Who Supports the ECB? Evidence from Eurobarometer Survey Data

This paper addresses empirically the still debated issue of the legitimacy of the European Central Bank (ECB) with regard to European polities, presenting evidence on public opinion support for the ECB as elicited from responses in the recent waves of the Eurobarometer survey. We employ a rich set of potential determinants, combining macroeconomic and socio-demographic data in logistic regressions, to explain trust in the ECB. We find that people with higher level of income and education and centre to right-wing political orientation tend to support the ECB, as well as people with optimistic expectations on the economic situation. Moreover, our results indicate that socio-demographic determinants of trust in the ECB dominate macroeconomic ones, in particular inflation performance, by a considerable margin of magnitude and in a quite robust way. The policy relevance of such results is important for ECB’s communication strategy with the EU public, especially in the years ahead of likely reforms of the European Monetary Union (EMU).