SecEUrity Project: EU Vaccine Procurement Experiment - Competing Frames

How does the European public evaluate the performance of the European Union in negotiating and purchasing COVID vaccines for its member states? While the COVID pandemic will likely have a multitude of effects on future EU politics, at the public level these evaluations of the EU vaccine procurement performance might be most influential. The EU vaccines negotiations arguably were the single most visible task the EU performed during the pandemic. Consequently, citizens might form attitudes about the desired involvement of the EU in important future (crisis) issues on the basis of their approval or disapproval of the job the EU has done with COVID vaccines. We study European public evaluations of the EU’s vaccine procurement performance by collecting data on these evaluations in a Pan-European survey conducted in 20 EU member states and the UK, with target sample sizes of 750-1,000 per country. At the descriptive level we are interested in the distribution of this performance evaluation, its relationship with the performance evaluation of the EU’s general handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the variation of these attitudes (and their relationship) across member states. The core of the study and the focus of this pre-registration is a survey experiment that studies the effects of providing respondents with information about the EU’s vaccine procurement performance. In doing so we aim to illuminate the extent to which citizens are familiar with the most common (expert) considerations about EU performance discussed in public discourse. As a flipside to this perspective, we can also address whether providing information about positive and negative aspects of the EU performance may shift public opinion towards a favourable or unfavourable evaluation, respectively. In European public discourse, there are positive and negative views on the EU’s vaccine procurement performance. Supporters of EU vaccine procurement say it has allowed the EU to secure vaccines at a less expensive price, and helps ensure equality across EU member states in terms of when they get vaccines. Critics of this approach say the EU has made crucial mistakes, which has led to a much slower access to vaccines compared to countries like the US and UK. In the survey experiment, we experimentally vary whether respondents are confronted with (1) the view of the supporters, (2) the view of the critics, (3) both views, or (4) neither.