Once we were friends: EU support and reciprocal views between Germany and Italy

Mutual trust among citizens of different member states is a cornerstone for the establishment of a sense of European identity and the strengthening of the EU integration process (Hooghe and Verhaegen 2017). However, the current, multifaceted crisis that the EU is experiencing, in addition to some side effects of the integration process, have not only exacerbated public opposition to the EU, but are also eroding the stock of mutual trust among citizens of different member states accumulated since the end of WWII. In particular, the recent Eurozone crisis has increased the tensions between core countries of Northern Europe, with strong macro-economic performances, and countries of the Southern periphery, struggling with excessive deficit and increasing public debt. Two competing narratives about who is to blame for the crisis are in play. The core countries’ narrative is about feckless Greeks and Italians and the inability of their national institutions to adopt structural reforms to keep their public debt under control and the Euro sustainable. The narrative running in peripheral member states blames Northern countries, and Germany above all, for their austerity measures and their lack of solidarity towards countries facing severe economic and financial difficulties. As Grabbe (2012) pointed out, the sovereign debt crisis is more than the breakdown of a currency and of a political project, it is also causing a loss of trust between EU member states. By taking Germany and Italy as illustrative examples of this ‘Core-Periphery’ divide, this article aims to investigate the evolution of the respective perceptions these two countries hold of each other, expressed by public opinions and political elites, and its relation with public support for the EU.