European identity and citizens' support for the EU: Testing the utilitarian approach

Abstract

Despite Cohesion Policy representing one‐third of the EU budget, research on the role of EU Cohesion Policy in promoting the European identity is still scarce. Taking stock of a new dataset of citizens' support for and identification with the EU identity at the regional level, we aim to answer to the following questions: what are the determinants of support and identification with EU? Do EU fiscal transfers affect public support for the EU and the European identity? Do citizens' awareness about the Cohesion Policy play a role in it? We find that attitudes towards the EU are driven by individuals' perceptions of the economy in their region and of the effectiveness of EU institutions in solving the regional problems. We don't find evidence of a Cohesion Policy effect, but it provides useful indications for further research.

Cohesion Policy and the citizens’ perceptions of the EU: the role of communication and implementation

“…In both regions studied these two factors made building awareness of Cohesion Policy among the citizens more difficult and hence limited the scope for boosting positive EU identification among the citizens. This confirms the expectation from previous research that awareness of EU Cohesion Policy is crucial for it having any effect on the citizen's views on the EU (Aiello, Reverberi, and Brasili 2019;Capello and Perucca 2019;Osterloh 2011). But also this contributes to the understanding of the Cohesion Policy -EU identification nexus by highlighting that communication and implementation 'architecture' matter.…”

“…Last but not least, we confirmed that the scale of funding also matters. Even though previous research suggested that the relationship between magnitude of funding and support for the EU is not straightforward (see Aiello, Reverberi, and Brasili 2019;Capello and Perucca 2019;Dąbrowski, Stead, and Mashhoodi 2019;Smętkowski and Dąbrowski 2019), the evidence from from stakeholder interviews and focus groups conducted, does suggest that the relatively small allocation of funding to the Dutch regions is hardly noticeable and can only have a limited impact on for positive EU identification. One of its anticipated effects of Cohesion Policy is to foster greater citizen attachment to the EU.…”

“…While this has become an emerging research topic (e.g. Aiello, Reverberi, and Brasili 2019;Capello and Perucca 2019;Dąbrowski, Stead, and Mashhoodi 2019;Dijkstra, Poelman, and Rodríguez-Pose 2019), with a growing number of studies exploring the patterns and drivers of EU support in regions mainly in 'large-n' quantitative research, there is still a knowledge gap concerning the regional dimension of the citizens' perceptions of the EU and the role of Cohesion Policy in shaping them. This paper seeks to address this knowledge gap and innovate by exploring this topic through mixed methods case study research and by looking into regions receiving relatively little Cohesion Policy funding, while most of the literature on Cohesion Policy focuses on regions being major beneficiaries of EU funding.…”

From Cohesion Policy Implementation to European Identity

“…Aiello, Brasili, and Reverberi () focus on citizens' awareness and perceptions of EU regional policy as determinants of EU support. The analysis shows a predominance of the perceived elements on the objective ones as determinants of trust in EU institutions.…”

“…Taken together, the results from these studies support the general messages and policy implications discussed in the previous section. Cohesion Policy could be a powerful tool for promoting European identity, if the target of reduction of inequality within the EU is achieved (Aiello et al, ; Capello & Perucca, ; Dąbrowski et al, ). At the same time, however, this is likely to happen only if effective strategies of information, communication and involvement will be developed and implemented (Brasili et al, ; López‐Bazo & Royuela, ; Smętkowski & Dąbrowski, ).…”