The present special issue of Perspectives on Federalism reflects on the nature and characteristics of solidarity within a supranational context, it explains what solidarity has meant so far in the EU, how much solidarity we had during the crisis, what type of solidarity is needed and how to...

The European Commission proposes a pan-European support for short-time work arrangements (SURE). This column discusses the relationship between this proposal and the idea of a European unemployment re-insurance scheme, to which the Commission also refers in its Communication on SURE. We sketch...

We argue that the EU needs a more robust policy framework for the centralized procurement, storage and allocation of medical countermeasures against a pandemic, such as COVID-19. We conducted a survey before the COVID-19 outbreak to assess Dutch citizens' attitudes towards such a centralized...

Against the backdrop of proposals to introduce a European unemployment insurance scheme, we study public support for such schemes by conducting a conjoint experiment on support for European unemployment insurance in 13 EU member states. We argue that European-level social policy initiatives and...

The European Commission has argued repeatedly that the European Monetary Union has to be completed by automatic fiscal stabilisers. To achieve this, one of the options would be the re-insurance of national unemployment benefit schemes at the Eurozone level. Are EU citizens ready to share the...

In the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis, proposals to share the risk of unemployment shocks have been high on the political agenda. Welfare states have built-in automatic stabilisers to cushion economic shocks, notably unemployment insurance. The argument with regard to the Eurozone is that a...

The recent European elections have shown a sharp rise in parties and independent parliament members generally perceived as “Eurosceptic”. Against this background, this paper analyses the interconnections between distressed economies, the fall of confidence in traditional political parties,...