A Cross-National Analysis of Voter Perceptions of Fiscal Solidarity in the EU: Taking Account of the Domestic Context

The European crisis has more than ever before brought to the forefront issues of transnational economic redistribution and has increased political contestation in and about the EU. This paper asks why some citizens oppose providing financial assistance to the EU’s struggling economies while others support it. Using data from the 2014 European Election Studies (EES) Voter Study for 28 EU member states, we take a comparative cross-national approach and test the effect of two key models of individual-level preference formation, i.e. self-interest and identity evaluations. We advance the literature by explicitly taking into consideration the domestic context. We argue that public opinion on European fiscal solidarity is conditioned by country context, and in particular EU member states’ domestic macroeconomic performance, which mitigates individual-level support for providing financial assistance to another EU member state. Our results show that ideational effects become stronger as GDP per capita increases, with stronger European identity leading to significantly higher levels of support for fiscal solidarity in rich countries. Likewise, higher social standing bolsters optimistic attitudes towards intra-EU redistribution in wealthy member states. In poor countries, however, national economic performance seems to play a bigger role than personal pocketbook or value position. When a country does not fare well economically, people’s views on providing financial help to others remain pessimistic, irrespective of their own material wellbeing or moral principles. Understanding the drivers of such preferences is important at a time when far-right Eurosceptic parties are politicising Eurozone’s financial rescues, further eroding solidarity within the EU.