This concluding chapter synthesizes the volume’s findings on how diverse global challenges shape public support for the European Union. Moving beyond a monolithic view of crises, it shows that public attitudes vary across crisis types—event-driven, structural, and recurring—and are deeply conditioned by national contexts, elite framing, and perceived EU responsiveness. While symmetrical and transnational shocks such as COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine often generate rally-around-Europe dynamics, recurring or identity-charged issues like immigration foster Euroscepticism. Structural threats like climate change elicit more diffuse, norm-based support. The chapter advances the concept of “contingent legitimacy” to describe how public trust in the EU is not stable, but context-dependent and shaped by institutional visibility, credibility, and framing. It concludes by reflecting on the implications for EU governance, calling for communicative, flexible, and multi-level responses to sustain legitimacy in the age of polycrisis, while acknowledging methodological limits and future avenues of research.

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Understanding Public Opinion Attitudes Towards the European Union Amid Threats and Crises

  • Giuliano Bobba,
  • Antonella Seddone

摘要

This concluding chapter synthesizes the volume’s findings on how diverse global challenges shape public support for the European Union. Moving beyond a monolithic view of crises, it shows that public attitudes vary across crisis types—event-driven, structural, and recurring—and are deeply conditioned by national contexts, elite framing, and perceived EU responsiveness. While symmetrical and transnational shocks such as COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine often generate rally-around-Europe dynamics, recurring or identity-charged issues like immigration foster Euroscepticism. Structural threats like climate change elicit more diffuse, norm-based support. The chapter advances the concept of “contingent legitimacy” to describe how public trust in the EU is not stable, but context-dependent and shaped by institutional visibility, credibility, and framing. It concludes by reflecting on the implications for EU governance, calling for communicative, flexible, and multi-level responses to sustain legitimacy in the age of polycrisis, while acknowledging methodological limits and future avenues of research.