Trust in European vs National Political Institutions in Central and Eastern Europe

Declining trust in political institutions has become a defining feature of European politics in recent years, coinciding with two other worrying trends: the growing electoral success of populist parties and diminishing levels of conventional political participation. While this dynamic is widely recognized, trust in political institutions itself remains a complex and contested concept. Rather than signalling apathy or mere disengagement, low or declining trust can also express citizens’ critical evaluation of political elites and dissatisfaction with how democratic institutions function. In this sense, changes in political trust are not only a symptom of democratic strain but also a potentially useful indicator of citizens’ expectations, demands, and normative benchmarks for democratic governance. However, the trajectory and intensity of this decline in institutional trust are far from uniform across Europe. Existing evidence suggests that Central and Eastern European countries, newer democracies and newer EU member states, display distinctive patterns of trust and distrust compared to specifically Scandinavian countries. These differences raise important questions about the specific role of supranational institutions in shaping democratic legitimacy in post-transition contexts. This paper examines how trust in European political institutions compares to trust in national political institutions in Central and Eastern Europe. We focus on the extent to which the European Union and its key institutions may serve as alternative or complementary sources of political trust in contexts where national institutions remain fragile, contested, or heavily politicized. Our central research question is whether European institutions are perceived as more trustworthy than domestic ones in these countries, and how these perceptions are embedded in broader narratives about democracy, representation, and responsiveness. Empirically, we combine cross-national public opinion data with original qualitative material to provide a nuanced understanding of political trust. First, we analyse recent survey data on institutional trust in both national and European institutions across EU member states, with particular attention to variation among Central and Eastern European countries. Second, we draw on in-depth, qualitatively conducted interviews with policymakers, elected politicians, and civil society representatives in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia. These interviews explore how key political and social actors understand political trust in European institutions, how they interpret trends in public opinion, and how they see the relationship between trust, legitimacy, and democratic performance. The data and interviews were collected within the TRUEDEM - Trust in European Democracies project.