The Impact of the Refugee Crisis on Polish Perception of the European Union

This paper investigates the effects of the migration crisis of 2015 on Polish attitudes to the European Union. Superficially, there seems to have been no significant impact: even though the migration crisis resulted in hitherto unprecedented tensions between Poland and the EU, as well as a robust anti-immigrant turn in Polish public opinion, this crisis had little or no effect on the standard survey gauges of EU favorability in Poland. However, based on a comparison between the results of pre- and post-crisis Eurobarometer surveys (EB82.3 and EB87.3), our analysis demonstrates that while the overall perception of the EU became only slightly less favorable between 2014 and 2017, a substantial shift in the structure of public opinion did occur. Concerns over immigration were not associated with perception of the EU before the crisis but became dominant predictors after 2015.