Public Opinion and European Integration: The Crisis of the 1970s

Public support and attitudes toward European integration and the Common Market as a set of integrative institutions traversed a crisis during the 1970s which few suspected. Evidence is presented which suggests that integrative efforts may have seriously lost ground rather than merely stagnating as had been forecast by the more pessimistic theorists and analysts of the 1960s. The decline in support can be linked to both integration-related events such as the attempts to enlarge the Community and the economic crisis of the mid-1970s. By the end of the decade, the decline in general support of European integration appears to have been reversed, probably because of the direct European elections and improvement in the economic situation. On the other hand, support for the Community continued to decline in the 1980s.