School of Economics researchers outline citizen perceptions of the EU project with Horizon 2020 partners across Europe

The Regional Quantitative Analysis Group (AQR-IREA) at the UB School of Economics has led the evaluation of the citizen perceptions of the EU regarding the regional performance of the Cohesion Policy and institutional quality. This research falls within the PERCEIVE project, a three-year research project funded by the European programme Horizon 2020 which studies what influences the perception of Europe at the regional level.

PERCEIVE is an acronym that stands for “Perception and evaluation of Regional and Cohesion Policies by Europeans and Identification with the values of Europe”. The findings were presented at the PERCEIVE Final Conference, which took place on June 19^th 2019. The project’s last public event gathered researchers from the seven partner academic institutions.

Four UB School of Economics researchers made contributions to the PERCEIVE project, namely Jordi Suriñach, Vicente Royuela, Enrique López-Bazo and Rosina Moreno. The AQR-IREA has provided an informative mapping of the determinants of perception and identification with the EU, in collaboration with the University of Goteborg and University of Bologna. The research carried out by these partners supported the development of a synthetic indicator to determine the citizen’s identification with the EU and modeled convergence of EU citizens’ identification in the case study regions.

The PERCEIVE project investigates, in different European regions, how much citizens feel European and to what extent this is related to the implementation of the European Cohesion Policy. The project relies on a multidisciplinary portfolio of competences bridging socio-political, regional-economic and public-administrative backgrounds. It also integrates the use of both qualitative and quantitative analytical methods such as surveys, focus groups, case studies and econometric modelling.

The parnership includes five major universities, two research institutes and an audience engagement consultancy. These are the University of Bologna (project leader), University of Gothenburg, Romanian Academy-Institute of Agricultural Economics, University of Barcelona, University of Portsmouth, Vienna University of Economics and Business and BAM! Strategie Culturali.

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