Unemployment risk-sharing in the EU: How policy design influences citizen support for European unemployment policy

Abstract

This article explores public preferences for European unemployment programs explicitly discussed in actual policymaker debate. European policymakers have been considering European-level Unemployment Risk Sharing (EURS) to stabilize member-state economies and provide a safety net for the unemployed. Using a conjoint experiment conducted in 13 European member states, we analyze public support across six crucial policy dimensions of EURS. The findings reveal that (a) overall support for EURS policies is broad and substantial, but sensitive to particular policy mixes; (b) citizen support is conditional on the program being generous and on coverage being limited to countries providing education and training and individual beneficiaries looking for and accepting work; and (c) cross-country variation is modest and most prominent with respect to cross-country redistribution.

Bargaining the Euro: Making an EU Fiscal Union Politically Acceptable

“…Instead of a single Fiscal Union, we therefore propose a combination of fiscal pooling instruments, which, together, add up to yield a sufficient level of fiscal integration. This solution is in keeping with a major finding from the literature on the political feasibility of fiscal integrationsupport for fiscal integration depends on the specific design and purpose of the fiscal instrument (Bremer et al 2021;Beetsma et al 2022;Kuhn et al 2020). In addition, support is higher when the transfer meets a particular policy goal which is popular among voters (Bremer et al 2021;Beetsma et al 2022;Kuhn et al 2020).…”

“…This solution is in keeping with a major finding from the literature on the political feasibility of fiscal integrationsupport for fiscal integration depends on the specific design and purpose of the fiscal instrument (Bremer et al 2021;Beetsma et al 2022;Kuhn et al 2020). In addition, support is higher when the transfer meets a particular policy goal which is popular among voters (Bremer et al 2021;Beetsma et al 2022;Kuhn et al 2020). Thus, while fiscal transfers without a specific purpose may be opposed by public opinion, targeted fiscal instruments attached to a particular policy goal are more likely to be acceptable to individuals across the EU.…”

“…This article aims to fill that gap, by proposing a model that makes it possible to identify which solutions are efficient in making the euro currency both viable and politically feasible. While there already exists a body of literature that explores the political feasibility of fiscal integration, and investigates individual preferences and public opinion in this area (see, for example, Bremer et al 2021;Baccaro et al 2022;, this article takes a different approach, by focusing on negotiating positions rather than on public opinion. This allows us to offer a new perspective on this topic, and to examine how preferences can be made to coincide so that political agreement can be reached.…”

Opting for Opt‐outs? National Identities and Support for a Differentiated EU

“…However, differentiation can politically fragment the EU. As it is possible to design EU policies that garner support even amongst exclusive nationals (Burgoon et al, 2022; Nicoli et al, 2020), uniform integration attentive to the concerns of this group may be a viable alternative to more EU differentiation. Whether one alternative is normatively more attractive than the other is, however, a question beyond the scope of this article.…”

Public preferences for social investment versus compensation policies in Social Europe

“…This literature's conceptualization and operationalization of European social policy, however, has tended to be very general, with only a modest set of studies aiming to disentangle attitudes towards particular aspects of what Social Europe would mean (for example, Baute et al, 2018;Eick, 2023). And even fewer studies have given any attention to attitudes towards social investmentoriented policies compared to compensation-or consumption-oriented provisions in Social Europe (Vandenbroucke et al, 2018;Burgoon et al, 2022). These recent studies demonstrate that EU-wide unemployment provisions, including those that are administered at the EU level, garner more public support if the EU provisions are made conditional upon national and European-level SI policies, that is, a combination of training, education and activation.…”