Eurobarometer Modular Cumulation: Showcasing a Source for Research on European Integration

The Eurobarometer survey is one of the longest running and most frequently fielded surveys on public opinion in the European societies. It allows to explore enduring cross-national trends and uncover causal patterns in socio-political attitudes and behaviors. Accordingly, a substantial body of literature is based on tailor-made cumulations of these data, entailing repeated efforts by different research teams. To mitigate this workload on the scientific community, the project "Eurobarometer Modular Cumulation" at GESIS adopts a modular and topic-based approach to harmonize Eurobarometer survey data, with the goal of facilitating both thematic and temporal extensions of the cumulated dataset. A base module will be created, comprising a set of core demographic and technical variables which will aid potential future cumulation efforts. Additionally, topic-specific modules on "European Integration" and "Climate Change and the Environment" will provide a ready-to-use database for analyses in these important fields. Furthermore, the infrastructure will include a sustainable update framework, including a detailed documentation, which allows for straightforward future extensions. The presentation will also feature an empirical example of using the “European Integration” module to showcase the research potentials of this cumulation effort. We present a long-term investigation of EU support. This will be defined and harmonized through the years as one indicator including a varying set of specific variables, e.g., EU image, EU membership evaluation, optimism about EU future, preferences for EU enlargement and a deepening of the European political union. Based on the literature discussing the relevance of a new transnational cleavage (Hooghe and Marks 2018, Kriesi et al. 2008) and identity-based polarization (Iyengar et al. 2012, Mason 2015), we focus on the development of and polarization around European integration over time and across different countries. Similar studies regarding polarization over European issues have been conducted in the context of the Brexit vote (Hobolt et al. 2021) and European identity (Hahm et al. 2023), but we ask whether these processes also unfold regarding European support. Consequently, we consider both the extent to which polarization over EU integration has increased and whether such polarization constitutes a stable long-term phenomenon, or a momentary surge triggered by specific events (Hutter et al. 2016). For the long-term trends we consider a creeping political crisis in terms of rising populism and Euroscepticism (de Vries and Edwards 2009) and possible value change (Kriesi et al. 2006). For the short-term perspective, we investigate how EU support reacted to external and internal crises (financial crises, large-scale migration, pandemic, military invasion to Ukraine) (Hutter and Kriesi 2019). We also investigate whether there are differences across European regions and countries regarding these reactions.