For many years now, the situation of the EU has been described as a ‘Polycrisis’. Different crises have been analysed in different ways and yet I argue in favour of an approach that bases the citizens’ opinion about the EU on its original core, a liberalized market. I ask the surprisingly understudied question, whether the EU keeps its original promise of economic benefits through market liberalization. The analysis will connect the regional patterns of market liberalization consequences with citizens attitudes towards the EU. I measure the exposure to globalization as subnational trade competitiveness on the NUTS-2 level, based on the regional sectoral occupation and its alignment with the national comparative advantage. This measure goes beyond existing measures like the estimates of the famous China shock, by additionally regarding the regional exports. The measurement of our dependent variable of EU attitudes will be drawn from the European Social Survey (ESS) and Eurobarometer surveys. I expect to find that EU regions that are relatively worse off from liberalized trade in the common market, show stronger anti-EU sentiments. Hence, the study contributes to the understanding of maybe the most serious challenge of the EU, public opposition towards the common market as its political core.
