The Political Legitimacy of the European Union: An Empirical Analysis of European's Membership Support

European Integration studies have shown concerns with polity and policy but have given little attention to European Politics and as such it became poorly equipped to explain why public opinion has deviated from the permissive consensus manifested in the initial post war period of European Integration. Euro-skepticism characterizes the political climate of European Union without knowing why and for how long. Meanwhile, the processes of European Integration are driven by actors belonging to political parties. As such, Party Politics is a key point for European Integration and European Politics. This paper empirically tests whether further integration with no politics will deepen the gap in European citizens' support towards their country membership and investigates if European citizenry is ready for more politics at the supranational level as a way out of the EU's legitimacy crisis. More precisely, we empirically examine if the basis for the creation of "true" pan-European parties defending citizens' best-interests is in place, in order to increase EU popular support. The central argument is that for pan-European parties to exist, they need to defend same values and interests European-wide. We insist on human capital and test the existence of social class polarization in terms of (own) country EU-support in the Member States. Empirical results using Eurobarometer Survey data, demonstrate pronounced differences in EU-support across social classes and time. Indeed, polarization of classes in terms EU-support emerged. Country effects emerge as well, as the newer Members States are more EU-enthusiasts than the older Member States of the European Union. All in all, we conclude that Europe fulfills the base requirement for the creation of true European politics which may be the road ahead for the European Union.