ABSTRACT
Recent recurring themes in the literature view increasing levels of opposition towards EU integration, and major varying attitudes across young people (de Vries 2013; Guerra 2014; Szczerbiak 2014a). A cursory examination on the Eurobarometer data since their first years of publication show that, on the contrary, support for the European Union (EU) generally decreases across age groups, such that younger people offer higher levels of support (see Inglehart 1970; Gabel 1998; Di Mauro and Fraile 2012). Similarly, studies show that income and education are likely to affect positive attitudes towards the EU; while women tend to be more sceptical, and age groups can show different patterns across member states, young people are generally more positive towards the EU integration process (Di Mauro and Fraile 2012). These results are further corroborated in comparative studies across Western and Central and Eastern European member states, where males, young people and those with higher levels of education or in a student position had a general more positive relationship with the EU, including at the beginning of the recent economic and financial crisis (Guerra and Serricchio 2014). More recently, an analysis on propensity to vote Remain in the British referendum on leaving the EU (23 June 2016) indicated that the mid-forties are a turning point, when attitudes may shift to become more negative. Nonetheless, the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections have shown that young voters may not necessarily represent a Euroenthusiast category, as in the case of Poland (Szczerbiak 2014a) and Croatia (Guerra 2014). High expectations and low deliveries, or persisting pockets of poverty, can affect attitudes when the EU is mostly perceived as an economic organization (ibid.). The EU can represent opportunities and economic benefits at the country and personal levels, particularly across the post-communist region, but when expectations meet low delivery, the costs of long-term recession can impact on young citizens' attitudes and disengage them from the EU integration project. Also, the economic crisis impacted on more contested debates, channelled by Eurosceptic parties across party systems, and anti-austerity and anti-EU debates at the domestic level spread across those EU member states more hardly hit by the crisis, represented by the Coalition of the Radical Left, Syriza, in Greece; the Five Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle: M5S), in Italy; and Podemos, in Spain.
