Germans Take Critical View of European Unemployment Insurance

The majority of German voters do not support the concept of European unemployment insurance. 57 percent of Germans oppose the idea, while just 18 percent support the reform proposal. A sovereign insolvency procedure, by contrast, garnered the support of 48 percent of survey participants, according to a new study for the research network EconPol Europe published on Thursday to mark the EconPol panel discussion at the Munich Economic Summit. “The high rejection rate of European unemployment insurance is based on concerns over long-term payments between the Eurozone’s member states. Germans also fear that governments will no longer fight unemployment energetically enough,” explains one of the study’s authors Mathias Dolls, Deputy Director of the ifo Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys.

“Our results suggest that the German population does not support one-sided steps towards greater risk-sharing. From an economic point of view, it is important to achieve the right balance between solidarity and market discipline in the forthcoming negotiations over reforming the Eurozone,” added Dolls.

Both proposals are featured in the Franco-German Meseberg Declaration on Eurozone reforms. The EconPol study is based on a survey by the German Internet Panel; the sample used is representative for the German population.

Publication
Mathias Dolls and Nils Wehrhofer, "Attitudes towards Euro Area Reforms: Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment", EconPol Working Paper 11, June 2018.