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French eurosceptics of the postMaastricht period often opposed EU policy by declaring it incompatible with « republican » values. Far from being only tactical or occasional, this political discourse refers back to the question of an identity contradiction between national political culture and European political culture. Obvious at the time of the signature of the Rome treaties, theoretical resistance to Europe refers to a republican model drawing its source from a long political and intellectual tradition (the myth of 1789, the republican theory of the state, and the social philosophy of the CNR, public policy model of the 1950s). The increasingly new nature of European « governance » was then able to foster criticism which was both « national » and « democratic », two aspects whichstrengthened each other.