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Restriction lift date:2018-08-01
Citation:Schön-Quinlivan, E. (2017) ''The elephant in the room' no more: Europe as a structuring line of political cleavage in the 2017 presidential election, French Politics, 15(3), pp. 290-302. doi:10.1057/s41253-017-0041-x
It is traditionally argued that the topic of European integration is rather absent or under-discussed in French political debate. In this context, it came as a surprise that the 2017 French presidential election turned into a ‘référendum sur l’appartenance à l’Union’ (Costa 2017). This article argues that after many presidential campaigns where Europe remained ‘the elephant in the room’, 2017 saw its settling as a clear line of cleavage between political parties, relegating the traditional left/right cleavage to a secondary position. The politicisation of socio-economic questions at European level also signalled a move away from the traditional value-based Eurosceptic grounds towards a will to shape the debate in the direction of a more social Europe.
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