Citizens’ attitudes, preferences, and demands with regard to the future of European social citizenship

To shortly preview our main findings: Firstly, on the one hand, the focus group data mirrors previous findings from quantitative surveys that document wide-spread support for the concept of Social Europe throughout the European Union. On the other hand, however, digging a little deeper also reveals a significant degree of skepticism regarding the future of Social Europe. This skepticism is partly related to the EU’s struggles in dealing with a series of mega crises (the economic and fiscal crisis, Brexit, Covid-19 and the Ukraine war), but also to lingering concerns about distributive justice and solidarity in the EU and the continued large divergence of welfare states. Secondly, the qualitative data also show that citizens tend to associate social investment policies with the EU and more traditional, transfer-heavy social policies with national welfare states. This broad division of labor is also congruent with the actual policy trajectories of social citizenship policy outputs (see chapter by Burgoon et al. in this volume). Thirdly, our findings also show that many citizens are often ill-informed about the state of social rights in the EU. Addressing the information deficit – both on the current state of social citizenship rights and the EU’s role in securing these rights – could help to boost support for the EU as well as improve socio-economic outcomes.