Are EU policies to blame for the significant decline in public support for the EU in Italy?

Departing from the holistic, cross-national approach of much of the previous research into public opinion on European integration and with a view to taking detailed account of the specificities of each member state which can be essential to explaining public views, this article empirically investigates the significant rise in public euroscepticism in Italy in the post-Maastricht period.

This decline in European Union (EU) support is all the more surprising and significant as Italian public opinion has traditionally strongly supported the EU, and as the large majority of Italian political parties and media still remain today strongly in favour of European integration. Using Eurobarometer data, our results demonstrate that the perceived negative EU role in socio-economic and societal issues explains this decline in EU support. The effects of socio-economic and societal issues on EU support are also found to interact with one another. These results are compared to those of two similar large EU member states, namely the United Kingdom and France, and implications are drawn.

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