Dominant approaches to EU analysis typically emphasise rational calculation, strategic bargaining, and institutional incentives. This paper departs from these perspectives by applying a constructivist ontological security lens that foregrounds meanings, identities, and normative expectations—while linking EU politics to the everyday anxieties through which Europeans experience crisis and demand reassurance and protection.

The polycrisis of 2022–2026—centred on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its cascading consequences, including energy price shocks, inflationary pressures, and intensifying climate-related risks—has made EU climate and energy governance salient far beyond government circles. In Czechia and Poland, these disruptions have been felt in daily routines and household calculations: higher living costs, uncertainty about future stability, and growing concerns over fairness and social security. The paper argues that such lived insecurity is not merely economic but existential. When familiar expectations no longer hold, individuals seek continuity and control, projecting everyday uncertainty into politics and intensifying expectations for national and EU-level responses that can restore predictability.

Empirically, the study examines how these everyday insecurities are mediated by political and media narratives that connect policy choices to responsibility, solidarity, and sovereignty. It also considers how climate- and energy-related disinformation can amplify anxiety and resentment by reframing transition policies as threats rather than safeguards, thereby shaping trust in EU governance and support for the green transition.

Methodologically, the paper employs a comparative design combining (1) analysis of EU and national energy-climate policy developments, (2) discourse analysis of political and media narratives—supported by topic modelling to trace shifts over time—and (3) public opinion evidence capturing perceptions of insecurity, trust, and identity orientations.

By bringing everyday ontological (in)security into the study of EU governance, the paper contributes to scholarship on “everyday Europe” and shows how European integration is enacted and contested through the meanings citizens attach to crisis politics under conditions of prolonged uncertainty.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Europe has grappled with a series of crises, from the 2008 financial and sovereign debt crises to the 2015 refugee crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and most recently, the Ukrainian refugee crisis, testing political trust within EU’s multilevel governance system. While existing trust literature primarily focuses on individual-level and single-crisis scenarios, it rarely examines and compares how birth cohorts socialized in different times, with distinct priorities and values, adjust their trust when different types of crises hit. To address this gap, this paper adopts a cohort perspective to investigate the impact of the four major crises from 2005 to 2024 on political trust at both national and EU levels. Drawing on political socialization theories and crisis-related literature, the paper anticipates divergent responses to crises across birth cohorts. Analyzing 39 waves from Standard Eurobarometer surveys from 25 EU countries via a pooled APC and pseudo-panel models reveals distinct generational patterns during crises. Preliminary findings indicate that economic crises are the most systematic and cumulative source of trust erosion, with negative effects manifesting more at the national than the EU level, and the resulting loss of political trust surpassing that of subsequent crises in both persistence and depth. Cohort analysis further suggests that younger generations tend to be more sensitive and vulnerable to economic and pandemic crises, while showing greater resilience than older cohorts during refugee crises. Taken together, this multi-crisis and cohort-based analysis helps assess whether and to what extent societal, especially political, responses to various large-scale exogenous shocks are universal. This knowledge is of high policy-relevance, as it can inform crisis communication and response strategies, including by aligning messages with the attribution logics that different cohorts may apply in different types of crises.

How do citizens evaluate the legitimacy of crisis governance beyond national borders? Existing debates on EU legitimacy distinguish between input-based considerations, related to who exercises authority, and output-based considerations, related to how effectively authority is exercised. This paper examines how these dimensions interact in the context of EU consular protection overseas during large-scale emergencies. Consular protection provides a distinctive empirical setting, as it involves state-like assistance to citizens abroad and the external exercise of public authority. Drawing on a population-representative conjoint experiment conducted in Spain, we analyse citizens’ support for consular protection that vary provider identity (another EU Member State embassy versus an EU Delegation outside EU territory), performance attributes (speed of assistance, equality of treatment, and scope of support), and crisis context (type of emergency and country risk). The results indicate that performance-related attributes play a central role in shaping support for consular protection arrangements. By contrast, provider identity (intergovernmental vs supranational governance) does not systematically structure citizens’ evaluations. Our findings also suggest that context matters in unexpected ways: support declines in high-risk countries, while crisis type (natural, health, political) does not significantly differentiate support. Heterogeneity analyses also show that European identity and ideology do not structure evaluations, whereas higher trust in the EU robustly increases support for consular protection. Overall, our findings show that citizens care more about what is delivered than who delivers it, explaining the conditions under which supranational authority becomes publicly acceptable.

While European integration is often analysed through the lens of institutional compliance and formal enlargement procedures, this paper argues that Ukraine’s path towards the European Union during Russia’s full-scale aggression reveals Europeanisation as an everyday societal practice of state institutions, civil society, and expert communities. Drawing on expert interviews, survey data, and process-tracing of Ukraine’s accession trajectory in wartime, the paper explores how European integration has been practised and perceived in Ukraine under conditions of the ongoing war.

First, the paper traces Ukraine’s path from the submission of its EU membership application in February 2022 to the opening of accession negotiations in June 2024. It shows how Ukraine’s application for EU membership submitted just a couple of days after Russia’s invasion was not merely a geopolitical signal but a manifestation of Ukraine’s actorness as a result of long-term Europeanisation process. It included both political determination and societal consensus regarding Ukraine’s European choice.

Second, the paper explores societal perceptions vis-à-vis the EU in wartime Ukraine when Europe is seen as civilizational choice, closely linked to democratic values, sovereignty, and security.

By foregrounding practices, perceptions, and societal engagement, the paper contributes to debates on Europe as a ‘people’s union’ and demonstrates how European integration is enacted in everyday interactions beyond formal institutional settings.