second : a reaction from the European left which perceived further European integration as a free-marketer plot designed to strip away their hard-won rights and liberties.

It doesn't look like they were wrong. The Brussels Consensus has replaced the Washington Consensus and is meting out neoliberal shock-doctrine to EU member states to the point that we have coined the term being ECB'd where in the latter part of the 20th century developing countries were being IMF'd.

Economics is politics by other means