To this end, the project relies on a unique combination of five large-scale cross-national opinion surveys; the European Social Survey, the Eurobarometer, the European Unemployment Risk Sharing Survey, the Joint Pharmaceutical Procurement Conjoint, and the REScEU Mass Survey. The latter three surveys have been organised by the host institutions of the action; the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the University of Milan (UMIL). Altogether, these five surveys yielded a enormous richness of data on the public attitudes towards various dimensions of Social Europe, enabling an unprecedented level of detail in the analysis.
The results of the action show that Europeans citizens care about the protection of existing social rights and their further development. However, the role of the European Union in protecting social rights is not uncontested. While many Europeans welcome greater efforts of the EU in protecting social rights, the public support depends on three major factors; the policy design, individual characteristics and contextual factors. With respect to the policy design, the analyses identify important sensitivities in the architecture of policies for European unemployment risk sharing as well as joint procurement for EU medicines. For instance, reciprocity and medical need tend to increase support for European solidarity. However, the actions also reveals that relative sensitivities as well as the actual level of support for specific EU social policies depend on citizens’ socio-economic status, ideological beliefs and deservingness perceptions of needy groups. However, the diving lines are not always clear-cut. Combining data on attitudes towards different components of Social Europe confirms that Social Europe is a multidimensional construct that cannot be reduced to a pro- versus anti-Social Europe attitude. Depending on which particular dimension is at stake, differing rationales and sensitivities rise to the surface. Finally, the action uncovers that contextual factors, most notably the welfare provisions which citizens currently enjoy at the domestic level and whether to which one’s country financially benefits from the EU budget, shape their visions as well as concerns and aspirations with respect to the future of Social Europe.
The research results were disseminated so far at various international (virtual) conferences and workshops (ESPAnet Conference, ECPR General Conference, Standing Group of the European Union, International Council for European Studies, Health in Europe Meeting, GESIS Interdisciplinary Workshop ‘Measuring European solidarity) and through published articles in high-ranking peer-reviewed journals in the discipline of political science and sociology (Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Common Market Studies, Social Policy & Administration). More articles on this action are expected to be published in the coming months.
