How Hard Does It Have to Be? Reconsidering European Integration and Hard Euroscepticism

Abstract Recent research on party‐based Euroscepticism increasingly ascribes ‘hard Euroscepticism’ only to parties pursuing exit from the EU. I argue that such interpretation, besides deviating from Taggart and Szczerbiak's original work, conceals the actual extent of ‘principled opposition’ to European integration. This contribution reconsiders and redefines hard Euroscepticism, restoring consistency with Szczerbiak and Taggart's reasoning whilst anchoring the category in the substantive core of European integration: an integrated common market, the legitimacy of a supranational layer, the possibility of further expansion of competences and EU core values. Compared to the understanding centred on exit, this (re)definition brings several advantages. Above all, it prevents the reduction of hard Euroscepticism to a merely strategic–tactical variable exclusively reserved for opposition parties. Moreover, it avoids the conflation of ‘strange bedfellows’ in the adjacent category of soft Euroscepticism. These arguments should stoke debate on the relationship between interpretations of European integration and Euroscepticism, hard and soft.