Viral solidarity? EU Solidarity and Risk-Sharing in the COVID-19 Crisis

Fiscal integration has long been regarded as a necessary condition to ensure the long-term stability of the euro. In the aftermath of the euro crisis, concerns about a populist backlash of Eurosceptic voters constrained national governments in their ability to pursue such integration. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, national leaders were able to agree to the Next Generation EU, a pandemic recovery fund of over 750 billion euro establishing an unprecedented, far-reaching, albeit temporary, fiscal stabilization capacity. Still, we know very little about citizens’ preferences towards the pandemic recovery fund? To answer this question, we conducted an original survey experiment on public support for different designs of a European pandemic recovery fund. We fielded the survey in five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain) in July 2020, at the time that national leaders agreed on the recovery fund. Our results show that there is surprisingly high support for a joint European fiscal instrument and that citizens react to different elements of the pandemic recovery fund. They prefer a broad program that is directed at countries in need, but they are skeptical about common debt. Yet, citizens’ skepticism towards common debt is not important enough for them to negatively evaluate the program as a whole. Overall, the pandemic recovery fund agreed under ‘Next Generation EU’ is a well-tailored instrument to generate widespread political support across European member states.