‘Sweet are the uses of adversity’: the consolidation of political support for supranational solidarity and the European polity in the aftermath of European crises from 2018 to 2022

Until recently, European solidarity was in high demand but low supply: while the increasingly interconnected nature of European crises could make the case for a supranational safety-net, public recalcitrance hindered political commitment towards more cross-border solidarity, for instance during the Great Recession. Since then, Europe underwent two pivotal moments with major implications to European solidarity: COVID-19 and the Ukraine invasion. These saw a boost in public support for supranational redistribution, along with a quick and unprecedented expansion of EU-led crisis-management instruments, particularly concerning fiscal solidarity, refugee integration and energy resilience. Using original survey data on European solidarity, collected in 16 EU countries from 2018 to 2022, we explore the reasons behind this evolution and discuss the implications of these shocks to the future of European solidarity. Our argument is two-fold: firstly, we suggest that exogenous shocks, such as pandemics and war, galvanise public support for European solidarity as citizens look to the supranational level for insurance against common threats and redress against adversity. Secondly, we contend that the willingness to pool resources in order to harbour the European community from adversity reflects an engagement to the European polity and contributes to the consolidation of political support for the EU, as the enabler of that safety-net.