Rising Euroscepticism and domestic political point-scoring pose an existential threat to the EU, according to the man tipped to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European commission.



However, Britain’s decision to leave has helped dissuade some political leaders from continuing to attack the bloc, said Jyrki Katainen, a commission vice-president.

Katainen suggested Britain’s EU referendum result had shown political leaders how dangerous it was to fuel anti-EU sentiment. “Brexit remedied this a bit,” he said.

“Many governments saw that you can all of a sudden find you are in a place you never thought you can be – if you order something you most probably can get it.”

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The former prime minister of Finland said in an interview with the Guardian that it was now time for EU member states to take ownership of the European project. Constant attacks on Brussels by politicians engaging in party political point scoring could not go on, he said.

The new EU needed to be developed by the member states themselves, Katainen said, in order to “avoid the situation where every year, in some member states, elections create an existential threat to Europe. It is not sustainable.”

The Front National’s Marine Le Pen, who wants to renegotiate France’s relationship with the EU to “restore sovereignty”, is currently leading the polls in the first round of the French presidential election. In the Netherlands, the far-right candidate Geert Wilders celebrated Britain’s vote to leave and has vowed to call a referendum if he gets the chance.

Leaders nearer the political centre, including the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, and the former French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, have been accused of aping the language of the populist right.

Katainen said political leaders in some member states had been demonising the EU for short-term domestic reasons, while some failed to show sufficient solidarity on EU policy despite being part of the decision-making process.

On Thursday, the commission criticised member states for failing to live up to their vow in 2015 to relocate thousands of refugees currently languishing in camps in Italy and Greece. Hungary, Austria and Poland refuse to participate in the EU’s relocation scheme. The Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovakia are doing so on a “very limited basis”.

Katainen said: “[The] 27 governments in the last two years have wanted to be part of the EU and it is fair to say that they will want to stay in the EU but some of the countries are either unwilling to participate in common problem solving or they are demonising the EU even though they have participated in the decision-making themselves.

“Only for short-sighted political reasons, the governments have criticised the EU as a construction and it will have some impact on what the normal citizens think.

“This kind of voiceless partnership with our member states ... is not sustainable. The commission cannot do anything in order to correct this. Citizens and national decision-makers can do it.”

Speaking after a white paper was published by the European commission offering member states various options for the future shape of the EU without Britain, Katainen said governments were not actually reflecting the desire for integration that he believed existed among citizens.

In comments that many will find contentious, he said: “I never questioned the basis of the European integration [as prime minister]. And this is not the case in a big part of Europe at the moment ...

“Citizens’ expectation are way higher than what the general perception is. The majority of the people are supporting integration in the eurozone area and the euro as a currency, but there are a whole range of issues, including defence, counter-terrorism, climate change, some social policy issues, where people would like to transfer power from national to EU level.

“People are more in favour of integration than the governments are,” he said.

Juncker will end his time as president of the commission in 2019. Asked about claims that he could be a top candidate to take over, Katainen insisted he had no ambitions in that direction.