Economic-voting literature shows that citizens evaluate both national governments and EU according to macroeconomic conditions. Nevertheless, the extent to which EU is challenging national sovereignty is still uncertain. A state-centric approach views the EU as non-challenging national states while a multi-level approach describes a situation where authority is shared across different levels of governments. To identify whether EU is viewed as a proper ruler by citizens, we need to compare EU and national support when the EU directly affects national legislatures and when it does not. Based on Eurobarometer surveys which were carried out three years after and before the 2004, we analyze economic support for national governments and EU in new members. We find that macroeconomic variables did not affect EU support before accession and that they considerably altered EU support after 2004, while it kept constant for national governments, showing that EU is not challenging national responsibility.
