How Multiple Crises Change Citizens' Attitudes on European Integration

This paper analyses changes in public opinion towards European integration and EU membership in Switzerland, a non-member state that is economically highly integrated with the European Union. We use data of a panel study that has been collected in the framework of the Swiss Election Study (Selects) since 2019 up until now. The different survey waves cover the “pre-crises” year of 2019 – the year of the federal elections – and track a large representative sample up until the next federal elections in 2023. The yearly waves of 2020, 2021 and 2022 thus cover the COVID-19 Crisis, the Russian war in Ukraine as well as the Energy Crisis. Our hypothesis is that, in times of crises like the beforementioned, citizens’ sense of belonging to Europe, their solidarity with other European countries and their common European identity are sharpened, no matter whether the country is EU member or not. According to this hypothesis, the different crises should lead to an increase in support for European integration projects and EU membership. Indeed, preliminary analyses of the panel data show a substantial overall growth in the importance the public opinion attributes to the existing bilateral agreements between the EU and Switzerland as well as to the need for further collaboration (through additional bilateral agreements) after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparing panel data collected in the “pre-crises period” (2019) with data from survey waves that were fielded during the Covid Crisis (2020, 2021), the Russian war in Ukraine (2022), and the Energy Crisis (2022), we additionally find slightly higher support levels for EU membership. The paper will identify which citizen groups were most prone to change their opinion towards EU integration and which of the crises had the greatest impact on attitudinal changes.