“Young Europeans Stand for Something”: A Comparative Analysis on Attitudes, priorities, and issues towards the EU

The paper aims at shedding light to the attitudes of young people towards the European Union, through an analysis of the priorities and issues that concern them. Furthermore, a cross national analysis is performed in order to investigate similarities and differences between the way young people understand Europe and prioritize various issues within the frames of European strategy, regarding their country of origin. The study uses the results of the research conducted in the framework of the European Youth Card Association’s project, #STANDFORSOMETHING (https://istandfor.eu). Its purpose is to investigate and describe the opinion and attitudes of young people towards the European Union and bring forward their ideas and priorities to be used as a reference point on the Conference for the Future of Europe and considering the European Year of Youth (2022). The survey took place through an online questionnaire during the summer of 2021 and a sample of 3000 respondents of age 16-28 from all over Europe was collected with participants from all EU Member States. The views and attitudes of young people towards the European Union has been considered as under-researched, however in the view to increase the legitimacy of the EU and the involvement of young people in politics, the European Commission adopted a European Youth Strategy 2019-2027. Furthermore, the EU aims at engaging with young people in various formal and non-formal means in order to collect their views on EU policies and the future. Research suggests that young people are interested and engaged both politically and civically in various modes. In this context, the paper provides an analysis of the results mainly focusing on issues, such as identity and general attitude towards the EU and its institutions. The research further presents the views of young people towards the 8 key priorities as set by the European Commission and further delves into an analysis of perspectives of the priorities, such as common basic income, digital skills and educational frameworks. The comparative analysis on a cross national level is implemented using multivariate quantitative analysis methods. In this stage of analysis, the aim is to further investigate profiles of young people based on how they self-identify, their general attitude towards the EU and its institutions, and what is their priority agenda. The variables are analyzed with the use of Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and provides a clustering of the respondents with similar profiles. The paper then applies Correspondence Analysis to link the profiles with other key characteristics of the respondents, such as demographics (country of origin, age, educational background etc.). The analysis provides useful insights on the understanding of the role of European Union in the young people’s lives and their priorities compared to the general attitudes of citizens (using relevant data from the Eurobarometer). The in-depth analysis with the use of multivariate tools, reveals patterns of behavior among youth and how these distinct profiles correlate to other important characteristics, such as their demographics and the level of identification of European identity.