The European Parliament elections are coming up, but what does the EU actually mean to people? That is what Elske van den Hoogen of Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences investigated in her PhD thesis. Among other things, she interviewed numerous citizens to hear what they think about the EU. Criticism of the EU comes in many forms, these interviews show, but being critical does not mean that you are against the EU.
Van den Hoogen spoke to many people, preferably in small groups, in a setting in which they felt comfortable and which they could choose themselves: "I wanted to have reasonably homogeneous groups. In part, people already knew each other and had fairly similar views." She did this deliberately to prevent it from turning into fierce discussions and so that participants would not start talking at each other's mouths. At the start, participants were given notes on which they had to write down four associations about the EU. This input then formed the basis for further discussion.
Shared criticism
Obvious terms like 'Euro', 'Brussels' and 'Brexit' (which dominated the news at the time) passed by. But also ‘not transparent’, ‘waste of money’ and ‘undemocratic’. "Interestingly, almost everyone appeared to have these three criticisms," says the PhD student. "But what exactly is meant by those criticisms is strongly related to how you look at the EU and what meaning you attach to it. And in doing so, it also turned out that people can be quite critical of the EU without being against it."
Based on the interviews, she came up with four different views of the EU. One group sees the EU as necessary because the Netherlands simply cannot do certain things alone. For example, someone returned that agreements on climate and security were 'fine', but that they were also bothered by 'fussing about small things' and that the EU should not interfere with our pensions. This 'pragmatic view', as the researcher calls it, is in favour of the EU, but makes critical comments.
'United States of Europe'
The 'federalist view' group, on the contrary, believes that more power should lie with the EU. They believe that European democracy would function better if less power lay with individual member states. "My dream scenario would be a more federal, more United States of Europe," returned one of the respondents. This, in turn, runs counter to the "anti-establishment view". According to this perspective, the EU is characterised by 'total control by the elite' who are seen as 'corrupt' and focused on self-interest. For example, MEPs are said to be 'busy with expense allowances' and 'checking in and out' of parliament mainly for appearances.
Indifferent and a voucher
Then there is a group of participants who are quite indifferent to the EU. "It tells me little" people said, or information about the EU goes "in one ear and out the other". This group had no strong opinion, but how do you get them to participate in research anyway? "By giving a voucher," explains the sociologist. "For my research, I felt it was very important to talk to these people. That voucher helped with that, because how else do you get them to speak?"
The PhD student also conducted survey research (with questionnaires) to provide numerical evidence for her findings. In doing so, she confirmed that Dutch people clearly attribute different meanings to the EU. But being very critical of the EU is thus not the same as being in favour of a Nexit, she systematically showed. In another study, Van den Hoogen showed an information video about the EU: "What I find an interesting finding is that the small group that knew very little about the EU started thinking more positively about the EU as a result. For this group of people, information campaigns about the EU can indeed have an impact. Perhaps this is also true for the upcoming European Parliament elections."
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Elske van den Hoogen was recently a guest on the radio programme Nieuwsweekend to talk about her research. Watch or listen to the clip here (in Dutch).
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