Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

European solidarity: silver linings through dark clouds

Anton Hemerijck, Luís Russo and Philipp Genschel 6th June 2022

‘Sweet are the uses of adversity,’ Shakespeare suggested. When it comes to European solidarity, he was right.

European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe
The Russian invasion of Ukraine evoked solidarity across Europe, as with this demonstration in Latvia (Bargais/shutterstock.com)

It is striking how vocal and proactive the European Commission and other European Union institutions (such as the European Central Bank) have become on issues of European solidarity in recent years. The European Pillar of Social Rights of 2017 reflected a genuine commitment to enhance the social dimension of the single market and economic and monetary union. Since 2020, NextGenerationEU has promoted fiscal solidarity to overcome the aftershocks of the Great Recession and the pandemic, with quite assertive country-specific recovery-and-resilience plans.

This year has seen an even stronger resurgence of geopolitical solidarity in confronting Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. Support for a more robust EU has also shone through the citizens’ panels of the Conference on the Future of Europe and the favourable political reaction to their recommendations. European solidarity has always been in high demand—but today, at long last, there is also fairly strong supply.

Finger-pointing

For sure, the treaties have always been replete with exhortations to solidarity, social cohesion, mutual assistance and so on. The preamble of the 1951 treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community claimed that ‘Europe can be built only through real practical achievements which will first of all create solidarity’.

Yet not long ago, such solidarity was meagre. The eurozone crisis turned into a ‘blame game’ between creditor and debtor countries, which left the burden of saving the euro to the ECB. The ‘refugee crisis’, similarly, triggered finger-pointing among frontline states, host states and uninterested bystander states. And calls for unity in security and defence policy met manifest disagreement on military spending and the pooling of defence equipment, technology and production.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

The EU remains a political union of nation-states. To the extent that these are mature welfare states, they provide large swaths of support to national citizens bearing social rights. Generous domestic welfare inherently limits the political space for cross-border solidarity. But now that European solidarity is being leveraged by NextGenerationEU, the extent of public support, across member states, becomes critical.

Continuity and change

Since 2018, the European University Institute (EUI), in collaboration with the polling organisation YouGov, has conducted a yearly survey across member states of attitudes towards European solidarity, integration and defence. The ‘Solidarity in Europe’ project now takes in more than 23,000 respondents across 16 member states and the United Kingdom. The results are published annually on the EUI’s research repository.

Looking back on five iterations, among member states and across policy instruments we observe continuities and changes in popular support for solidarity. The point of departure of the survey was an expectation that public support for common solutions was low even though the cross-border ramifications of the multiple crises facing Europe since 2008 were strong. Low public support, in turn, fed into intergovernmental recalcitrance on issues of European solidarity.

We anticipated however that this could change—and change it did. We were particularly interested in finding out under what conditions political support for EU solidarity could be galvanised, rendering it politically salient, legitimate and an effective European instrument to mitigate adversity. We conceptualised European solidarity to vary by issue (solidarity for what?), by member state (solidarity by whom for whom?) and by instrument (solidarity how?).

We theorised that external shocks (natural disasters, pandemics, wars) could elicit stronger solidarity than predicaments such as debt, unemployment and partly also refugee inflows —endogenous imbalances thought to be the member states’ own responsibility and thus less deserving of cross-border (fiscal) solidarity. This predisposition was stronger in some member states than others: countries with deep fiscal pockets were less likely to support solidarity to address public debt and unemployment crises; transit countries or countries far removed from main routes of migration were less likely to support solidarity on refugees.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

These patterns indeed persisted throughout the project, though a blip came in 2022, when the Russian invasion of the Ukraine brought a significant rise in support for refugee-solidarity in its wake.

European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe

Self-reinforcing preference

Another important initial hypothesis claimed that, once the imaginary Rubicon of tangible European solidarity was crossed, citizens would prefer contributing to an EU-led initiative to providing assistance to other countries on a bilateral basis. Since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, the evidence has confirmed such a self-reinforcing preference for EU instruments to be at the helm of crisis management.

European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe

As an exogenous and symmetric shock, Covid-19 created the conditions we had believed conducive to building political capital for European solidarity. General support for solidarity was already quite high in 2020. But it remained stable during 2021, despite the stress of unprecedented steps towards fiscal solidarity, and is in 2022 much stronger than three years ago. Solidarity has thus been reinforced by the pandemic experience.

The 2022 figures can be read as representing popular support for EU-led crisis management, particularly NextGenerationEU—the main source of redistribution supporting Europe’s economic recovery. One would perhaps expect that the 2022 hike in solidarity is strongly related to Ukraine. Yet prices and energy supply (not unconnected, of course) are the main concerns for Europeans at this juncture, rather than the war itself.

European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe
European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe

Exploring the correlates of European solidarity, we find a clear association with political attitudes towards the EU. Solidarity represents a willingness to engage collectively in the sharing of risks and resources against adversity. This implies the existence of institutional trust and a sense of belonging to a community—a European one. Is it far-fetched to see the combination of trust and solidarity as indicating an expression of community-building, towards something of a European polity (albeit without a well-defined demos)?

European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe

What kind of Europe do its citizens want? A ‘market Europe’ (stressing market integration and economic and monetary union) is less popular overall than a ‘social Europe’ (emphasising fair and equitable living standards) or a ‘global Europe’ (highlighting the EU’s leading role on climate and human rights). Most Europeans prefer a social model for Europe and the most supranationally oriented are also those most disposed towards fairness on welfare.

In combination with the finding that more citizens are willing to pay higher taxes for improved welfare, this indicates some scope for the EU to advance its social agenda. And under Ursula von der Leyen’s presidency the commission has been far more assertive than under José Manuel Barroso in the wake of the Great Recession, when solidarity was in very high demand but supply was dismal.

There is regional variation here. In north-western member states, where a global Europe is preferred, citizens sustain a more ‘post-materialist’ conception of the EU’s role in terms of international political values. In south-eastern states, though, citizens tend to view the EU through a more materialist lens, stressing a Europe that privileges social protection and market-based prosperity.

European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe

European solidarity,Solidarity in Europe

Nevertheless, the north-south rift over austerity, which characterised the eurozone crisis and its aftermath, may be easing. And the north-western versus south-eastern differences could form the basis for a vision for the EU as a whole, addressing different yet not antagonistic aspirations in tandem. Over the lifetime of this project, the EU has matured politically. This happened on the fly, in reaction to the multiple crises from eurozone debt to Putin’s war, rather than consciously and deliberately. What we seem to be witnessing are the growing pains of a political union with social fairness at its core.

Anton Hemerijck

Anton Hemerijck is professor of political science and sociology at the European University Institute. He researches and publishes on social policy, social investment and the welfare state and is a frequent adviser to the European Commission.

Luís Russo

Luís Russo is completing a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence, having previously worked as an adviser to the Portuguese cabinet on EU cohesion policy. His research focus is political attitudes towards the EU; within the EUI ‘Solidarity in Europe’ project he explores the drivers of support for European solidarity.

Philipp Genschel

Philipp Genschel is a professor of European public policy at the European University Institute in Florence and a professor of political science at Jacobs University Bremen.

Home ・ Society ・ European solidarity: silver linings through dark clouds

Most Popular Posts

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative,conservatism Boris Johnson: blustering onPaul Mason
deglobalisation,deglobalization,Davos Getting deglobalisation rightJoseph Stiglitz
schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza

Most Recent Posts

public services,public service,women,public service workers Public services should not be the victims of inflationIrene Ovonji-Odida
gdp,gross domestic product Let’s count what really mattersJayati Ghosh
green transition,just transition,fossil fuel,energy transition,Ukraine,Russia Ukraine and the geopolitics of the energy transitionBéla Galgóczi and Paolo Tomassetti
energy,efficiency,generation,solar,price,inflation From subsidising energy to reducing dependenceHans Dubois
SPO,Rendi-Wagner,Austria,social democratic,social democrat,social democracy A social-democratic decade ahead?Robert Misik

Other Social Europe Publications

National recovery and resilience plans
The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020

Eurofound advertisement

Minimum wages in 2022: annual review

Nominal minimum wage rates rose significantly in 2022, compared with 2021. In 20 of the 21 European Union member states with statutory minimum wages, rates increased. When inflation is taken into account, however, the minimum wage increased in real terms in only six member states. If current inflation trends continue, minimum wages will barely grow at all in real terms in any country in 2022.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

ETUI/ETUC conference: A Blueprint for Equality

Join us at the three-day hybrid conference ‘A blueprint for equality’ (22-24 June).

The case against inequality has already been strongly articulated. Inequality is not just incidental to a particular crisis but a structural problem created by an economic model. Now is the time to explore what real equality should look like.

As a media partner of this event, Social Europe is delighted to invite you to this three-day conference, organised by the ETUI and ETUC. More than 90 speakers from the academic world, international organisations, trade unions and NGOs will participate, including the economist Thomas Piketty and the European commissioner Nicolas Schmit.


MORE INFOMATION HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube