Economics and Public Support for the European Union: An Analysis at the National, Regional, and Individual Levels

The intention of this paper is to explore the sources of public attitudes toward the European Union over the last two decades, using cumulative data available from the Eurobarometer series of public opinion polls. The basic question addressed is whether attitudes are affected by short-term trends in economic well-being and tangible benefits from EU membership, or whether they instead manifest broader and more durable support for integration. The paper will begin by discussing the two major hypothesized sources of support for the EU as an institution, utilitarian and affective support. It will then offer an empirical analysis of public attitudes toward the EU between the mid 1970s and the late 1990s. The analysis will be conducted at three levels of generality. It will begin by focusing on relationships at the level of member-states by means of a pooled cross-sectional and time series analysis of eight EU members. The analysis will go on to explore cross-sectional and longitudinal variance in public attitudes at the level of administrative regions within the EU, exploring the possibility that relationships that are not apparent at the national level will be evident when more homogenous regions are examined. Finally, the study will conclude with an analysis at the level of individual Eurobarometer respondents, examining whether attitudes toward European integration are a product of individuals' personal economic well-being as opposed to that of the nation or region in which they reside. The overall conclusion of our complementary national-, regional- and individual-level analyses is that economic factors, particularly tangible benefits received from EU membership, do play an important part in the formation of public attitudes toward the EU.