Arguably the recent EU elections boosted so-called eurosceptic parties in many EU countries, and euroscepticism is marching on across the continent. This although the attitudes of many traditionally eurosceptic far-right parties have shifted to a more “moderate” line, as “explicit calls to leave the Union have been replaced by somewhat softer calls for a referendum on leaving or even ‘just’ reforming the EU and its policies profoundly”. This is realism, but a realism that aims to use the institutions of the EU, isolated as they are from the European citizenry, to achieve a regression in matters of rule of law and the collapse of Intereuropean solidarity. There is nothing essentially democratic in this transformation.
Yet the causes of euroscepticism are not irrational. For a large number of Europeans the EU is not only seen as “not delivering” in areas such as prosperity and the social welfare state, and being under the influence of corporate lobbyists, but – rightly in our opinion – as an unelected technocracy of upper and upper-middle class bureaucrats, whose pronouncements are rubber stamped by the EU institutions, and at the same time serve as a conduit for harsh, unpopular measures, which can then be explained to electorates by governments as “imposed by the EU”.
But these attitudes are in fact not antithetical to the federal European project. In fact, as I see it, “Together for Europe” is in its own way “eurosceptical”: it is skeptical that the current institutional arrangements are optimal as far as democratic accountability is concerned, but also they are far from ideal in protecting the future of this continent. Not only that, but as the Rome Manifesto explicitly states: “The Federal Union shall not be a super-state. It will refrain from overly intrusive regulation. Any competence which is not explicitly delegated to the Union shall remain with the member states. Moreover, some competences which are currently exercised at EU level can be repatriated to the member states”.
There should be a space of dialogue between federalists and at least the democratically inclined among the sceptics (and these are not necessary in minority), because there are common realizations and concerns and while particular political objectives might or might not diverge (and our movement is an institutional movement that includes divergent political positions), the institutional discussion could be fertile.