“Europe is our future”: Measuring support for European integration as a tridimensional temporal process

Belot, Céline and Van Ingelgom, Virginie (2015) “Europe is our future”: Measuring support for European integration as a tridimensional temporal process. [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Introduction: On the 2nd of June 1992, a majority of Danish voters said “no” to the Maastricht Treaty. Asked about the same time what they thought of the EC, 56% of Danish people claimed that membership to the EC was a good thing, 61% approved European Unification and 67% acknowledged their country benefited from its membership. At the time of the “No vote” relative to the Nice referendum, the Irish were even more euro-enthusiast with 81% claiming their country membership was a good thing and 83% that it benefited from this membership. Seven years later, still a majority of French and Dutch people considered their country membership as a good thing and declared their country benefited from it when voting “no” for the Constitutional Treaty2. Why such a discrepancy between referenda results and measurement of support? Could it be that the measures used since now more than forty years in European studies to grasp people’s support for European integration are deficient? In a European Union in search for legitimacy, being able to evaluate and understand citizens’ opinion appears crucial.

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