The COVID-19 Pandemic and Public Support for European Integration: Evidence from Germany

Abstract

The European Union increasingly relies on the willingness of citizens to support the delegation of authority from their national governments to European institutions. Major policy crises have the ability to profoundly shape public support and opposition to greater European integration. In this article, we consider the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for public support of greater European integration. We build on the utilitarian approaches to develop an account of the pandemic's implications for citizens' views on the need for more EU-level policy making. We contend that higher levels of concern for COVID-19 correspond to higher support for further European integration. We then go on to argue that this relationship is conditioned by ideology. We find support for our hypotheses using a nationally-representative survey of 4400 German respondents fielded in April and May 2020.