Forged in Crisis: How the Nature and Salience of European Crises shape European Identity

How do different types of crises shape citizens’ identification with the European Union? Despite recurring shocks—from Brexit and the so-called refugee crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—European identity has remained strikingly resilient. Building on Schimmelfennig’s (2024) crisis typology, we distinguish EU failures (internal capacity deficits) from attacks (external challenges to EU norms) and examine how their salience, measured through Google Trends data, relates to European identity across member states. Using a Bayesian latent trait model combined with a staggered difference-in-differences design, we trace how European identity evolves under different crisis conditions. Results show that attacks strengthen diffuse support, while failures have no significant effect. This suggests that external threats reinforce, rather than erode, citizens’ sense of belonging to Europe, and that European identity can indeed be "forged in crisis."