Opting for opt outs? Untangling the role of identity in shaping support for differentiated integration

Differentiated integration is an increasingly important issue to scholars of European integration. The reasons for this are two-fold: First, differentiated integration is increasingly used to overcome governmental opposition to controversial policy integration. Second, the European Commission has pointed to an increasingly differentiated EU as one possible path forward after Brexit. However, what is missing from the still emerging literature on what drives public support for such differentiation is a deeper understanding of how national identity shapes support for a more differentiated European Union. Using data from 2020-21, this paper shows that those supporters of the EU expressing the greatest attachment to their nation-states also express greater support for an EU that is segmented by policy area compared to supporters of the EU with more inclusive national identities. However, they are no more likely than other supporters to want differentiated integration that is only temporal in nature. The reason, this paper argues, is that exclusively national supporters of the EU are more likely than other supporters to see the nation-state as the legitimate centre of political authority and may thus be more worried about what integration implies for national sovereignty. It also finds that these effects are greater in the Nordics and Central and Eastern European countries Denmark and Poland. The results have important implications for future paths of integration. They suggest that the kind of differentiation that allows countries to opt out of politically controversial integration may be a useful political tool for allowing the EU to overcome politically controversial integration. This may, in turn, facilitate even greater degrees of functionally needed integration even in domestically salient policy areas.