The need to understand the domestic impact of EU policies and how they interact with different national and societal interests has never being more pressing, at a time where the EU faces great challenges and uncertainties in terms of the future of the integration process. This has received renewed interest in the UK during the Brexit negotiation process and across the EU member states reviewing the future of the EU focusing on better regulation and aiming to justify the necessity of further steps on European integration. Using an expert survey to compile a new Europeanisation index the paper examines whether the existing allocation of authority to EU institutions per policy area corresponds with public preferences. This paper will use time-series data on voters’ preferences on the preferred level of allocation of authority between the national and the EU institutions from Eurobarometer surveys. The new Europeanisation index also captures the ideological nature of EU legislation and whether it favours specific societal interests. This paper will explore whether there are differences between the nature of EU policy, incumbent parties’ policy proposals and the preferences of the median voter over time. The distance between voters’ preferences and parties’ policy commitments can help us to understand the impact of integration process on the ‘elite disconnection’ observed in Europe and how this elite disconnection contributes to rising public Euroscepticism.
