All Hands on Deck' or Separate Lifeboats? Public support for European Economic Solidarity during the Covid-19 pandemic

What are the sources of public support for international aid in times of crises? This paper
investigates the determinants of public support for the EU Covid-19 aid package (’NextGenera-
tionEU’, NGEU), the largest aid package in EU history. We show that although public support
for within-EU redistribution is influenced by long-standing factors such as ideology and citizen
identities, endorsement or opposition cues taken from elite actors are important determinants
of public support for aid in times of crises. Conversely, the effects of policy details about the
aid package are more mixed. Using what is to the best of our knowledge the first EU-wide
study on public opinion on the Covid-19 rescue package, our vignette experiment shows that
short-term shifts in support for the rescue package are driven mostly by elite endorsement
cues rather than information about the precise terms of aid or amount. We also find that the
role of elite endorsement cues varies across different subsets of the population depending on
their level of political sophistication, national level attachment and country context. Thus, in
the face of multidimensional decision-making in times of crises, national institutions are key
catalyst of moving short-term support for policies of international solidarity. We discuss how
our findings have implications for democratic governance and accountability in the EU.