The Ideological Choice for Europe

“I don’t think that our EU membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations.” (Orban 2014) This epitomises the rise of political groups, who no longer necessarily see a connection between a liberal economic and a liberal political order. Today the EU is marked by an inversion of ideological realities: Whereas the supranational polity developed democratic and social standards, member states embark on a different strategy. Why do we witness a retrenching of national social welfare and the declaration of Social Rights at the European level at the same time? Why do populist parties advocate national liberal economy and fiscal discipline, while simultaneously opposing EU integration (so far identified as promoting such liberalism)? We assume that the old ordoliberal paradigm of EU integration allowed for such contradiction by imposing competitiveness as the guiding economic ideology and hence fuelling fiscal competition between member states. The Euro-crisis enhanced such stance. The demands for social justice are denounced by “neutral” specialists as irrational remainder of “old ideological battles” (Zizek 1998). Necessity is to outplay ideology. But are we not witnessing old ideological battles between the social-democratic ideology of justice and the neo-liberal market-necessities? Ironically, it has now reached the European level: the discourse on social justice is to prevent disintegration, whereas member states strive for winning the game of competitiveness. The paper, 1) traces ideological narratives of European integration from ordo- to neo-liberalism and national illiberalism to a new European discourse on justice to substantiate the puzzle of inverse ideological positions; 2) drawing on expert interviews in 28 member states (Horizon-2020-project “EMU-Choices”) it maps national positions on economic ideologies and their conduciveness to further integration, differentiation or disintegration; 3) this empirical basis allows to draw preliminary conclusions about future European ideological battles on the legitimacy of the EU.