Sweden and the EU

Many Europeans view the EU and the move towards an ‘ever closer’ union with mixed feelings. While security concerns and the ‘peace argument’ continue to play an important role, it is evident that with the fading memory of the Second World War, the receding threat of a Third World War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the process of economic and political integration has increasingly come to be complicated by concerns over ‘national identity’. To some extent the emergence of neo-nationalism is an expression of the increasing split between the elites, who tend to be persuaded by integrationist arguments and seduced by the promise of increased economic growth, and the masses, who are both less ‘European’ in their outlook and more prone to feel threatened by unemployment thought to be linked to ‘globalization’. ¹ Thus the political climate has pushed to the fore the latent conflict between the EU ‘project’ and the survivance of the nation, to invoke a Québecois figure of anxiety.