Assessing the Depoliticization of European Citizens in a More Politicized Union

Have European citizens become increasingly Eurosceptic and thereafter more politicized over the last two decades, turning their backs on European integration? Though many journalists, politicians and academics argue that they have, this paper suggests that reactions to European integration cannot be reduced uniquely to a rise in Euroscepticism, but that indifference and ambivalence need also to be brought into the picture when studying citizens’ attitudes towards the EU and more broadly EU legitimacy and its politicization. As the enhanced politicization of the European integration has marked the EU post-Maastricht development and particularly the last European elections held in 2014, this text aims at understanding how this (macro) politicization has impacted on the acceptance and the appropriation of the political order by lay citizens. Thus, this paper challenges the idea that a growing (macro)-politicization leads necessarily to a polarization of citizens’ attitudes towards the EU and proposes an alternative interpretation. Drawing on evidence from recent survey data collected in May 2014, from long-term survey data (EB Trends) and from 24 focus groups conducted in francophone Belgium, France and Great Britain in 2006, this paper relies on triangulation in order to explore the various faces of citizens’ depoliticization. It adopts a mixed-methods approach to analyzing the middle-of-the-road attitudes of ordinary citizens who consider themselves neither Europhiles nor Eurosceptics. Complementing existing quantitative and qualitative literature in the field, it opens up new perspectives on attitudes towards European integration.