EU critique beyond Euroscepticism and progressive stories: Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

Critical stances towards the EU have long been marginalized. In the political realm, they have been, and still frequently are, depicted as the business of "Eurosceptics" who are fundamentally questioning an established normative consensus. In the academic realm, integration theory somewhat similarly builds on "stories of progress" which construct a simplistic and largely uncritical history of European integration. In this introduction to the special issue, we argue that these tendencies do more harm than good, as they stand in the way of meaningful investigations of the diversity, the ambivalences, the symbolic underpinnings and the socio-political functions of EU critique. We picture how and with what consequences EU critique is typically delineated as a marginal phenomenon, and we sketch alternative perspectives based on an idea of EU critique as a field of knowledge that emerges in discourse and practice. Ultimately, both the introduction and the papers in this special issue make the case for freeing EU critique from its outside position in order to get a more nuanced picture of European integration and the current challenges it faces.

A union in distress: Contested spatial imaginations, narratives and practices of European (dis)integration

“…Shifting political grounds and local bottom-up factors are rather neglected in this perspective (Scheller and Eppler, 2014: 6), and critical voices, in this narrative, are interpreted as Eurosceptic voices questioning the integration project. Disintegration as a social dynamic does not become addressable within this body of research (see also Bach, 2008; Münch, 2006; Scheller and Eppler, 2014: 6; Schünemann and Barbehön, 2019: 3; Vobruba, 2012).…”

“…Quite a few scholars try to disentangle the patchwork of critiques and strategic appropriations regarding the union’s fragile normative assumptions (see, for example, Scheller and Eppler, 2014; Schünemann and Barbehön, 2019; Vollaard, 2014). Recent years have witnessed an increased scholarly fixation on the powerful and seemingly omnipresent discourse of so-called ‘hard’ Euroscepticism (Szczerbiak and Taggart, 2000: 6), addressed not only as an expression and result of the difficulties faced by the EU (e.g.…”

“…Therefore, they differentiate between four dimensions of integration versus disintegration (territorial, institutional, economic and social-cultural (Scheller and Eppler, 2014: 296)) and discuss disintegration strategies as functional mechanisms to support integration, for example regarding the cases in which certain competencies are re-directed to the national level (Scheller and Eppler, 2014: 317). EU critique, in this approach, is understood as a form of appropriation, seeing critique generally as a constitutive part of the democratic project (Schünemann and Barbehön, 2019). In sum, European integration and disintegration are seen as taking place simultaneously and as processes which reciprocally influence each other (Scheller and Eppler, 2014: 10).…”

“…Criticisms of European integration have existed from the origins of the process, ranging from a variety of positions questioning its efficacy to direct opposition. Meanwhile, recent Political Science studies discuss the interaction between integrative and disintegrative stances as an inherent feature of integration processes (Scheller and Eppler, 2014; Schünemann and Barbehön, 2019). We take these approaches as starting points for considering the processes of disintegration and integration within the EU, which we understand heuristically as a symbolic and spatial construction shaped by multiple spatial imaginations, economic, political, cultural and ethical narratives and practices, that among others manifest in respective policies.…”