Can the Politicization of European Integration be Reversed?* PIETER DE WILDE and MICHAEL ZÜRN Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB) Abstract Following the failure of the Constitutional Treaty, executives of European Union (EU) Member States and the European Commission tried to take European integration as a political issue as much off the agenda as possible and limit involvement of citizens in EU decision-making. This article assesses the viability of this attempt to combat politicization of European integration and comes to the conclusion that it is unlikely to succeed in the long run. Politicization, it is argued, is a direct consequence of the increasing authority of the EU. The executive response to reverse this trend, however, does not address its cause, but rather the intermediating factors in the form of political opportunity structure. Since the cause of politicization remains intact and interme- diating factors are unlikely to be controlled by executives, this attempt to reverse politicization is not viable. Introduction As European Union (EU) Member State leaders met in the spring of 2007 to sign the Lisbon Treaty, it was widely considered a thinly veiled effort to reintroduce the failed Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (TECE) while avoiding ratification refer- endums in as many states as possible. The British tabloid, the Daily Mail, voiced concern eloquently: ‘New EU Treaty is a “Constitution in Drag” – But Blair Insists There Will Be No Referendum’ (Mail Online, 2007). What we see here is an example of an executive response to growing politicization of European integration, which consists of limiting the involvement of the wider public in EU institutional reform and policy questions as much as possible. This response to the failure of the TECE appears dominant in the conduct of both the European and national executives. On the one hand, the European Commission imper- sonated by José Manuel Barroso emphasizes the need to do business (that is, problem- solving) and to strengthen Europe especially in its external relations (Commission, 2006). Any issues of constitutional settlement, procedural democracy and legitimacy are put aside. We may label this the ‘new Barroso strategy’ to strengthen Europe. On the other hand, Member State leaders like Nikolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel seem to see classical intergovernmental multilateralism as the appropriate means to respond to the urgency of crises such as the financial and the euro crisis. This approach has helped them to come to solutions which would have been hard to achieve in a public-oriented approach such as including the European Parliament (EP) or direct referendums on the future of the euro. They were also successful in pushing difficult decisions about bail-outs through in the * We would like to thank the members of the TKI Colloquium at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB) and the participants of the workshop for this special issue, especially the editors and Sara Hobolt, for very helpful comments. JCMS 2012 Volume 50. Number S1. pp. 137–153 © 2012 The Author(s) JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA