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Is there a path to political union?

Merler, S., (2013), “Is there a path to political union?”, Bruegel, 23 September.

Over the last few months and ahead of much anticipated European elections in May 2014, there has been a growing debate about the scope for further integration and leaps towards a form of “political union”. Advocates point to the hard constraints that an incomplete political integration has imposed on the management and the resolution of the euro crisis, while sceptics argue instead that steps towards greater political integration are elusive, because the confidence of European citizens in Europe and in European institutions is waning. Evidence put forth by Sonia Alonso or by Lluís Orriols point indeed to a bleak picture and seem to suggest that an ideological and political divide is growing between Northern and Southern Europe.

In what follows I question the appetite and scope for further political integration by looking at data from the European Commission’s Eurobarometer – which surveys Europeans among other things about their “trust” in European and National Institutions. The focus is on the Eurozone – where the case for political integration is the strongest – with the addition of the UK where adhesion to Europe is said to be the weakest. Eurozone countries are divided in two groups: North (Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands) and South (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain). France and the UK are considered separately. Some Eurozone countries have been excluded from the sample due to data and analytical constraints.

 

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