Economic crisis and attitudes towards the European Union : are Italians and Greeks becoming eurosceptic because of the crisis?

The economic crisis has emerged as a global phenomenon affecting several countries at the same time. This situation has presumably had an impact on attitudes towards supranational institutions, among which European Union has a prominent role. This is likely to be true also in countries that have traditionally been less critical towards the European integration process such as Italy and Greece, where the crisis not only heavily hit the economy, but also triggered serious political and institutional turmoil. Different national and international actors have been identified as potential culprits for the crisis. The main research question of the paper is whether, in these two countries, the attribution of blame for the crisis to national or international actors has an impact on voters’ attitudes towards the European Union. Analyses are carried out using fresh data from the national election studies (ELNES 2012 and ITANES 2013) of the two countries. To answer our questions we further control for the political sophistication and ideological positions of voters, as the political narrative that voters apply to understand the current crisis can affect their perceptions towards the European Union.