ABSTRACT

The field known as Europeanization explains the domestic impact of the European Union (EU) by focusing on the origin of the EU impulse, the process through which the impulse is filtered, interpreted and used by constellations of domestic actors and institutions and the outcomes in terms of convergence or differential Europe. This literature has, for good reason, tended to examine such processes in ‘forward gear’; that is, studying the efforts to increase the domestic impact of the EU. In recent years, however, there have been several manifestations of strategies to reduce this impact and operate in ‘reverse gear’, thus seeking de-Europeanization effects. In this chapter, we draw on the established ‘forward gear’ conceptual and empirical tools to establish the broad outlines of a framework to account for de-Europeanization (‘reverse gear’). We locate the origins of the impulse to de-Europeanize in both the EU’s institutions themselves, and in the member states, and we examine the actors and processes which explain the extent to which this has ultimately taken place.