DP15021 The future of the European project: survey results from members of national parliaments in France, Italy and Germany
We explore the potential for six well-known reform proposals in the European Union such as Eurobonds and European Unemployment insurance through a survey of members of national parliaments in France, Germany and Italy in 2018. In addition, we address three institutional reforms and fiscal policies: a new tax-based own resource for the EU budget, majority voting of the European council on tax policy, and the extension of legislative initiative to the European Parliament. We find that (i) nationality and party alliance are key determinants of reform preferences, but the latter dominates quantitatively the former; (ii) on average Italian politicians and members belonging to the Socialists and Democrats group are much more in favour of further European integration than German policymakers and those from the European People’s Party group; and (iii) populist parties in Germany and Italy have radically different views on the future of Europe. In the last part of the paper, we compare the answers for the same questions to the answers made by French and German parliament members in 2016. We find that (iv) there is considerable stability of views over time.
