Research Papers

The European Union’s most urgent problems require increasingly centralized responses. They’re also producing nationalist, often anti-EU responses from European voters, which represents a big problem. Whatever the eventual EU responses to its challenges, popular political positions are being left unclaimed by legitimate EU institutions. In fact, Europeans’ most popular positions are often both illegal under EU law and damaging to the EU’s prosperity. Two examples: in 2011, fixing the Eurozone requires centralized, pan-European authority, but it has also produced virile national sentiments in Germany and Greece throughout the same year. Similarly, an influx of migrants to Europe followed the Arab Spring. A coordinated burden-sharing response was required - by practicality if not by law. Instead, EU Member States acted alone. The response of Italy, France, Denmark and other countries even endangered the basic legal framework of free movement and common markets in Europe. The ultimate historical irony for Europe would be if effective, centralized governance in Europe fails to beat growing charges of a democratic deficit. This would mean those post-war institutions designed for peace, and later prosperity, instead labouring under perceptions - or eventual realities - of democratic illegitimacy. One outcome would be the popular legitimacy of many far-right agendas. This would become satire. Europe’s historic answer to Fascism never intended itself to be considered a tyranny, and failing to produce institutions that are legitimate, popular(ish) and effective will endanger Europe’s international agility and success - critical given the challenges of our new century. The paper will conclude by looking at and explaining the different EU responses to populist movements and parties from Haider to Berlusconi and Orban.