IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03969482.html

Rallying around the EU flag: Russia's invasion of Ukraine and attitudes toward European integration

Author

Listed:
  • Nils Steiner

    (JGU - Johannes Gutenberg - Universität Mainz = Johannes Gutenberg University)

  • Ruxanda Berlinschi

    (KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

  • Etienne Farvaque

    (LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - ULCO - Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Jan Fidrmuc

    (LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - ULCO - Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Philipp Harms

    (JGU - Johannes Gutenberg - Universität Mainz = Johannes Gutenberg University)

  • Alexander Mihailov

    (UOR - University of Reading)

  • Michael Neugart

    (TU Darmstadt - Technische Universität Darmstadt - Technical University of Darmstadt [Darmstadt])

  • Piotr Stanek

    (Cracow University of Economics)

Abstract

This article uses a survey amongst students at European universities to explore whether Russia's invasion of Ukraine has affected attitudes towards European integration. Some respondents completed the survey just before Russia's assault on 24 February 2022, and some did so just afterwards, thus delivering a quasi-experimental design situation, which we exploit. Our results suggest that the ominous news about the Russian attack increased the participants' interest in EU politics, consolidated their attachment to the EU and made them more mindful and appreciative of the benefits of deeper European integration. In effect, the war so close to the EU Eastern border provoked a rally around the supranational EU flag, with convergence of public opinion towards shared European values.

Suggested Citation

  • Nils Steiner & Ruxanda Berlinschi & Etienne Farvaque & Jan Fidrmuc & Philipp Harms & Alexander Mihailov & Michael Neugart & Piotr Stanek, 2022. "Rallying around the EU flag: Russia's invasion of Ukraine and attitudes toward European integration," Post-Print hal-03969482, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03969482
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13449
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mihai Alexandrescu, 2024. "Beyond Geopolitics: Unraveling Public Support for Economic Sanctions in the B9 States at the Beginning of the Ukrainian War (2022)," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(3), pages 21582440241, August.
    2. Zakharov, Alexei & Chapkovski, Philipp, 2025. "The effect of war on redistribution preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    3. Jerg Gutmann & Hans Pitlik & Andrea Fronaschütz, 2023. "Has the Russian invasion of Ukraine reinforced anti-globalization sentiment in Austria?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 50(2), pages 289-299, May.
    4. Liesbet Hooghe & Gary Marks & Ryan Bakker & Seth Jolly & Jonathan Polk & Jan Rovny & Marco Steenbergen & Milada Anna Vachudova, 2024. "The Russian threat and the consolidation of the West: How populism and EU-skepticism shape party support for Ukraine," European Union Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 459-482, September.
    5. Muhammad Muhammad & Domantas Undzėnas, 2025. "Entangled fates—the rally effect around Europe due to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    6. Maria Hierro & Adolfo Maza, 2024. "A Capacity‐Based Approach for Assessing Changes in Responsibility Sharing in the EU: Comparing the Syrian and Ukrainian Refugee Crises," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(6), pages 1734-1746, November.
    7. Hamjediers, Maik, 2025. "A Threat Next Door? Causal Evidence that Russia's Invasion Increased Willingness to Fight in the Czech Republic but Not in Uruguay," SocArXiv p6xf4_v1, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order and Integration
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • Z18 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03969482. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.