Out of sight, out of mind? Public reactions to corruption in the European Union

Citizens’ ability to hold corrupt politicians accountable is a key feature of demo-cratic political systems. Particularly in the European Union (EU), such account-ability mechanisms are often argued to malfunction due to the EU’s complicatedinstitutional architecture and in-transparent democratic procedures. Contributingto the debate on the EU’s democratic deficit, we provide quasi-experimental evi-dence on the causal effect of a recent corruption scandal in the European Parliament.Leveraging an ‘Unexpected Event during Survey Design’ identification strategy inFrance and Germany, we document a sizable negative effect of the so-called Qatar-gate scandal on public trust in the European Parliament. This provides evidencein favor of a working accountability mechanism in the EU’s democratic politicalsystem