The aim of the paper is to detect, through dynamic panel data techniques, the long-run macro drivers of citizens' mood toward European institutions and to support the existence of an inverse relationship both in the short and in the long-run between trust on one side and the rate of unemployment and the discretionary fiscal policy measures on the other. This is valid in the whole Eurozone and in particular in peripheral countries. This outcome gives support to the conclusion that the process of institutional consolidation should pass through a greater political sensibility toward some specific economic variables.