Researching the Welfare Impact of Populist Radical Right Parties Comment on "A Scoping Review of Populist Radical Right Parties' Influence on Welfare Policy and its Implications for Population Health in Europe"

Populist radical right (PRR) parties can impact population health through multiple mechanisms, including welfare chauvinistic policies, influencing mainstream parties, and eroding democratic norms. Rinaldi and Bekker survey the literature in order to motivate a wider research agenda. They highlight results from existing studies which show the importance of looking into the impact of PRR parties on welfare policy. This commentary considers some of the areas of research highlighted by the original article, as well as other possibilities for further research. The most important of these is to expand the sample of cases to Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South East Asia

A missing link? Maintaining support for the European polity after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Recent research argues that external threats like war spur EU polity formation (Kelemen & McNamara, 2022). One key mechanism of this process is public support for policy responses designed by policymakers. However, like the ‘rally-round-the-flag’ effect (Mueller, 1970), public support wanes over time and we decompose this decrease into two elements: salience and polarisation at the domestic level for national and European policies in both soft and hard security (aid and sanctions). We show that while salience can sustain public support for European policy innovations, polarisation about national and (unexpectedly) European policies accelerates its decline. We thus qualify the story of EU polity formation through external security crises

European attitudes to refugees after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Why do attitudes to refugees vary? An original panel is used in five EU states – France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland – to explain European attitudes towards three groups of refugees following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is shown that European attitudes to Ukrainian refugees are determined by predispositions to immigration and perceptions of the war and actors involved, with European identity and contact with refugees being relatively unimportant. These findings are validated with dynamic panel models and attitudes towards the Temporary Protection Directive. A ‘spill-over’ effect is further demonstrated, whereby attitudes to Ukrainian refugees positively affect attitudes to Afghan and Somali refugees, and a declining ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effect over time. These findings contribute to the literature on attitudinal formation, showing the relative malleability of attitudes to refugees as a function of their embeddedness in broader attitudinal patterns (particularly to immigration and geopolitics), changing context (the different stages of the war), and spill-over from views towards other refugee groups

A unified autonomous Europe? Public opinion of the EU's foreign and security policy

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed the EU into a new phase where both the political elites and the public start to rethink its foreign and security policies. This paper uses a unique survey in seven European countries in the wake of the war to examine European public opinion on how the EU's foreign and security policies should be made and how autonomous they should be. We find that Europeans not only favour increasing military capacity at the national or NATO level but also prefer increasing military capacity at the EU level, though to a lesser degree. We also show that perceptions of both short-term and long-term threats, European identification and mainstream left-wing ideology lead Europeans to favour a more militarily powerful, unified and autonomous EU

SiE survey on solidarity in Europe trendfile (2018-2023)

The SiE survey on solidarity in Europe, developed by the EUI and YouGov, is implemented yearly since 2018. This trendfile compiles the most relevant variables repeated over the six wave datasets (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023); please consult GESIS for the individual yearly datasets. The trendfile indicators cover a number of topics such as support for solidarity amongst EU countries and beyond; political attitudes concerning European integration; trust in EU and national institutions; response to different crises through various instruments, including the Covid-19 outbreak and the war in Ukraine; preferences concerning EU policy, European security and defence policy, Russia, NATO and a European army; identity; value of democracy; importance and salience of various issues and threats; position concerning world politics; and individual attributes such as left-right self-placement; gender, age, ocupation, religion, past vote in national elections, among other indicators.The SiE survey on solidarity in Europe, developed by the EUI and YouGov, is implemented yearly since 2018. This trendfile compiles the most relevant variables repeated over the six wave datasets (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023); please consult GESIS for the individual yearly datasets. The trendfile indicators cover a number of topics such as support for solidarity amongst EU countries and beyond; political attitudes concerning European integration; trust in EU and national institutions; response to different crises through various instruments, including the Covid-19 outbreak and the war in Ukraine; preferences concerning EU policy, European security and defence policy, Russia, NATO and a European army; identity; value of democracy; importance and salience of various issues and threats; position concerning world politics; and individual attributes such as left-right self-placement; gender, age, ocupation, religion, past vote in national elections, among other indicators

Intraoperative transfusion practices in Europe

© 2016 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Journal of Anaesthesia.Background: Transfusion of allogeneic blood influences outcome after surgery. Despite widespread availability of transfusion guidelines, transfusion practices might vary among physicians, departments, hospitals and countries. Our aim was to determine the amount of packed red blood cells (pRBC) and blood products transfused intraoperatively, and to describe factors determining transfusion throughout Europe. Methods: We did a prospective observational cohort study enrolling 5803 patients in 126 European centres that received at least one pRBC unit intraoperatively, during a continuous three month period in 2013. Results: The overall intraoperative transfusion rate was 1.8%; 59% of transfusions were at least partially initiated as a result of a physiological transfusion trigger- mostly because of hypotension (55.4%) and/or tachycardia (30.7%). Haemoglobin (Hb)- based transfusion trigger alone initiated only 8.5% of transfusions. The Hb concentration [mean (sd)] just before transfusion was 8.1 (1.7) g dl-1 and increased to 9.8 (1.8) g dl-1 after transfusion. The mean number of intraoperatively transfused pRBC units was 2.5 (2.7) units (median 2). Conclusions: Although European Society of Anaesthesiology transfusion guidelines are moderately implemented in Europe with respect to Hb threshold for transfusion (7-9 g dl-1), there is still an urgent need for further educational efforts that focus on the number of pRBC units to be transfused at this threshold

Intraoperative ventilator settings and their association with postoperative pulmonary complications in neurosurgical patients: post-hoc analysis of LAS VEGAS study

Background: Limited information is available regarding intraoperative ventilator settings and the incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) in patients undergoing neurosurgical procedures. The aim of this post-hoc analysis of the 'Multicentre Local ASsessment of VEntilatory management during General Anaesthesia for Surgery' (LAS VEGAS) study was to examine the ventilator settings of patients undergoing neurosurgical procedures, and to explore the association between perioperative variables and the development of PPCs in neurosurgical patients. Methods: Post-hoc analysis of LAS VEGAS study, restricted to patients undergoing neurosurgery. Patients were stratified into groups based on the type of surgery (brain and spine), the occurrence of PPCs and the assess respiratory risk in surgical patients in Catalonia (ARISCAT) score risk for PPCs. Results: Seven hundred eighty-four patients were included in the analysis; 408 patients (52%) underwent spine surgery and 376 patients (48%) brain surgery. Median tidal volume (VT) was 8 ml [Interquartile Range, IQR = 7.3-9] per predicted body weight; median positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) was 5 [3 to 5] cmH20. Planned recruitment manoeuvres were used in the 6.9% of patients. No differences in ventilator settings were found among the sub-groups. PPCs occurred in 81 patients (10.3%). Duration of anaesthesia (odds ratio, 1.295 [95% confidence interval 1.067 to 1.572]; p = 0.009) and higher age for the brain group (odds ratio, 0.000 [0.000 to 0.189]; p = 0.031), but not intraoperative ventilator settings were independently associated with development of PPCs. Conclusions: Neurosurgical patients are ventilated with low VT and low PEEP, while recruitment manoeuvres are seldom applied. Intraoperative ventilator settings are not associated with PPCs