Two transnational Deliberative Polls (DPs), based on probability samples
from EU-27, asked, among other things, about the respondents’ identification with Europe versus their home countries and about their attitudes toward the extent to which decisions in various policy spheres should be made at the EU versus the national level. Here we use the initial, pre-Deliberation measurements to examine the patterns in identifications and attitudes toward Europe and the EU as they vary across countries. Since the first of these DPs was in 2007, and the second in 2009, the contrast affords a view of the effects of the early stages of the financial crisis, commonly thought to have soured many Europeans on Europe. Using a mixture of individual-, country-, and multi-level analyses, we consider the effects of the crisis alongside those of other macro-level variables and individual-level ones like political knowledge and left-right orientation.
