More national, less European?: Europe, Europeans and the Euro area crisis (2004-2017)

Abstract

This paper studies how people in the Euro Area Member States identified as European during the Great Recession and examines both their perceptions about being European and their attachment to Europe. It analyses the effect of the crisis on the relationship between European and national identifications (the identification approach), including public debt as a key contextual factor. Factors related to the rational instrumental approach and cognitive mobilisation were controlled for. The analyses indicated that the higher a country’s public debt, the greater the positive effect that national identification had on the perception of being European, whereas this relationship was negative at lower levels of public debt. Conversely, the higher a country’s public debt, the weaker the positive relationship between national identification and the attachment to the EU.