Portuguese Attitudes Towards EU Membership: Social and Political Perspectives

Drawing on extensive sets of Eurobarometer data, this contribution presents and analyses Portuguese attitudes towards European integration. The data show that the Portuguese electorate continues to use political parties in order to make sense of complex reality, adopting their chosen party's stance on European integration. This leads to another conclusion relating to the relationship between the EU and the public in general: national parties seem to be the missing link for an improvement in the relationship between the EU as a political institution and the public in general.