The European Union and the member states : an empirical analysis of Europeans' preferences for competences allocation

In this article, we empirically study the preferences of European citizens concerning the allocation of powers between the European Union (EU) and the Member States using Eurobarometer data from 1995 to 2003. Both descriptive and econometric analysis highlights a ranking of countries according to the number of issues citizens want to delegate to EU (which we call Europeanism). More specifically, the more pro-European countries are those from Southern Europe while the less pro-European countries are those in Scandinavia, Denmark, and Luxemburg. Econometric analysis shows that this country effect is largely linked to the quality of the countries’ national government institutions. We find also a positive relationship between Europeanism and education, the degree of information of citizens, and left wing affiliation. For some policy domains, we also estimate probit equations for citizens’ preferred allocation of powers and we find that the countries’ Europeanism ranking varies with the area considered.