ABSTRACT
This chapter offers another take on the question of what factors contribute to shaping attitudes to “Europe”. It argues that most of the factors typically cited to explain Switzerland’s Euroscepticism are common to the two main linguistic areas of the country and cannot therefore account for the marked difference between them, whereby the French-speaking region has consistently been more pro-integration than the German- or Italian-speaking areas. The author argues that the key factor is the peculiar cultural situation of German-speaking Switzerland and its consequences for the latter’s attitudes to Germany and, by extension, to “Europe”. The perception of integration as a German-driven cultural threat to German-speaking Switzerland is the key mechanism fuelling Euroscepticism in the latter. Theiler highlights the similarities with the way that English cultural identities have featured in the Brexit debate, thus calling for greater scholarly attention to the role played by cultural factors.
