Conclusions

Abstract

This concluding chapter provides a summary review of the main themes and empirical findings developed in the book. It shows that the processes affecting perceptions of EU citizenship and engagement appear to operate in a broadly similar fashion cross-nationally. Obviously, levels of citizenship and engagement vary across countries and contexts. Nonetheless, the empirical analysis shows that EU mass publics tend to think about the EU in remarkably similar ways. The sense of EU citizenship among mass publics may not yet have ‘caught up’ with the formal legal citizenship that all EU citizens enjoy. This said, there is a real, measurable emerging sense of European citizenship, which complements rather than contradicts feelings of national citizenship among mass publics in all member states, and which counterbalances a developing Euroscepticism in some EU countries. This structure appears relatively stable, even during the severe global economic crisis which affected European nations after 2007