Unemployment risk-sharing in the EU: How policy design influences citizen support for European unemployment policy
| Author | Brian Burgoon,Frank Vandenbroucke,Theresa Kuhn,Francesco Nicoli |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165221075251 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Unemployment risk-sharing
in the EU: How policy
design influences citizen
support for European
unemployment policy
Brian Burgoon
Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Theresa Kuhn
Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Francesco Nicoli
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; Faculty of Economics,
University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Frank Vandenbroucke
Minister of Social Affairs and Healthcare of the Belgian
Government, Brussels, Belgium
Abstract
This article explores public preferences for European unemployment programs expli-
citly discussed in actual policymaker debate. European policymakers have been consid-
ering European-level Unemployment Risk Sharing (EURS) to stabilize member-state
economies and provide a safety net for the unemployed. Using a conjoint experiment
conducted in 13 European member states, we analyze public support across six crucial
policy dimensions of EURS. The findings reveal that (a) overall support for EURS policies
is broad and substantial, but sensitive to particular policy mixes; (b) citizen support is
Corresponding author:
Brian Burgoon, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166 1018
WV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Email: b.m.burgoon@uva.nl
Article
European Union Politics
2022, Vol. 23(2) 282–308
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165221075251
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
conditional on the program being generous and on coverage being limited to countries
providing education and training and individual beneficiaries looking for and accepting
work; and (c) cross-country variation is modest and most prominent with respect to
cross-country redistribution.
Keywords
European economic governance, European unemployment benefit schemes, public
opinion, public policy, survey experiment
Introduction
A major debate in comparative political economy concerns the development of social
protection in the European Union (EU). In the past decade, the European Commission
and the Council have presented several proposals to establish Eurozone-level risk-sharing
(European Commission, 2017; Van Rompuy et al., 2012). More recently, the European
Commission agenda has prominently included proposals to establish European-level
reinsurance of national unemployment benefits (Von der Leyen, 2019: 10), and the
initial EU response to the COVID-19 pandemic has included the program of Support
to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency to disburse benefits and ‘re-insurance’
to citizens (European Commission, 2020: 3).
These ideas about EU unemployment benefits –what can be generically called
European-level Unemployment Risk Sharing (EURS) –constitute an extensive form of
international cooperation in socio-economic protection, among the most jealously
defended prerogatives of national sovereignty. Not surprisingly, then, such political-
economic pooling of sovereignty remains controversial among scholars, policymakers,
and publics. Support for EURS must overcome concerns about the level and distribution
of costs, and about how EU-level provisions will relate to existing national welfare states
(Baute et al., 2018a). More fundamentally, the development of EU-level social provisions
is at the front lines of debate about whether European integration should be about not only
market liberalization but also about meaningful social embedding by developing a ‘social
pillar’of integration (Scharpf, 2002).
Scholarship on public opinion about EU social policies has yielded diverging find-
ings. Some uncover considerable support for EU cross-border solidarity (Ferrera and
Pellegata, 2017; Gerhards et al., 2020), while others find modest support, especially
as compared to support for national policies (Dolls and Wehrhöfer, 2021; Lahusen
and Grasso, 2018). Bremer et al. (2020) suggest that public opinion depends on the
policy domain and instrument: support is strongest for cross-national solidarity
towards natural disasters and lowest towards struggles with debt, and precautionary
ex ante instruments (like training or education) are preferred over ex post remedies
(like income transfers). Significant differences across countries are driven by macroeco-
nomic contexts and expectations as to what EU involvement promises for one’s country
(Vasilopoulou and Talving, 2019). Finally, scholars reach diverging conclusions about
how much left-right ideology (Gerhards et al., 2020; Kleider and Stoeckel, 2019),
Burgoon et al. 283
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