Disadvantages Of Euroscepticism

Euroscepticism – a threat to the future of the project called EU
EU’s finality as a federation is not the only possible outcome of the EU’s development – and it is not even a realistic one (Majone 2009: 219–221). A mischievous comment suggests itself in connection with the “ever closer Union”: there is probably nothing that would contradict the finality of European integration more than this concept, which characterises above all a process, a development. It remains true, however, that although the categories of soft and hard Euroscepticism imply one specific form of European integration, Taggart and Szczerbiak’s typology does not employ an explicit, definition of it. Obviously, one might object that the research aim of both authors was to

No longer do we find ourselves in a period of major advances in the Union’s development, in the way that we did in the 1950s and again in the 1990s. The protracted and painful unwinding of the Laeken process through the 2000s resulted in a Lisbon treaty that essentially reaffirmed the process to date, rather than a truly ground-up reappraisal of the system. The difficulties in reaching even this modest consolidation suggest that there is no longer a widespread desire for major structural reform in the short and medium term. This trend is further reinforced by the severe impact of the Great Recession, with all of its implications for national financial and economic retrenchment and for its impact on weaker economic growth, the latter historically having been associated with slowing in integration (see Dinan 2005). At the time of writing, an area where there might be significant potential for a significant advance in deepening integration is in respect to the Euro and its associated governance (e.g. Economist, 21 June 2011), but this is certainly nothing like a consensus view at present. With this slowdown in integration in mind, from the sceptic camp’s perspective, it becomes ever easier to find shortcomings in existing EU practice, knowing that major resolution is not likely to be forthcoming at any great speed. As the periodic ‘relaunches’ of integration have demonstrated, the system needs to be constantly reviewed and updated if it is not to be overtaken by events. Coupled to this slowdown in integration is the historic stance that elites have taken towards sceptic views, namely one of ignoring them, or at least of giving that impression. This was most vividly seen in the ‘re-runs’ of the referenda on Maastricht in Denmark and on Nice and Lisbon in Ireland, where there was a clear impression that