European Solidarity: From Old-Age Theory to Enacted Common Practice

Abstract

Ever since the very first days of the European Union (EU), solidarity has been an important value gluing together the community’s member states and the EU citizenry. The term solidarity was mentioned in various EU treaties and, before the eruption of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, it was primarily put into practice through the introduction of European Structural and Cohesion funds aiming to promote regional development and convergence among the European regions. However, with the outbreak of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis in late 2009 the face of European solidarity changed dramatically. To overcome the crisis, financially and economically struggling EU member states received bailout packages from the EU as well as wealthier countries. In return for the financial assistance provided, EU debtor states were committed to implement harsh austerity measures to make their public debt sustainable. As a result, European solidarity was attached to strict bailout conditions. In 2015, solidarity among EU member states was once again challenged when a high number of refugees entered the European continent. Discussions over the fair redistribution of refugees between the member states and financial support for states hosting a large share of refugees once again brought solidarity to the EU’s agenda. In our panels, we bring together innovative approaches to the study of European solidarity and therefore combine theoretical work with empirical studies. Moreover, we consider various time points in recent EU history from the onset of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis to the latest European Parliament election of May 2019. We decided to set up two panels instead of one to more broadly capture the many-faced facets of European solidarity. Our second panel considers empirical works on solidarity within the EU. This panel’s presentations apply conjoint survey experiments, content as well as cross-section survey analyses. Making use of a conjoint survey experiment, the paper presented by Baute, Nicoli and Vandenbroucke investigates the role of conditionality and reciprocity for European solidarity in the form of an European unemployment risk-sharing scheme. Raphaela Hobbach evaluates the importance of European solidarity in German and French parliamentary debates during the Euro Crisis. Focusing on the impact of the Economic Crisis, the link between changing European middle classes and their attitudes towards EU (welfare) solidarity is studied in the paper by Miro and Ronchi. The last paper presented by Kyriazi and Visconti tackles citizens’ solidarity towards migrants from the prospect of individual transnational experiences.

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