PUBLIC OPINION

Attitudes on Integration At best, European public opinion on regional integration and the benefits of the EU is equivocal. Views range from enthusiastic support to indifference to vocal opposition. Key evidence comes from polls carried out by the Commission-sponsored Eurobarometer polling service. These have found (in recent years) that just over half of Europeans believe that membership of their state in the EU has been a ‘good thing’. While there has been little study of the reasoning behind support for the EU and integration, much more is understood about opposition, which comes in several different forms.

Public Opinion on the EU

Euroscepticism Euroscepticism refers to opposition to the process of European integration, or doubts about the direction in which it’s moving. Particularly since the 1990s and the debate over Maastricht there has been a growth in levels of euroscepticism, but there are many different shades of opinion, varying by time and place. The long-term significance of euroscepticism is hard to determine. Since the mid-1990s Eurobarometer polls have shown support for the EU running at about 3:1 over opposition, but much of this support is ‘soft’. Strong feelings about Europe (whether for or against) are harder to find.

Shades of Euroscepticism

The Knowledge Deficit Polls have also found that Europeans mainly know little about how the EU works. The knowledge deficit refers to the gap between how the EU works and what ordinary Europeans know about that process. A 2013 Eurobarometer poll found that only about half of Europeans agreed with the statement ‘I understand how the EU works’. This deficit encourages detachment, encourages elitism, means that voters in one member state can make uninformed decisions with EU-wide implications, and makes voters more susceptible to manipulation by pro- and anti-Europeans. Closing the knowledge deficit is difficult because many Europeans are not interested in public affairs, and because most take a closer interest in domestic politics.

Europeanism The debate about Europe has overlooked the broader question of how far Europeans agree (or disagree) on core political, economic and social values. Europeanism can be defined as the political, economic and social values that Europeans have in common, and that are most clearly supported by Europeans. Europeans subscribe to universal ideas such as democracy and free markets, but most also subscribe to more focused concepts such as communitarianism, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and secularism, and agree on a wide range of specific issues such as the definition of the family, attitudes towards work and leisure, capital punishment, and the reduced role of military force.