ABSTRACT
The deepening of integration has widened the importance of decisions taken in Brussels for all European citizens. A corollary of this is that public opinion increasingly also matters in the European Union. In fact, the Maastricht referendums in Denmark and France and the Amsterdam Treaty referendum in Ireland proved this point emphatically. In this contribution Portuguese citizens’ attitudes towards Europe will be presented and discussed using Eurobarometer data from between 1985 and 1999. The attitudes of European citizens have been analysed extensively in a comparative manner. Social factors and political attitudes will be used to explain Portuguese views on membership in the next section, followed by an in-depth analysis of Portuguese parties positioning towards the EU integration in Portugal, as well as of the relationship between party positions and the electorate’s attitudes. Thus, both social and political data will be used to understand Portuguese attitudes toward the EU.
