As the EU member states face the possibility of disintegration, the willingness of citizens to leave existing powers within the EU’s competence draws more and more attention. Contrary to what could be expected taking into consideration the erosion of trust in the EU, the European public hasn't called for the return of powers to the national authorities. For instance, in the field of immigration policy reluctance to communitarize the policy (“political Euroscepticism” after Lubbers and Scheepers, 2005) remained at the same level as in 2007.
The given qualitative analysis of predictors of the willingness to confer powers in the field of immigration policy to the EU and of the dynamics of the factors explains the lack of change in the level of political Euroscepticism in immigration policy. The predictors identified may explain the public support for communitarization of other policies and point out the attitudes, that are to be changed by the EU in order to accelerate "spill-over" effect.
Dependent variable is the answer to the question “For each of the following areas, do you think that decisions should be made by the (nationality) Government, or made jointly within the European Union? Immigration” of Eurobarometer . In order to identify the predictors, the first part analyses the change in the dependent variable from 2001 to 2007 (when the lowest and the highest levels of the willingness were registered). A regression analysis reveals some unusual causes of the change (independent variables), like number of immigrants in the country, bad expectations of citizens, assesments of democratic character of the EU, level of correct awareness of the EU. In pursuit of the reasons for a relative stability of political Euroscepticism in immigration policy field from 2007 to 2012, the second part analyses the dynamics of the predictors during that period.
