Politicization and European Integration through policy-making: the public/political elite nexus in time of crises.

Since the Great Recession, the EU entered an edge of multiple global crisis that are reshaping the dynamics of integration. Within this tumultuous decade, the EU institutions established a wide range of policies to contain the effects of global crises on integration, by implementing regional policy making and initiative. The results of this “integration through policy-making strategy” showed to vary for characteristics and outputs (of the integration progresses). The reasons of these different outputs are still debated by the scientific community within the Grand Theories of European integration. Our research aims to contribute to this debate by focusing on the role of public support for EU integration though policy-making. We first present a theoretical framework on the dynamics linking the general public to political elites within the integration process during politicizations phases. We then analyze support for policy making to straight EU integration both at the elite and the general public level in the three main crises of the last decade: namely the Euro crisis, the refugee reception crisis and the SARS-COV2 pandemic. Data will be provided by cross-national mass and political elites surveys. Our preliminary results confirm a relationship between the public-elite alignment and the output of the integration policy. Moreover the type of policy at stake seem to play also an important role in public perceptions.