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1 Introduction

Since the debate on the Maastricht Treaty, Euroscepticism has been thriving in Europe. The adoption of the Treaty of the European Union(TEU) was a major turning point for the European integration process. The inclusion of Economic and Monetary Union provisions in the TEU changed qualitatively the nature of the European integration process, because one of the ultimate powers of the national sovereign state, namely the power over a national currency, was transferred to the European level. The introduction of the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union in 1999, and the use of the Euro from 2002 by then 12 countries transformed the European Union into a visible economic force worldwide. The Danish “no” on the Treaty of the European Union in June 1992 was an important inclusion of the people, even if nationally organized, in the whole integration process. The first Danish referendum on TEU showed some of the diffuse attitudes that European citizens have towards the European integration process. Euroscepticism is diffuse, atavistic and configured nationally. As Ann-Christina Lauring Knudsen shows for the Danish case these diffuse attitudes bring together a general positive feeling about Nordic cooperation and a Nordic model, which is clearly presented against a German-Latino Union dominated by Germany and France and the perception that further integration may change the welfare system of the country based on social equality. Historical memory related to the aggressions of Prussian-German state of the mid-nineteenth century and also during the Nazi period of occupation contribute to a general fear of German domination of political and economic life which may undermine the Danish way of life. However, society is quite split, and the vast majority is actually pro-European. Euroscepticism just appears when there are referendums on EU or in European Parliament elections. In fact, in Denmark there are two different party systems in national and European elections (Knudsen 2008: 153). However, Euroscepticism, while still diffused in many cases and nationally configured is slowly gaining a transnational character and therefore cannot be regarded as a negative phenomenon, but a refreshing one for the European integration process. This shows that European integration matters to citizens, even if it is a reaction against a potential threat to a way of life. It is understandable that Euroscepticism is a phenomenon in many EU member-states with advanced economies and strong democracies, however it is more difficult to grasp what is happening on the southern, central and eastern peripheries of the European Union, in particular since the economic and Eurocrisis which started in 2008.

This chapter assesses the growth of Euroscepticism in the peripheries of the European Union and tries to provide explanations for this phenomenon. It argues that Euroscepticism in central and eastern Europe may have similarities to Euroscepticism in more advanced economies of northern Europe, but also considerable differences. Moreover, one has to differentiate between southern, central and eastern peripheries. Although the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus joined the European Union at the same time as most central and eastern European countries (apart from Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia), they are here conceptualised as part of southern Europe. After this introduction, the chapter is divided in four parts. The first section defines what is understood under Euroscepticism. A major criticism is that the most cited definition by Taggart and Szczerbiak (2008) is too narrow and flawed. The section introduces an alternative typology including the poles of Euroenthusiasm and Euroscepticism. This is followed by a discussion on the changing nature of the European Union towards the periphery. The main thesis is that Economic and Monetary Union substantially changed the EU as a benevolent agent into a conditonality-oriented one, and this has created quite a lot of Eurodisenchantment across the European Union, especially in southern, central and eastern Europe . The next section tries to map out the varieties of Euroscepticism in the southern, central and Eastern Europe. Last but not least, some conclusions will be drawn on the future of European integration.

2 Defining Euroscepticism: From Methodological Nationalism to Methodological Europeanism

The pioneering studies of Taggart and Szczerbiak (2008) have given intellectual and research dignity to the concept of Euroscepticism. This is clearly a useful analytical concept which allows to identify the varieties of Euroscepticism within and across countries. Being the first not always leads to the best discussion of such a concept. Their typology of “Euroscepticism” is a flawed one, because it does not contextualise the phenomenon in the broader picture of European integration. The genuine antagonistic pole of Euroscepticism is actually Euroenthusiasm, however most studies are obsessed with just one pole, even if they differentiate between “soft” and “hard” Euroscepticism.

According to the authors, the main difference between “soft” and “hard” Euroscepticism are as follows:

Hard Euroscepticism is where is a principled opposition to the European Union and European integration and therefore can be seen in parties who think that their countries should withdraw from membership, or whole policies towards the EU are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of European integration as it is currently conceived.

(….)

Soft Euroscepticism is where there is not a principled objection to European integration or EU membership but where concerns on one (or a number) of policy areas lead to the expression of qualified opposition to the EU, or where there is a sense that ‘national interest’ is currently at odds with the EU’s trajectory (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2008: 7–8, italics are mine).

It focuses too much on the national domestic party system of the member-states and therefore is unable to contextualise Euroscepticism in the larger picture. The concept of Euroscepticism was first developed by Paul Taggart in a seminal article of the European Journal of Political Research published in 1998. He used already these definitions. His focus were the comparative study of this phenomenon in different member-states (Taggart 1998). However, one cannot understand Euroscepticism without looking at the EU as a political system linking the national and the European levels. The EU as a political system requires that Euroscepticism is contextualised in the overall transformation of its multilevel governance system (see Kohler-Koch 2003; Hix and Hylland 2011). Although we are far away from an integrated European public space, Euroscepticism gained an important transnational dimension, because due to the pioneering research of Taggart and Szczerbiak similarities of political parties in different countries can be found. We can begin to conceptualise the EU as a transnational public space, which is still characterised by fragmentation. It is a multilevel public space in the making (Risse 2010: see Chap. 6; Magone 2006:143–145).

Both authors emphasise the centrality of national political parties in the national domestic context. Taggart and Szczerbiak 2008: 2). However, they clearly do not venture on conceptualising Euroscepticism in this EU Multilevel governance. On the contrary, the European integration process and the antagonistic pole “Euroenthusiasm” is completely excluded from the discussion. They refer to three factors leading up to the interest in Euroscepticism. Firstly, the decline of ‘permissive consensus’ particularly during and after the adoption of the Treaty of the European Union played a role in allowing to the emergence of what Pieter de Wilde and Hans-Jörg Trenz call a ‘constraining dissensus’ (De Wilde and Trenz 2013: 540). Secondly, the increased conduct of referendums which contributed to a Eurosceptic atmosphere, at least in terms of debate; and thirdly the enlargement process, particularly to central and eastern Europe, which led to fears among many populations in the original member states such as the Netherlands (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2008: 3). They conclude that actually soft Euroscepticism dominates the landscape of political parties, they are not mainstream, seldom in government and small (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2008: 10).

Their approach, probably unconsciously, is based on methodological nationalism. It clearly does not venture into a discussion about the European integration process as a moving elephant touched by several blind men, just paraphrasing Donald Puchala’s seminal article of 1973 (Puchala 1971). The authors do not problematize the changing nature of the European Union as a polity sui generis. Euroscepticism is a reaction to a restructuring of the European Union between the national and European levels (Bartolini 2005). This restructuring was quite silent and slow until the presidency of the European Commission by Jacques Delors in 1985, therefore Europe does not matter very much for national electorates public opinion until then. One speaks of the Eurosclerosis period of the European Union. Between 1952, the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the direct election of the European Parliament in 1979, decision-making was dominated by technocratic elitism. The governments of the member-states had full control over the European integration process. In spite of an early period in which the European Commission was able to push substantially the internal market, all this came to a halt after the Empty Chair policy of Charles de Gaulle and the subsequent Luxembourg compromise. Intergovernmentalism became the dominant method of integration reducing the powers of the European Commission. This followed what Helen Wallace referred as the logics of the image of the pendulum swinging regularly between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism (Wallace 2000: 46). Intergovernmentalism had reached its limits in the 1980s, in a time of major upheaval and a Great Transformation of European and global politics. In the 1980s, Eurosclerosis, high level of unemployment and lack of entrepreneurial innovation led to the relaunching of the Single European Market of which original blueprint was developed by the newly founded European Roundtable of Industrialists. Europe was in danger in losing ground in terms of competitiveness in relation to the USA and Japan. Jacques Delors had the charismatic and visionary abilities to change the pendulum from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism. He implemented the blueprint towards a more methodological Europeanism in overcoming the crisis. Since then, the European integration process has been in a permanent restructuring of its polity. This future-oriented „Russian dolls“approach predisposed the will to keep the rhythm of a permanent overhaul of the European Union. The different “Russian dolls”—Single European market programme, multiannual financial frameworks, the upgrading and reinventing of European cohesion policies, particularly for the southern European countries, and last but not least, Economic and Monetary Union changed the once EC dominated by the member-states to a EU with the European Commission as the motor of European integration (on Russian dolls approach, see Ross 1995: 39–50).

Delors was also able to profit from a very positive atmosphere among national political leaders, with exception of Margaret Thatcher and later on John Major, to push forward the European integration process. Moreover, the leaders were willing to pay for it by doubling the budget of the European Union twice, in 1988 and in the Edinburgh summit in 1992. Furthermore, the fall of the Berlin Wall 1989, the unification of Germany in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the second half of 1991, were an important structure of opportunity to move towards a more ambitious role in the then European Community (Dinan 2004: 233–234).

Since then the European Union has been expanding into more and more policy areas that affect considerably the national citizens. Mark Pollack characterised this as creeping incrementalism of policy areas (Pollack 1994, 2000).

Such a review of the transition from a methodological nationalism, in which member-states dominate the European integration process to methodological Europeanism, in which member-states have become part of a larger whole and are under considerable permanent systemic pressure to adjust to top-down and horizontal Europeanization pressures is necessary, because it gives a better understanding of Euroscepticism. The nation-state of the trente glorieux (1945–1975) is irrecognizable. Globalization and Europeanization have both contributed to an erosion of the self-contained state. While then the nation-state was quite self-contained and controlled its territories, today’s member-states of the European Union share and pool sovereignty as a strategy to survive in an increasingly turbulent world (Leibfried and Zürn 2005; Rosenau 1990).

In the European Union sovereignty is shared and most national policies are Europeanized. This transition from a national to a European political system is perceived as a threat to ways of life in the member-states. Most electorates think still nationally, not European. The result is a lagging behind of the attitudes of some parts of the population in relation to processes that changed the reality for good. The turning point for this increasing process of restructuring of European, national, regional and local levels was the adoption of the Treaty of the European Union. There is a disjunction between the national political cultures and a growing transnational European political culture. The European Union is now a multilevel political system linking the European, national, regional and local levels. It means that member-states are no longer isolated from each other, but interdependent. However, the originality of the European integration process is that such integration was paralleled by the development of European law which allowed for the consolidation of a non-hierarchical, non-coercive European multilevel governance system. Member-states are voluntarily part of the European Union, and according to article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon they can leave the Europolity at any time (Kohler-Koch 2003: 20; Hix and Hylland 2011; Hooghe and Marks 2001; Wessels 2008).

It is also at end of the 1980s that Euroscepticism begins to emerge as a widespread further cleavage of party politics (Lord and Hix 1997: 24, 26–27). It culminates during the process before and after ratification of the Treaty of the European Union in the early 1990s. Margaret Thatcher’s famous Eurosceptic speech in the College d’Europe in Bruges should enthuse a large faction inside her party, which created several intra-party Eurosceptic associations such as the 1992 foundation of Conservatives against a Federal Europe, No Turning Back Group, the 92 Group and the Conservative Way Forward (Baker et al. 2008: 98).

In this sense, it would be wrong to reduce the discussion just to the phenomenon of Euroscepticism at national level, because it really does not tell us very much about the overall picture. A better approach is to perceive Euroscepticism as part of this restructuring from national political systems to a European political system. However, as various authors have shown, even within Euroscepticism, the typology of Taggart and Sczerbziak is too crude to gain an understanding of what is now known as the “varieties of Euroscepticism”. According to the seminal book by Cécile Leconte, there are four varieties of Euroscepticism.: utilitarian, political, value-based and cultural anti-Europeanism. Her definition for the four varieties are as follows:

Utilitarian Euroscepticism refers to scepticism about the gains derived from integration, or its distributional impacts, be it at an individual or collective level (Leconte 2010:46, italics by JM).

……..

Political Euroscepticism can be defined as principled opposition or defiance towards the setting up of a supranational institutional system, the delegation of powers to supranational institutions beyond a limited core of policies (internal market, competition policy) and to the principle of the pooling of sovereignties (Leconte 2010: 50, italics by JM).

………

Value-based Euroscepticism refers to the perception that EU institutions unduly interfere in matters where not only strongly held collective and societal preferences, but, more fundamentally, value systems, are at stake (for instance, issues such as abortion, divorce, minorities’ rights, the balance between individual liberties and public order, and so on) (Leconte 2010: 57, italics by JM).

………………

The last form of Euroscepticism originates in scepticism towards ‘Europe’ as a civilization, as a historical and cultural identity. Here, EU scepticism is rooted in a deeper, cultural scepticism towards Europe in a broader sense, which can be defined as ‘anti-Europeanism’ (Leconte 2010: 60, italics by JM).

It is clear that these varieties of Euroscepticism show a more complex picture, than Taggart and Szczerbiak portrayed in their publications. Indeed, a major criticism came from Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde who regarded their typology too broad (Kopecký and Mudde 2002). Kopecky and Mudde rightly expand the typology to the Euroenthusiasts creating four different groups, the europhile optimists, the europhile pessimists, the europhobe optimists and the europhobe pessimists. While the Europhile optimists are unconditional supporters of European integration, the Europhobe pessimists reject outright the European integration. The europhile pessimists are critical of the EU and want to change it from within, while the europhobe optimists can be compared with soft eurosceptics which reject some aspects of European integration (Kopecký and Mudde 2002).

This eurocritical dimension of attitudes towards European integration was further developed by Bernard Weßels from the Science Center Berlin. He differentiates three types of Euroscepticism which clearly helps us to understand better the phenomenon. His three varieties of Euroscepticism are hard Eurosceptics, soft Eurosceptics and critical Europeans. They all have negative attitudes towards European integration, however the critical Europeans support the political community. They are contrasted to non-attached instrumentalists, soft instrumentalists and affective attached Europeans who positively support the European integration process, but have different levels of identification with the political community. The non-attached instrumentalists support the EU, but have negative identification with the EU. The instrumentalists support the EU and are neutrally inclined towards the political community, while the affectively attached Europeans are both positive of European integration and the political community (Weßels 2009: 62–63).

Weßels approach is certainly more conducive to an understanding of Euroscepticism, because like Kopecky and Mudde include also Euroenthusiasm, not just Euroscepticism types. The established typology along the two dimensions of “political EU community” as a concrete project and “ideas of European integration” as a diffuse helps to explain differences. However, in both cases their typology is still too narrow. They try to put all expressions in a four box scheme, diminishing so the value of its explanation. More appropriate seems to be the more generous typology of expressions developed by Robert Harmsen and Menno Spiering in their special issue on “Euroscepticism” (2004). Harmsen develops this argument in two further publications in 2005 and 2007. He clearly looks at the whole spectrum of attitudes, influenced by a paper written by Chris Flood who developed a more sophisticated supposedly “value-free” continuum taking into account the two opposite poles of Euroenthusiasm (Maximalists) and hard Euroscepticism (Rejectionist). Inbetween, one can find several categories such as reformists wanting change of certain aspects of the European project, gradualists advocating slow and piecemeal change, revisionists pushing for a return to a previous stage and minimalists defending the status quo and against further European integration (Harmsen 2004: 19–20). This clearly is a quite important more sophisticated continuum that is better placed to understand the whole varieties of attitudes towards European integration. However, one problem that all these typologies and continuums have, is that they are biased towards the more advanced democracies of western Europe. Passive instrumental disappointment or disenchantment is not covered by these continuums. This is a serious gap, because precisely such categories are dominant in the peripheral new democracies of southern, central and Eastern Europe. So far, what has been described as Euroscepticism is better interpreted as disenchantment with the European integration process, because it is not bringing enough benefits. It is an utilitarian approach towards European integration, but the reaction is passive it does not lead to an ideological Euroscepticism. In our own continuum, I therefore included four main types of atttitudes towards European integration, each one subdivided in two or three subtypes. These are as follows:

Euroenthusiasm

This refers to complete support for European integration and can be divided in those that are convinced about the project and are not led by national interests, and those that support European integration, but also pursue the national interest. I call the first, desinterested Euroenthusiasts and the latter interested Euroenthusiasts. A third group, that I struggle still to categorize are those political parties that advocate a Europe of the regions, but are extremely pro-European.

Eurocriticism

Eurocritics are pro-European, but want to change either some policy areas or the whole logics of the European integration process. This is a category that is neglected by the literature, and particularly by the typology of “soft” and “hard” euroscepticism. I differentiate between reformist eurocritics who want just to reform parts of the political project, and those that advocate a transformative approach, by changing the (economic or political) logics of the European integration process. Some leftwing and communist parties can be assigned to the latter such as the Block of the Left in Portugal, Die Linke in Germany or the United left in Spain.

Eurodisenchantment

This is a category that never appears in the literature. It expresses the disappointment of supporters of European integration with the pace and development of the European integration process. I have divided this group in two subtypes. Those that are temporarily disenchanted, because of the austerity policies of the global crisis and those that are disenchanted and detached from the European integration process, but do not express this disenchantment in the public space.

Euroscepticism

This is a more ideological position against the EU that can manifest itself in soft (rejection of some aspects) or hard (outright rejection). I divided soft Euroscepticism in strategic one, which clearly wants to opportunistically capitalize on the Eurosceptic mood of the population, and the sovereigntist version, which clearly assesses negatively interference of the EU in certain policies or way of life of the country. The last group are the hard Eurosceptics, divided in nationalist sovereigntists which reject the EU completely, because it affects its national sovereignty, and the cultural anti-Europeanists that regard the EU as a danger for the integrity of the national culture.

This broader typology will helps to understand better the varieties of Euroscepticism in the peripheries of the EU and how different are they from that of the more core member-states. The next section will contextualise the increase in more negative attitudes towards the EU in the recent Eurocrisis and the impact on the peripheries of the Europolity. Afterwards, we try to use the continuum to map out what is happening in southern, central and Eastern Europe in terms of these negative attitudes (Table 1).

Table 1 Continuum of attitudes towards European integration
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3 From Benevolent to Conditionality-Oriented Southern Europe: The Peripheralization of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe

Originally, the ECSC, EEC and Euratom were a community of six, of which French was the main working language, it expanded to nine in 1973. For the first time it became clear that not all countries shared the spirit of the six founding members. The referendums in Norway led to rejection of membership, and in the UK, first signs of Eurosceptic campaign, at that time by the Labour party, became salient which clearly still were not very loud, because the European Community (EC) was still very much controlled by the member-states as previously mentioned.

In 1974, the Portuguese Revolution of Carnations started the process of democratization in Portugal, Spain and Greece. All three countries were members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and therefore quite crucial for the southern flank of the military alliance. In the context of the Cold War, it was important for western and American leaders to consolidate these fledging liberal democracies. The integration in the regional community of democratic states was the obvious thing to do. Political leaders in all three countries regarded membership of the EC as an important step towards consolidation of democracy. The EC was idealized as a “vincolo esterno” (external link, agent) that benevolently would contribute to democratization and socioeconomic welfare of these countries (Dyson and Featherstone 1996). This vincolo esterno was a powerful argument for joining as soon as possible the European Union. Greece was able to join in 1981 due to its previous association agreement of 1962, signed before the military junta took over politics in 1967. The military dictatorship led to the freezing of the agreement, but after its downfall it could be reactivated again. Today with hindsight, one can speculate that Greece joined the EC too soon. Portugal and Spain had to wait further 5 years to join the EC in 1986. This was a painful waiting game, but in the end it helped to consolidate democratic and economic structures (see Magone 2010). All three countries belonged to southern enlargement and could rely on a fourth country that was quite positive about European integration and was located in the south. In fact, the “vincolo esterno” approach of political elites was first deviced and formulated in Italy (Varsori 2011). All three countries had a easy ride in terms of the absorption of the acquis communautaire if we compare to the central and eastern European countries. Moreover, they joined the European Union when Jacques Delors became president of the European Commission and most decisions related to today’s European Union were taken. Last but not least, it was recognised by the then leaders of the EU that the southern enlargement made the EC more heterogenous economically, socially and politically. Particularly, the lagging behind economies of southern Europe were a major issue due to the intention to achieve a level-playing field in the Single European Market and later on in Economic and Monetary Union. Club Med under the leadership of charismatic Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez were able to achieve the establishment of a substantially revamped multi-annual structural funds programme funded by a doubling of the EU budget in 1988 and 1992 (Dinan 2004: 225–227).

In between, the unexpected Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the unification of Germany, and the democratization of the central and eastern European countries created a structure of opportunity for a further enlargement of the EC/EU. The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed the neutral countries of Austria, Finland and Sweden to join the European Union in 1995. Norway was also scheduled to join, but Euroscepticism was much stronger there, and membership was rejected in a referendum in 1994. This enlargement was very important, because now most of western, northern and southern Europe were part of the European Union. The enlargement to the Nordic countries and Austria strengthened also demands for more accountability, transparency and democracy at the EU level. However, from an instrumental point of view the most important aspect of this enlargement was related to the financial sustainability of the European Union. All three countries were net payers into the budget of the EU. This was a crucial enlargement for the forthcoming central and eastern European enlargement.

Between 1993 and 2004, the European Union became a crucial agent for democratization and Europeanization. As Attila Agh rightly asserts these countries of central and eastern Europe (CEECs) had to adapt and anticipatorily implement the 80,000 pages of legal provisions of the acquis communautaire. The Copenhagen criteria stipulated the benchmarking for joining the European Union. Candidate countries were screened yearly to see how much progress they made towards these criteria. In comparison to the southern enlargement, the enlargement to central and eastern Europe was quite complex and difficult. Much easier was the smaller enlargement to the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Malta. These two islands were part of the western European liberal democratic tradition, and they had liberal market economies. The only major problem was that of the division of Cyprus, which in the end was not resolved, but nevertheless led to the integration of the Republic of Cyprus to become part of the European Union.

In contrast, central and eastern Europe comprise several groups of countries. Apart from the more stable and consolidated democracies of central Europe (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland), there were the Baltic republics (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania) and the eastern Europe (Bulgaria and Romania). Apart from Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007, all other candidate countries joined in 2004 (for a balance before enlargement see Lippert 2003).

One of the major differences to previous enlargements is that all these countries were subject to conditionality of fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria. It means that to belong to the regional community of democratic states became quite more difficult after 1993. This was a quite major change to the “benevolent” EC of the 1980s (see Smith 1999; Pridham 2005).

This became clear with the regular negotiations for the multi-annual financial framework, also known previously as financial perspectives. After the doubling of funding in the Edinburgh summit in 1992, the net payer countries began to join together and block any attempt by cohesion countries to increase the budget. The consequence is that the budget has been frozen, and even reduced in the last round in 2013. Such cleavage of net payers vs. net receivers started in the Berlin European Council of 1999 and continued in the Brussels European Council of 2005. The last such round leading even to a reduction of the EU budget was in the Brussels European Council of 2013. While the southern periphery has been able to keep the levels of funding since 1994, the central and eastern European periphery has to accept a much lower funding, although they are in greater need. Therefore, there is not only a major cleavage between the core European countries and the peripheral ones, but also within peripheries. There is asymmetrical distribution of funding in the European Union. The southern and some western European countries had in this situation to give up on their levels of funding from the EU and transfer to central and Eastern Europe. However, Portugal and Greece, two underperforming economies remain at the same level of funding as the crucial turning point of 1992. A more sophisticated analysis of per head transfer of cohesion and CAP Funds show an even more discrepancy between the southern, central and eastern peripheries. The cleavage between net payers and net receivers gained a new dimension during the crisis of the Euro and the sovereign debt crisis of some countries. The multiannual financial framework for the period 2014–2020 led, after initiative of prime minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom and networking with the net payers to a reduction of funding to € 970 bn for the 6 year period bringing below the symbolic one trillion € ceiling. One of the main arguments for the cuts was that in a period of austerity for most member-states, also the European Union had to give its contribution (Euractiv 2013a).

In this context of austerity, the EU showed that it is reaching its limits of governance, in terms of resources and geographical area. The difficulties within the Union prevent prospects of further enlargement. Priority of enlargement will remain the western Balkan states whenever they are ready. In this situation of austerity, restructuring of the economic governance system and above all consolidation of territorial governance, the best solution is not to venture into more enlargement. Although since 1 January 2014, all restrictions on labour mobility for Romania and Bulgaria have been lifted, these countries are still excluded from the Schengen area due to the resistance from Finland, the Netherlands, France and Germany (Euractiv 2013b).

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland have certainly exacerbated this conflict between the rich member-states and the poorer ones. These countries were affected by problems to raise funding in the markets through their sovereign bonds. It clearly showed that Economic and Monetary Union is still a quite incomplete project. The EU had to improve its economic governance instruments in order to prevent another sovereign debt crisis to happen again. Among the new measures in the new architecture of the European Union, one has to mention the European semester, which preventively tries to identify budgetary problems, before the final draft budget is approved by national parliaments. This peer review in the European Council and with participation of the European Commission will certainly tighten even further spending policies of national governments. Quite important is also the fiscal compact proposed by German chancellor Angela Merkel in 2011, which was signed by 25 countries, and just opposed by the UK and Czech Republic. Signatories to the intergovernmental fiscal compact agreement have to introduce in their constitutions the debt brake (Kunstein and Wessels 2011; Schwarzer 2013).

Therefore, the European Union has become quite a complex, sometimes intransparent political structure, which only experts are able to understand. The recent transformations have certainly made the EU even more intransparent for citizens (Fig. 1 ).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Net transfer per Head from EU Budget 2010. Source: Eurostat, Budget office of the EU quoted from The Guardian, 25 January 2012

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In the peripheries of southern, central and Eastern Europe, one begins to notice that the EU is more and more divided in terms of those that set the categories of European integration, the rule makers, and those that just passively accept the rules and implement them, the rule takers.

The intergovernmental construction of the bailouts of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Cyprus were motivated by the rationale that if conditions are not imposed on these countries, then reforms will not happen at all. This was a demonstration of power coming from net payers in relation to net receivers. In this process, the European Commission was sidelined and the informal Franco-German alliance represented then by chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolás Sarkozy, also known “Merkozy” because of their common aims, was able to impose an intergovernmental quite complex process towards the creation of a bailout fund, the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in 2010. It should be replaced by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) in 2013 (Schwarzer 2013; Hilz 2013).

The implementation of bailouts in the different countries was trusted in the socalled troika consisting of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The inclusion of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was allegedly a condition set by chancellor Angela Merkel and German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, in order to avoid that the Portuguese president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the president of the European Central Bank, Jean Claude Trichet, and later on Mario Draghi. All these EU leaders were sympathetic to the crisis countries, and therefore perceived as not being able to be tough on monitoring the progress in terms of the reforms set out in the memorandum of understanding. Therefore, Chancellor Merkel and German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble regarded as a sine qua non that the IMF is included in the monitoring team. (Die Welt, 28 August 2012) The opinion of the troika in each of the three-monthly visits to their countries were crucial to get the next tranche of funding. However, in 2012 and 2013 the cohesion of the troika was beginning to show signs of erosion. While the European institutions wanted a softer approach, particularly towards Greece, the IMF wanted to be more strict in their demands for reforms.

In 2012 and 2013, the IMF had to change its projections of the austerity programme for all countries. They recognised that they had made a mistake in the projections, and that the outcome in the social and economic field were more severe than envisaged. In this situation, all countries want to leave the tutelage of the troika as soon as possible. Ireland was able to do so in December 2013, Portugal was able to complete the adjustment programme in June 2014. Just Greece and Cyprus will remain under the close scrutiny of the troika. Expresso, 9 October 2012; World Economic Outlook, October 2012: 41; Tagesspiegel, 7 June 2013; IMF 2013a: 20–27; IMF 2013b, Wirtschaftswoche, 14 June 2013; Reuters, 16 July 2013).

The impact of the austerity programmes on the economy, politics and society of these countries cannot be underestimated. Instrumental disenchantment with the European Union in normally pro-European countries is a major effect. In all these countries, people are dissatisfied with how national democracy works, but also at European level. The Eurobarometer of the second half of 2011 shows that the democracies in the southern, central and eastern periphery are dominated by attitudes of dissatisfaction (Eurobarometer, 76, 2011: 48). Both the Spring and Autumn wave of Eurobarometer 2013 show that the countries in the southern, central and eastern Europe are those that feel that their voice does not count in the European Union. In the Autumn Eurobarometer 2013 conducted in November, there are 13 countries of the southern (Portugal,Spain,Greece, Italy, Cyprus), central (Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia) and eastern peripheries (Bulgaria, Romania) have results below the 29 % of EU average that respond that their voice counts in the European Union. Quite interesting is that the highest value is in Denmark with 57 % of respondents answering that their voice counts (EB 80, 2013: 8). Above the average are all net payers apart from the UK. In spite of the negative impact of Economic and Monetary on crisis countries, just Cyprus (42 %) seems to have now more people against it, then for it. While Portugal (50 %), Greece (62 %), Ireland (69 %), Spain (56 %) and Italy (53 %) still have quite high positive values above 50 %. In central and eastern Europe just the Czech Republic (26 %), Poland (35 %) and Lithuania (40 %) have low levels of support for EMU (Eurobarometer, 80, 2013: 25).

The 2014 European elections were an interesting testing ground for how the varieties of attitudes towards European integration played out in each country, but also European wide, by aggregating the data. The chapter was quite advanced when the 2014 elections took place, so that we used just the 2009 elections results to underline our findings. The next section tries to map out briefly what here is understood as peripheral Euroscepticism which we contrast to the Euroscepticism of the rich net payer countries.

4 Peripheral Euroscepticism: A Danger for European Integration?

After contextualising the changed nature of the European Union since the 1980s, it is important to look at the varieties of attitudes towards the European Union in the peripheries of the European Union. This allows us also to check if really Euroscepticism in the peripheries of the European Union could be danger for the cohesion of the Europolity. We will use the continuum that we presented above to map out the Euroenthusiasm/Euroscepticism in the southern, central and eastern peripheries. One particular good way to create this map is to look at the European political parties that are funded by the European Union since 2008. These European political parties are a novelty due to their role to integrate national parties into a general overarching rationale. This helps us to understand which kind of parties at national level adhere to different political positions towards the EU.

At the moment, the European Parliament has recognised the following European political parties that we try to match to our typology (Table 2).

Table 2 European Political Parties in the Continuum of European Attitudes
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After this allocation of the different European political parties recognized by the European Parliament. We try to identify the national parties in the peripheries of the European Union that belong to these European organizations. Based on their results in the European Parliament elections of 2009, we try to find out how strong the Eurosceptic vote is in the periphery. In order, to avoid too much information, we will concentrate on Eurocriticism, the Eurodisenchantment, measured by the abstention level, soft Euroscepticism and hard Euroscepticism. If we look at the European elections 2009, in all countries of the peripheries, the pro-European parties dominate. Euroenthusiast parties belonging to the European People’s Party, the Party of European Socialists and Liberals dominate in the European Parliament. According to my calculations in 2009 78.6 % of seats belong to Euroenthusiastic parties. The Eurosceptic vote is just 17.1 % and predominantly the soft version of it. It is particularly concentrated in central Europe, and particularly in the Czech Republic and Poland. Quite a large part belong to the Justice and Law. In 2014, Euroenthusiasm just declined slightly to 74.4 %, but Euroscepticism declined as well to 15.8 %.

Party (PiS) in Poland and the Civic Forum Party (ODS) in the Czech Republic . Soft Euroscepticism is less important in the other peripheries, although in southern Europe one has to mention the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Cypriot Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL) which are two parties which decided not to join the Party of the European Left (PEL), that is a more transformative Eurocritical party. In spite of the left-right dimension, PiS, ODS, PCP and AKEL are all sovereigntist parties, which clearly do not want to leave the European Union. ODS and PIS are organised in the European Conservatives and Reformist parties and follow a similar position as the British conservatives, which is the main party in this European parliamentary group and party. The former national presidencies of Vaclav Klaus (ODS) and Lech Kaczynski (PiS) can be referred as examples of Eurosceptic positions. Both presidents delayed substantially the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. One interesting undercurrent of the Euroscepticism of ODS is its anti-German tendencies due to the historical past before and during the second World War. There is also a fear of a German dominated EU. Sean Hanley seems to detect a development of a soft to a hard version in which Vaclav Havel seems to be at the centre of the ideology production. The “national interest” is more emphasised after 1998, also as a strategic positioning in the inter-party competition (Hanley 2004a: 531–533; Hanley 2004b). According to Aleks Szczerbiak and Monika Bil, the virulent Polish Euroscepticism of the 1990s and early millennium was replaced by a more internalised Europeanisation of party programmes. The focus on national politics and the good performance of the Civic Platform have reduced the impact of European integration on the political discourse (Szczerbiak and Bil 2009; Blazyca and Kolkiewicz 1999).

In Southern Europe PCP,The Greek Communist Party (KKE) and AKEL were hard eurosceptic parties, but shortly before and after membership these parties accepted the European integration process, nevertheless are eurosceptic in terms of the impact on sovereignty and the national social systems (for AKEL see Charalambous and Christophorou 2013).

Therefore, no hard Eurosceptic party can be found in the Iberian countries, it means that this is a clearly feature of southern Europe which clearly regards the European integration process as an important agent for change. The long authoritarian dictatorships in Portugal and Spain led to a general immunisation of both populations for rightwing parties, which do not have any representation neither at national and European level (Lobo and Magalhães 2011; Jiménez and Egea de Haro 2011).

The big exception is Greece in which the nationalist fascist party Golden Dawn was able to increase their vote substantially in the two national elections of 2013, becoming now a major virulent force against the European Union. In 2009, they were not represented in the European Parliament, but the ultra-conservative Orthodox People’s Rally (LAOS). LAOS was founded in 2000 and is a small party, but which was able to get representation in the European Parliament. In the two national elections of 2013, the party got only about 2 %, however in 2009 had reached 5.9 %. Golden Dawn (XA) and the new Independent Greeks (ANEL) party have more or less occupied this ultra rightwing space. Interesting about LAOS and ANEL is that they were founded by former prominent members of the predominantly pro-European New Democracy party. Both XA and ANEL profited immensely from the crisis related to the austerity programme that successive Greek governments have to implement. Before the crackdown on the fascist party Golden Dawn, an opinion poll on 13 October 2013 showed that the old parties continued to be rejected by the population and radical parties were able to keep their electoral share. This clearly made Golden Dawn the third largest force with 6.8 % of the vote, still before the Socialists (PASOK). The two largest forces were the conservartive pro-European New Democracy (ND) and the Coalition of the Left (Synaspismos) under Alexis Tsipras.(To Pontiki,13 October 2013): In second national elections of 2012, ND got 29.7 %, quite a weak result if compared with previous elections before the crisis, and Synaspismos 26.9 %. The vote of the pro-European Socialists (PASOK), one of the major parties before the crisis, collapsed to 12.3 %, and according to the previously mentioned poll of October 2013 it would have only got about 7 % at that time, becoming just fourth after golden Dawn. In comparison, to the other southern European countries, the Greek party system changed considerably. New more radical parties were elected that may affect the stability of the country and create a more fragmented party system. The Greek electorate may be moving from passive Eurodisenchantment to ideological Euroscepticism (on party system shortly before the crisis (see Verney 2011).

An interesting party is Tsipras’Synapismos which is a Eurocritical party. It wants to change the logics how the European Union is run. The social dimension, a review of Economic and Monetary Union, and the end of the austerity programme of the troika are important elements of the party’s programme. It is quite populist in presenting easy solutions to quite complex and difficult problems. In Portugal and Spain, one can also find Eurocritical parties like the Portuguese leftwing Block of the Left (BE) and United Left (IU). Both parties are not Eurosceptic as most political scientist tend to categorize them, but transformative Eurocritical. This clearly is probably the strongest current in southern Europe mainly due to the exponential rise of Tsipras’Synaspismos. It is this leftwing transformative Eurocritical position that is probably the most salient feature in southern Europe. In 2009, it was about 6.8 % of the southern European MPs and the second largest group after the Euroenthusiasts (Lisi 2013; Ramiro and Verge 2013; Tsakatika and Eleftheriou 2013). In the EP 2014 elections Tsipras’Synaspismos was able to win 26.6 percent of the vote, leaving behind both established parties New Democracy and PASOK, This clearly has increased the support for his Eurocritical position. Alexis Tsipras became the official candidate of the Party of the European Left for the position as president of the European Commission (Euronews, 15 December 2013).

The party systems of Romania and Bulgaria underwent major changes over time. Particularly, the Bulgarian party system had to deal with collapse of major parties and the emergence of new ones throughout the past 24 years. The vote is still quite volatile. Most parties reflect the more or less a Euroenthusiastic cluster of attitudes. However, in both countries exist virulent hard Eurosceptic parties. In Romania, there is the Great Romania Party (PRM) which achieved 8.7 % in the 2009 European Parliament elections. This nationalist party rejects European integration. It is not affiliated to any European party or parliamentary group. In 2000 and 2004, the PRM was able to achieve 19.5 % and 13 % respectively. However, in 2008 the party vote collapsed to 3.2 %. In Bulgaria, the hard eurosceptic vote has been more stable with the nationalist Ataka (Attack). This nationalist group founded in 2009 targets particularly the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, and rejects the EU as it is organised today. In the last European Parliament elections it reached 12 % in 2009, but at national level just 7.3 % in 2013. Nevertheless, it has been a stable force and may remain an important representative of hard euroscepticism in Bulgaria.

In the Baltic states, just Lithuania and Latvia have parties with Eurosceptic position represented in the European Parliament. Although Estonia is a Eurosceptic country in terms of the attitudes of the population, most parties are quite pragmatic and part of the permissive consensus of support of the European Union, because it is in the national interest. In contrast, in Lithuania and Latvia there are soft Eurosceptic parties. Particularly the “Order and Justice” (TT) of Roland Paksos is a populist Eurosceptic party advocating a more “Europe of Fatherlands” approach. It is member of the European Alliance for Freedom and Democracy. In the European Parliament elections of 2009 it received 12.22 %, and got 7.3 % in the last elections of 2012, down from 12.7 % in 2008. In Latvia, the Freedom and Fatherland/Latvian National Independent Movement (TB/LNNK) is a soft eurosceptic parties, emphasising also the sovereignty of the country. This was one of the first parties to emerge in Latvia after independence and the establishment of democracy. In 2008, the party in alliance with the party “Everything for Latvia” got 13.4 % at national level which is a considerable result in a highly fragmented party system, and in the 2009 European Parliament elections got 7.45 %. Meanwhile, there has been a merger of both parties. Latvia is probably one of the most Eurosceptic countries of the European Union, however Euroscepticism has not found the expression one would expect in electoral results. Latvia had to undertake major reforms and implement an austerity programme of the International Monetary Fund after receiving a loan of €714.3 million. This was necessary, because Latvia was in a severe recession between 2008 and 2010. Under the government of Andris Dombrovkis the small country was able to regain competitiveness and is now a fast growing economy similar to Estonia. Although the opposition wanted a referendum on the Euro, the government decided to introduce the Euro without it (The Economist, 28 December 2012). Support for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was quite low at end of 2012, but picked up throughout 2013 and in the autumn Eurobarometer had reached 52 % of support and in Estonia it increased considerably to 76 %. Since 1st of January 2014 Latvia became the 18th member of the Eurozone. Just Lithuania, which is not member of the Euro yet has just a support of 40 % (Eurobarometer, 80, 2013:25; The Economist, 9 January 2014). This may be an indication that Euroscepticism is more instrumental, or may be just Eurodisenchantment, that if everything goes right may lead to more Euroenthusiasm. Estonia has been the more successful country of all three Baltic states. Opinion polls changed from Eurosceptic positions to more Euroenthusiastic ones. The political parties have been moderate and cooperation showing a more Scandinavian pragmatic problem-solving culture. This was achieved, in spite of a severe recession and a similar austerity programme to that of Latvia (Lust 2006; Sikk 2009).

Taking everything into account Euroscepticism is a weak force in southern, central and Eastern Europe. It clearly is not a relevant force yet. The mainstream parties support the EU. Even the Eurocrisis and sovereign debt crisis did not change very much the party systems. The cleavage Euroenthusiasm vs. Euroscepticism is almost non existent at national level, and just plays out in the European Parliament elections, but actually in small numbers. The only two exceptions are Poland and Czech Republic with quite strong conservative parties with strong reservations about the interference of the EU in national sovereignty matters. This can be understood partly by referring by the long occupation of Soviet troops and loss of sovereignty, but partly the political culture of the individual countries.

More worrying than these results are the abstention levels across the peripheral countries (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
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Abstention in the 2009 European Parliament elections. Based on the European Parliament elections database http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/00082fcd21/Results-by-country-(2009).html;jsessionid=A0B6D22560D2E73E5224E82FB75043D0.node2?tab=14 accessed on 20 January 2014

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Here is not the place to make a deep analysis of abstention at European Parliament elections, but one can see that in some regions abstention is much higher and consolidated that in others. In central Europe the average is 72.6 % abstention, just Hungary has an abstention level of 63.7 %. In contrast Slovakia reaches 80.4 %. In Eastern Europe is also quite high, particularly in Romania with 72.33 %. Also in the Baltics the average is over 60.5 %, particularly in Lithuania with 79.2 %. There are many reasons why people do not vote in European Parliament elections. One major factor is that it is a second order election and does not matter so much in national political terms. However, these figures may also hide a type in the continuum of European integration that has been so far neglected that of Eurodisenchantment. Here suffices to present some data from the post-electoral survey that the European Parliament has conducted in 2009. One of the questions was what are the reasons for not voting. In the item “opposition to EU” just about 1–3 % responded affirmatively. The outliers were Sweden and Austria with 13 and 11 % respectively. The highest positive answers were to the item “vote has no consequences/vote does not change anything”. The EU average was 17 %. Particularly in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia it reached 17, 22, 19, and 23 % of answers respectively. This shows a strong passive Eurodisenchantment of non voters in central and Eastern Europe. Also in the Baltics are the figures quite high with 38 % for Latvia, 21 % for Lithuania and 17 % for Estonia. In southern Europe, just 24 % of Greek respondents, in contrast to 10 % Spaniards and 11 % Portuguese. Another of the answers is defined in the item “Lack of trust in/dissatisfaction with politics in general”. The EU average is 28 %, however the central and eastern European countries reach quite high values. In Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria,Slovakia and Czech Republic 36, 45, 44,37 and 39 % respectively respectively respond affirmatively to this item. Greece is an outlier in southern Europe with 51 % of the vote, Portugal and Spain are around the EU average. The Baltic states are also below the EU average (Eurobarometer-European Parliament 2009: 19–24).

In sum, the identification with Eurosceptic parties in southern, central and eastern Europe is rather weak, most voters tend to vote for the mainstream pro-integration parties. The great exception has been Poland and the Czech Republic. However, both party systems changed considerably in the past years and this may also change the prospects of these parties. The vote of the Civic Forum Party in the Czech Republic collapsed from 20.2 to 7.7 % in the 2013 elections. A new populist party called Yes 2011 emerged out of the and became the second largest party after the pro-European social democrats (ČSSD) and in Poland the Law and Justice party has been experiencing defections as well as a strong competition from the pro-European Civic Platform Party (PO) under charismatic Donald Tusk. This also changed the overall quality of the debate on the merits of European integration. More important for the success or failure of European integration is the vast majority of people who do not vote at all. Certainly a large part will be disenchanted with the European Union and therefore undermining the legitimacy of the whole project.

Conclusions: Divided Europe? The Centre-Periphery Cleavage and Euroscepticism

One of the problems of the Euroscepticism debate is that the main typology used is too narrow to understand the whole picture of the phenomenon. In this chapter we tried to show, that Euroscepticism is just one expression towards the European Union, and actually a small one. Hard euroscepticism, outright rejection of the EU is almost non-existent if we take the survey on the political parties in the European Parliament in Table 3 as a map. A lot what is characterised as Eurosceptic which is actually Eurocritical. This phenomenon is quite strong in Greece and finds also its expression in Portugal and Spain. It is mainly transformative Eurocriticism, which is supportive of European integration, but wants to change its policies in a different direction. Overall, it more than doubled its MEPs from 4.1 % in 2009 to 9.6 % in 2014.

Table 3 Continuum on European Union attitudes among Southern, Central and Eastern Europe in the European Parliament after 2009 and 2014 EP elections
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I tried also to show that the European Union changed considerably in the past thirty years, particularly after the introduction of the “Russian dolls” approach of president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors. However, after a period of generosity, the European Union has become less benevolent and changed its approach to the central, eastern and Baltic countries. It became a EU based on conditionality. The recent Eurocrisis and sovereign debt crisis led to similar policies towards southern Europe through the troika. This clearly was a big surprise for all southern European countries. Particularly, Greece and Portugal had to learn that to be part of a competitive EU they had to become themselves more competitive, but this is still work in progress. In Cyprus, the business model was not exactly the ideal one for a competitive economy. Ireland is a different case, because it has quite a dynamic economy, in spite of the negative impact of the banking sector leading up to the crisis.

In spite of this, a part of Greece, most other countries in the periphery are still supporting the European integration process by voting for pro-European mainstream parties. Euroscepticism remained so far a marginal phenomenon in most countries. However, the European Union has to find better strategies of including the vast majority of people who are disenchanted with the project. Otherwise, it will remain an insignificant regional governance political system in the world.