Disciplining large member states during the crisis: analyzing the discursive strategies of the EU and German actors on France

With the different crisis processes unfolding in Europe, European integration has changed its modus. Critical observers have identified the rise of ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ or ‘new constitutionalism’ in order to denote the new character and continued neoliberal content of European integration. This article explores the content of the new European mode of integration by analyzing several documents addressed to France by the European Commission as coordinating discourse; and the communicative discourse of German politicians who support and disperse this neoliberal agenda, for example, via interviews in French newspapers. In highlighting the discursive strategies of those speech acts, I argue that those discourses are undemocratic in character as they seek to depoliticize important issues. This analysis helps us understand how the EU disciplines larger member states and also why the French Socialist Government is not pursuing its election campaign program but a mostly neoliberal policy course in the area of economic, social and fiscal policies.