Oldal 42 [42]
40 ] Tamás Dezső Ziegler
The problem also has a social level: the system of the EU is not explained in
our schools, and people in general do not really know how the overcomplicated
Union and its institutions work.’ This also becomes important when dubious
austerity measures are imposed on a country, like in the case of Greece, and,
as a consequence of the interconnected system, individual countries lose their
capacity to help themselves. In such a situation, people tend to be far more
critical towards European cooperation.
Moreover, there are serious inconsistencies in how EU institutions handle
specific countries. Same or similar violations of EU law are treated differently,
so the perception of fairness of integration is being put into question (Schmitter
and Lefkofridi 2016, 216). A massive transfer of power to the EU, which could
cope with the ‘no taxation without representation’ problem, is not imaginable
at present (Schmitter 2012). Finally, Schmitter and Lefkofridi also claim that
with or without the EU... European national democracies have been in trouble for
several decades. The paradox of these times is that, precisely when so many aspiring
neo-democracies have been emerging in the East, the archaeo-democracies of the
West have been sliding into crisis. Their citizens have begun to question the very
same ‘normal’ institutions and practices that new democratizers have been trying
so hard to imitate. (Schmitter 2012, 44, emphasis in the original)
Other scholars, like Erik Jones, also find that unequal opportunities of Member
States can cause disintegration (Jones 2018). Integration creates losers and
winners, and “if there is some spectacular collapse, it will most likely result
from the isolation of one-or-more member states from the rest of the Union.
The British sense of self-isolation is one illustration of this dynamic; the
forced isolation of Greece in the summer of 2015 is another” (Jones 2018,
449). If Member States do not receive mutual support or empathy from other
countries, people will lose faith in the EU.
Eppler and her colleagues also stress that the expanded competences of
the EU and peoples’ identity could collide:
The growing gap between the dramatically expanded competences of the EU on the
one hand and the static levels of European identity on the other hand increases the
likelihood that the EU’s power has grown to the point where it exceeds the necessary
basis of ‘identity’ safeguards. (Eppler et al. 2016, 17; see also Kelemen 2007, 60)
These circumstances can generate spill-backs (i.e. the reverse of spillovers),
or to put it differently: a ‘transcending cycle’ (Eppler et al. 2016, 3; Lindberg
and Scheingold 1970, 199; Schmitter 2012, 46).
5 "This is also true in other forms of integration as well: the Council of Europe, for example,
is a nearly unknown organisation by the European public.