Euro-disappointed but not Eurosceptic? New evidence from Poland on the frustrated with EU’s response to democratic backsliding.

Some pundits claim that, in times of increasing tensions between the EU and the populist radical right governments of the so-called 'illiberal democracies', we are witnessing the appearance of a new category of Eurosceptics. Apparently, it consists of those defenders of democratic rights and the rule of law who are increasingly frustrated with the EU’s insufficient reaction to democratic backsliding in countries such as Hungary or Poland. In this study, we focus on Poland and describe this new category as the ‘Euro-disappointed’, showing that it is conceptually and empirically different from the one related to Euroscepticism. Using Polish National Election Study (PGSW) longitudinally together with original survey data collected in December 2020, February and November 2021, we demonstrate that the shares of Poles concerned with the lack of adequate response from the EU to the ongoing process of autocratization and those in favor of the conditionality mechanisms tying the EU funds to the rule of law are high and rising. However, the ‘Euro-disappointed’ remain predominantly pro-European and, despite the intensification of the clash between Warsaw and Brussels, there is no sign of the mounting frustration leading towards lower levels of support for further European unification among this group.