Do Citizens Support Cohesion Policy? Measuring European support for redistribution within the EU and its correlates

Abstract

As the European Union enters into the next decade, its leaders seemingly strive towards more future integration rather than less, despite the recent setback of Brexit and the rise of anti-EU populist parties. In his state of the Union in 2018, Jean Claude Junker emphasized several ways forward - ‘European solidarity’, ‘rejection of exaggerated nationalism’, and support for ‘balanced migration reform’. Yet he did not mention one key policy tool for achieving a closer Union – Cohesion Policy and the Structural Funds, which are “the only real, significant redistributive mechanism in the EU…” (Fratesi 2017) and consistently constitute the second largest item in the EU’s budget. As Cohesion policy essentially redistributes resources from wealthier EU countries to poorer EU regions, creating winners (net recipients) and losers (net donors), it has been a target in anti-EU rhetoric, including in the lead up to Brexit. Despite elite commentary, we know surprisingly little about what EU citizens think of the rationale behind the policy of Cohesion – e.g. economic redistribution within the EU. As part of the PERCEIVE Horizon2020 project, we launched a unique survey to investigate how citizens feel about economic integration within the Union, where 17,200 citizens were interviewed. In this paper, we show how we measure support for the policy, the results as well as a host of correlates. Our analysis shows the variation in citizens’ support for EU Cohesion policy between countries, how support varies between demographic groups, as well as the extent to which support is correlated with utilitarian and ideational factors as well as cue taking. Implications for future developments of this policy are discussed.

Stand together or alone? Public support for European economic solidarity during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Thus, while the vast majority of studies that investigate public support for the EU do not investigate support for fiscal redistribution, there is a growing literature that seeks to explain public support for within EU fiscal redistribution, including intra EU financial assistance, bailouts or cohesion policy (see i.e. Bechtel et al 2014;Bauhr and Charron 2018;Bauhr and Charron 2020a;Charron and Bauhr 2020;Daniele and Geys 2015;Kuhn and Stoeckel 2014;Kleider and Stoeckel 2019;Stoeckel and Kuhn 2018). Studies note that the determinants of fiscal redistribution may be different from the determinants of general support for the EU both since the costs of these reforms are more concrete (i.e.…”

EU Cohesion Policy 2021–2027: New Tools to Foster European Integration?

“…Recent studies [6,8] of this issue seem to support that idea, providing evidence that more positive EU image in the regions is dependent on the size of ESI funds allocations. The EU Commission has launched two special studies to investigate this relation namely projects PERCEIVE (Perception and Evaluation of Regional and Cohesion Policies by Europeans and Identification with the Values of Europe, [17]) and COHESIFY (Understanding the impact of EU Cohesion Policy on European Identification, [7]) under Horizon 2020 program in 2016-2019.…”

“…With the proposed modification of the allocation method, the Commission claims to pursue a more tailored approach to regional needs [6,8]. The change can be found in.…”

Citizens' perception of the Cohesion Policy and support for the European Union

“…In turn, the Flash Eurobarometer surveys that compile information about the latter aspect (awareness of regional policy in the EU) do not include questions about the degree of support for the European project. To fill this gap, the PERCEIVE project carried out a unique survey that provided information about both citizens' support for the EU and their perception of the CP (see Bauhr & Charron, ; Charron & Bauhr, ). In all, 17,147 interviews were carried out during the summer of 2017 in 15 EU member states.…”