A new normal: How Covid is shaping people's perception of EU, its leaders

COVID-19 is an unprecedented doom loop between a severe health crisis and grave economic repercussions. Government interventions to handle the outbreak and its aftermath first stopped public life in its tracks and then entirely reshaped it. This has left us in a kind of “new normal”, in which social interactions and labour conditions will probably never be the same again.

An experimental research study suggests that when people are thinking about the health crisis, they express less trust in politicians and political institutions such as the European Union. That’s even more the case when they are thinking about