PhD thesis defence by Luís Russo
This thesis examines the evolving dynamics of attitudes towards the European Union (EU) amid two unprecedented, EU-wide crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I analyse the extent to which these shocks consolidated support for the EU both as a policymaker and as a political community, and whether new concerns emerging from these challenges recalibrated key determinants of individual EU attitudes. Drawing on the original ’Solidarity in Europe’ survey dataset, fielded annually between 2018 and 2023 across 16 EU member states, the study integrates observational, experimental and machine learning techniques to disentangle the impact of new economic and security concerns deriving from both crises on support for the EU. The theoretical framework revisits the postfunctionalist assertion of a ’constraining dissensus’ grounded on the tension between rapid EU jurisdictional changes and exclusionary national identities. Specifically, I present evidence that exogenous and symmetric crises with clear-cut economic ramifications may trigger a temporary attitudinal framework where expectations of economic insurance and prosperity against shared adversity and uncertainty become the most informative motivations underpinning individual EU support, overriding identity-based considerations that have hitherto been pivotal to EU attitudes. Chapter 1 investigates the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian crisis, demonstrating that the most salient crisis-related personal concern—inflation—has been progressively linked to bolstered public demand for a more interventionist EU policymaking role. Chapter 2 zooms in on whether the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the determinants of support for EU solidarity, finding that net-benefit expectations from supranational redistribution outweigh cultural predispositions, underscoring the growing importance of material divides underpinning support for supranational redistribution. In Chapter 3, I test the explanatory value of economic, cultural and geopolitical drivers of EU attachment to find that expectations of economic benefit are the strongest correlates of EU attachment; experimental evidence aimed at testing the micro-mechanisms of domestic elite framing complements these findings, demonstrating that frames emphasising economic advantages from the Single Market are the most effective in mustering EU attachment, offsetting the negative effect of identity-centred Eurosceptic messages. Chapter 4 investigates an erosion in EU attachment one year after the Ukraine invasion, especially amongst the biggest proponents of EU integration, indicating that initial rallying effects from the external, collective challenge posed by Russian expansionism may erode under prolonged inflationary conditions. Overall, this study offers nuanced insights into how common shocks reshape political attitudes, emphasising that urgent crisis pressures may open an avenue for sustained EU legitimacy - insofar as it is perceived to be responsive to both material challenges and public perceptions.
Luís Russo is a PhD candidate at the Social and Political Sciences Department at the European University Institute (EUI) and a member of the ERC SOLID team with Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. His research focuses on EU public opinion, particularly the extent to which the common crises of the 2020s have recalibrated political support for European solidarity and European integration. As part of SOLID, besides working on the interplay between crisis concerns and support for EU crisis management, he manages the EUI-YouGov ‘Solidarity in Europe’ survey. Prior to the EUI, he received an MA at the College of Europe, an MRes at the EUI and a BA at the Nova University of Lisbon. From 2014 to 2020, he was a political advisor at the European Parliament and with the Portuguese Government. He has published on the impact of COVID-19’s economic recovery on the reconfiguration of public support for European solidarity.