After the ‘Europe of the Regions’: Explaining Current Trends in the Relationship between Regionalism and European Integration

Abstract

Most studies conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s saw regionalism and European integration as mutually supporting phenomena, whose de facto alliance and convergence was summarized in the slogan ‘Europe of the Regions’. In contrast, more recent works detected a ‘fall’ in the idea of the ‘Europe of the Regions’, with Western European regionalist parties’ experiencing a considerable loss of influence in the post-enlargement EU, and many of them cooling down their support for European integration, becoming more instrumental in their positioning or even adopting openly oppositional stances. On the other hand, most of ethnic minority parties from new member states or candidate states in Central-Eastern Europe have, also due to the protection guaranteed to their ethnic groups by EU conditionality, developed a pro-EU position. In addition, recent claims for independence in Western Europe, most notably in Scotland and Catalonia, appear to be framed in overall pro-EU terms. The purpose of this panel is to: - Analyze in a long-term perspective the positioning of regionalist parties towards European integration, explaining changes in trends in different periods. - Analyze and compare the positions of Western European regionalist parties and those of Central-Eastern European minority ethnic parties towards the EU and the process of European integration. - Focus on the most recent developments either concerning regionalist parties (e.g. the undertaking of concrete actions towards independence) or EU politics (e.g. the emergence and management of the economic crisis or the current immigration/refugee crisis), in order to explore their impact on the relationship between regionalism and European integration. - Present reflections and/or proposals from a theoretical/conceptual and/or methodological point of view for the future study of regionalism and, in particular, for the study of regionalist or minority ethnic parties in the context of European integration.