed her PhD in researching how far-right parties in French and Italy integrated Europe in their ideology. \u201cThe story I usually tell is that it all started in the car in Sardinia. Where a friend, with some very questionable music taste, had some neo-fascism music on and a few years later I was thinking about music and thought \u2018ah let\u2019s write something about this.\u201d It didn\u2019t make any sense in her mind, how could a neo-fascist listen to a \u2018pan Europeanist pro-Europe neo-fascism song\u2019?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo, it\u2019s something beyond the European Union and how these two visions exist within them.<\/span> For me, the most interesting thing about this research was that these parties don’t like the European Union now, but that was not historically the case. Something that is fairly well documented in the literature is that in 1980, even parties like the <\/span>‘France national’<\/span><\/i> were pro- European. This was also the case with another party which I studied in my thesis, the Italian <\/span>\u2018social movement\u2019<\/span><\/i> which is a neo-fascist movement t<\/span>hat very few people ever heard about, but it\u2019s a very interesting case because it was the first successful far-right party after the World War II.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n For Lorimer, there were two interesting elements, a historical evolution in terms of the position of the far-right development in Europe, and how they have this dual discourse.\u00a0<\/span>\u201cFar-right parties oppose European integration but on the other hand, they will say that this is because they are true Europeans and they love Europe and they love the civilization and that the European civilization is in danger by the European Union, by Islam and by some sort of decline that is unstoppable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think right now Euroscepticism is present in pretty much all European countries.\u00a0 For instance, Italy was hugely pro-European until well up in the nineties, and even after the Euro crisis. But the tides have turned against European integration and now Italy is very Eurosceptic. Another example, France was pretty much the leading county for this. Since the 1990’s we’ve seen far-right parties emerge pretty much across the board and even countries that were up until now, sort of immune from this. Spain also got its own right-wing parties <\/span>now. So, you can say it\u2019s a sort of trend in Europe.\u201d Lorimer also tells that it\u2019s not necessarily a huge wave that is going to take over the country. And this \u2018wave\u2019 won\u2019t get enough votes to take over Europe.<\/p>\n Idea’s to explain euroscepticism<\/strong> \u201cAnother theory is that a lot of voters don’t know a lot about the European Union, because it is complex so they rely on their politicians to tell them what to do with it and how to think about the EU. That sends the ideas that politicians give political ques to their electorates because they have views on the EU integration and then voters say, ‘oh well my party says this about EU integration, and I agree with them’. That story is a little bit complicated because of course there is a conversation between politics and voters so it\u2019s very difficult to understand if it’s the politicians that are telling people what to think, or politicians responding to what the people already think.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![]()
\nThere are some theories on Euroscepticism. \u201cOne is that Euroscepticism is motivated by economic concerns. Converses the idea that someone is a loser of globalization and that they don’t benefit from the process. There is also a slightly different storyline about identity, which is perhaps stronger. It says that people who have a strong feeling of national<\/span>\u00a0identity tend to be more sceptical about the EU because they will frequently think that their national identity and their European identity is incompatible, and they will think of participation European integration processes. Something that weakens their nation and their own place within its sense of self.” Because of these feelings, there could be more nationalism then before. In the case of\u00a0 Brexit, it was a little different, the UK always had a strong identity that didn\u2019t work with the identity of European integration.<\/p>\n