The intense politicization of European integration combined with the unprecedented nomination of Commission presidency candidates by European political parties made the May 2014 EP elections the most interesting and critical in the EU's history. Many observers feared that the biggest winners would be far-right parties which, capitalizing on opposition to integration and immigration, polled well domestically. Hitherto, these parties had not created a group in the EP, as such a step was contrary to their core nationalist ideologies. During the crisis, however, the French National Front and the Dutch Freedom Party made efforts to unite the nationalist, anti-EU forces and destroy the EU from within. In fact, most Eurosceptics' proposals would not be easy to implement without breaking up the entire project.
This paper discusses how the politicization of European in the crisis may impact the EU's future. We draw on Haas's discussion of short- and long-run negative and positive expectations and on Schmitter's model of crisis-induced decision-making cycles as well as his expectations related to politicization in his treatise on neo-neo-functionalism. Based on these works, we spell out scenarios regarding elite behavior that help us analyze current developments.
