Falling Apart? Post-Accession Attitudes towards the EU in Bulgaria and Romania

Much research has been devoted to the attitudes of political elites and citizens from candidate countries towards EU accession. Many studies focused either on the separate opinions of these two categories or on their convergence of opinions particularly during the pre-accession period. In contrast, very limited attention has been paid on the elite and mass opinions about the EU in the post-accession period. This paper fills this gap in the literature and analyses the extent to which Bulgarian and Romanian politicians and citizens have convergent opinions after 2007. The two countries joined the EU at the same time and share the common feature of being for a long period of time the countries with top level of support for the EU. Nevertheless, both countries witness the emergence of several Eurosceptic parties and movements that could challenge that situation. The paper uses a mixed-method approach that combines statistical analysis on individual level data (Eurobarometer) and qualitative discourse analysis. The discourses belong to the top level politicians from the main parties in each country. The time frame for analysis is 2010-2017, which covers the financial crisis and several elections in both countries.