On 6 April 2020, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that the “COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge for the European Union in its entire history”. For the first time, open borders between EU countries were revoked, many European governments have banned the export of medical supplies to avoid shortages at home while particularly the Italian and Spanish governments have called for more solidarity in the EU to cope with the dramatic situation in their countries.
As the future of the European project crucially depends on popular support, we seek to study how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced public support for the EU. More specifically, we investigate how this crisis has influenced Eurosceptic attitudes, solidarity with fellow Europeans and the electoral performance of Eurosceptic parties.
Building on an innovative theoretical framework that combines insights from political behaviour, social psychology and political communication, we study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic through six work packages that are clustered into three pillars.
In the first pillar, we investigate how the policy measures adopted by national governments and the European institutions have affected Eurosceptic attitudes, European solidarity and the performance of Eurosceptic parties.
In the second pillar, we examine how the behaviour of political actors, namely political parties and social movements have influenced Eurosceptic attitudes, European solidarity and the performance of Eurosceptic parties.
Finally, in the third pillar, we study how media framing and fake news have influenced public support.
To answer our research questions, the interdisciplinary team of leading scholars from political science, sociology and economics relies on an original multi-method approach combining survey and observational data with experiments and natural language processing technologies. Our project aims to enhance our understanding of how the Corona crisis has affected public support in different parts of the EU. This allows us to provide policy-makers with evidence-based recommendations on how to ensure the legitimacy of the European project.
Principal investigator
Researchers
- Professor Heike Klüver | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Professor Michał W. Krawczyk | University of Warsaw
- Dr Theresa Kuhn | University of Amsterdam
- Dr Toni Rodon | Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
Project details
Project duration: 4 years
Project funder: Volkswagen Stiftung