French nationalism, EU support and a possible Frexit: insights from survey data

Abstract

This article focuses on French opinions and perceptions towards the European Union (EU). Its aim is to assess whether nationalism plays a relevant role in shaping people's views on the EU. For doing so, different proxies of patriotism, nationalism and chauvinism are explored, and French perception of the EU is scrutinized through four dimensions measuring the respondents' assessment of their EU knowledge, their country's benefits from EU membership, national sovereignty and support for continuing French EU membership. The data source comes from the survey carried out in 2013 by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) in which the sample size, in the case of France, is more than 2,000 people. Findings indicate that nationalism and chauvinism correlate negatively with attitudes towards the EU. The contribution to the literature is twofold. Firstly, it is shown that there is a strong negative correlation between chauvinism and the willingness of remaining as a Member State of the EU. Secondly, this research revealed that an improvement in the communication channels between the EU´s institutions and the citizenship could be crucial to counterbalance this effect.