Mapping and Explaining the Development of Public Trust in the EU during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract: This study seeks to advance the understanding of the development of public trust in the EU during the Covid-19 pandemic (from its beginning to March 2022). The importance of this study lies in the relevance of public trust in institutions in impacting their legitimacy and success, e.g. of policies. It is found that the EU has lost trust during the pandemic among a majority of especially central- and Northern- European member states. Four factors relating to public trust, namely trust in national governments as well as the vaccine, perceived job insecurity, and the receiving of additional financial aid from EU institutions were explored as potentially correlating variables in a mixed-method multi-stage research design. Based on the Eurofound data set titled “Living, Working and Covid-19 Data”, a high substantive but negligible statistical significance was identified regarding all four variables. In narrowing in on the negative outlier cases Austria and Germany through newspaper analysis, a correlation between the sentiment of newspaper reportings and the development of public trust was identified and the statistical findings were strengthened for all variables but trust in the vaccine.