The next European electoral appointment will inevitably be marked by the profound changes that the crisis has produced in European public opinion. All confidence indicators – in the institutions, in the future of the Union, in the single currency – showed significant declines during the crisis, in some cases reaching historic lows never previously experienced. The first major challenge that future European leaders will have to face is rebuilding the confidence of citizens, who will hardly be satisfied with a sluggish recovery and a return to "business as usual".
A second challenge, in some ways even more complex, is to stem the division between public opinion that the crisis has made manifest. In fact, although generalized, the fall in confidence has not been uniform in the countries of the Union. Given the specific dimension that the crisis has assumed in the eurozone, the above analysis has mainly focused on the dynamics in the euro countries. A strong difference in trends between the countries of the North and those of the South has emerged, which in a few years has led to a real reversal of the "map of public trust" in the European Union.
If at the time of the introduction of the euro the countries of the South were generally the most sympathetic towards the institutions of the Union and the most enthusiastic supporters of the single currency, today they appear to be the least confident and least convinced of the advantages of monetary unification. In particular, with regard to support for the single currency, before the introduction of the euro and until 2003, the citizens of the South were decidedly more convinced: 60 vs. 45% in 1995; 72 vs. 56% in 2000; 75 vs. 62% in 2001; 74 vs. 69% in 2003. Subsequently, in conjunction with the enlargement to the east of the EU, there is first a balancing (68% for both areas in 2004) and then a reversal of positions. At the end of 2013, support for the euro in the countries of the South had fallen to 55%, compared with 68% in the Centre-North. Therefore, in the almost twenty years over which the opinions of European citizens on the euro have been collected, it is not the first time that a divergence has been recorded between the perceptions of the Centre-North and those of the South. On the one hand, it could appear reassuring that something of the kind had already happened in the past and that it was then overcome.
On the other hand, however, at that stage public confidence in the EU fluctuated around 50% while today it is below 30%. Furthermore, today it is the countries most in crisis who believe least in the euro and in the EU and unions – in life but perhaps also in the economy – usually falter and come to rupture because the party "in suffering" has the perception of not to be understood and listened to and that you have no other option. The strong link between support for the euro and faith in the future of the EU, moreover, makes it clear that what is at stake is not just the single currency. In other words, in the absence of adequate responses, the risk of instability would not concern only the euro but the entire European project.
