How Did the Debt Crisis Affect the Different Dimensions of Public Support of the European Union?

What are the reasons behind variations in public opinion on the European Union (EU)? Can the European debt crisis contribute to change the explanations of citizens’ attachment to the EU? Researchers have tried to explain public support for the EU from several different approaches. While some argue that the source of this support lies on post-materialist values that would contribute to the identification with the European ideals such as cosmopolitanism, others follow a more instrumental or utilitarian approach and argue that citizens’ attitudes towards the EU are the result of a calculation in which national politics are also involved. According to this, individuals would be more prone to transfer national sovereignty to the EU when they perceive the political national institutions to be working worse than the European supranational institutions. Similarly, when they understand that being part of the EU conveys economic benefits that overtake those of being a non-member state, citizens would be more favorable towards increasing European democracy. In our paper we evaluate to what extent the European crisis might have an impact on how citizens evaluate the EU and test these set of explanations. These allow us to investigate the origin of Eurosceptic attitudes in countries that traditionally where among the most Europhile. In doing so, we use data from a survey experiment conducted in Spain.