Björn Bremer

Björn Bremer

Political Economist at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG)

Public Opinion Towards the Euro and the EU After a Tumultuous Decade

The recent crises of the European Union (EU) have exposed the continued vulnerabilities of the Eurozone. Despite the pronounced demand for institutional reforms, political supply has remained meager at best for a long time. During the Euro crisis, fiscal capacity building through the European Stability Mechanism or Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program of the European Central Bank was highly contested, and invariably late. The Covid-19 pandemic changed Europe’s momentum, as member states agreed to the creation of a pandemic recovery fund. As the pandemic also initiated a discussion of broader reforms, today, many proposals exist that either suggest the further integration of core state powers through the sharing of key resources of sovereign government or institutional changes to the design of the Eurozone and/or the EU. Yet, we know little about what voters think about the integration of core state powers or institutional reforms. This information is hard to get from existing surveys such as the Eurobarometer or the European Election Study because they do not contain specific questions about these issues. In my research, I use novel surveys and survey experiments to find out what voters want and what explains their preferences.

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