A New Type of Left-Wing Euroscepticism: Bloco’s ‘Disobedient’ Position

Over the last few decades, most parties to the left of social democracy moved from an outright opposition to European integration to a more reformist position: while opposing certain aspects of it, they would aim to change it from within. While that broad consensus was not significantly affected in the first years of the Eurozone crisis, the deal signed by the SYRIZA government in July 2015 with the Troika resulted in certain left parties reassessing their stance on Europe. This paper argues that the most substantial such development occurred in the case of the Left Bloc (Bloco) from Portugal, which abandoned its previous ‘Expansionist’ position. It is argued that its new position, also displayed by the new transnational initiative ‘Plan B for Europe’, represents a new type of left-wing Euroscepticism that, while not advocating from an immediate exit, it does not exclude this alternative any longer, particularly with regards to the Eurozone. This new approach is not encapsulated by any of the current analytical frameworks in the literature. The paper suggests that this approach would be best described as ‘Disobedient Euroscepticism’