The central concern of this book is to know and describe how far EU ‘legal’ citizens feel that they are actually part of a functioning European political system and how much they think of themselves as EU citizens. The chapters report evidence of the levels of European identity, sense of EU representation and preferences for EU policy scope among European mass publics, which are the main dimensions of EU citizenship. The analysis uses a new comparative dataset on EU attitudes derived from a survey in sixteen EU countries plus Serbia in 2007. This study shows that, despite initial expectations, ... More

The central concern of this book is to know and describe how far EU ‘legal’ citizens feel that they are actually part of a functioning European political system and how much they think of themselves as EU citizens. The chapters report evidence of the levels of European identity, sense of EU representation and preferences for EU policy scope among European mass publics, which are the main dimensions of EU citizenship. The analysis uses a new comparative dataset on EU attitudes derived from a survey in sixteen EU countries plus Serbia in 2007. This study shows that, despite initial expectations, levels of European identity, sense of EU representation, and preferences for EU policy scope among European mass publics did not display a strong trend in any particular direction during the period between 1975 and 2007. However, there are interesting variations in these measures of EU citizenship both across individuals and across countries that are described and explained by reference to a series of relevant hypotheses. The book pays particular attention to the inter-linkages among the three dimensions of citizenship itself. EU identity, representation and scope are all reciprocally related, but the representation dimension is key to the development of a generalised sense of a sense of citizenship at the EU level. This in turn places a significant premium on the need to address popular doubts about the EU's ‘democratic deficit’.