Economic Crisis and EU Integration: Lack of Trust and Solidarity Among Europeans?

Many factors influence attitudes towards the EU integration process. One of them is national contexts, because national frames are important even for people with a high international experience, like young people. The economic crisis we are experiencing since 2008 is testing the extent of trust and solidarity among Europeans. Governments and citizens from richer countries, less affected by the crisis, have helped poorer states with many conditions. Both solidarity and trust are crucial to define a political community, and crisis has remarked that the European Union is far away from being a political community, where citizens feel that they are Europeans and take care of each other.

We use data from two Eurobarometer surveys, carried out in 1997 and 2001, which involved a special youth sample (people aged 15 to 24 years). Results show that before the crisis we could find instrumental attitudes towards the Union spread among citizens of pro-European countries, like Spain and Greece. Indeed, data confirm the importance of international experience for developing attitudes towards the Union, especially for people with a high level of such experience, although individual experience is shaped by national contexts. Analyses show that national context is a key factor in understanding the support for or opposition to the integration process.