Europeans are becoming aware of the EU’s impact on their daily lives. At the same time, a narrow majority of EU residents show satisfaction with the democratic functioning of the EU. That’s according to a Eurobarometer poll, exactly one year before next year’s European elections.
It’s a towering cliché, but you can prove anything with numbers. And so you always have to be careful with surveys, especially when they are commissioned by an institution – in this case the European Parliament – which is currently struggling with a serious image problem of its own. For this Eurobarometer, more than 26,000 respondents were personally surveyed in March in all EU member states. The poll was conducted barely two months after the major corruption scandal erupted in the European Parliament. So it is not implausible that this unsavory affair influenced the results somewhat.
Compared to last fall, slightly fewer EU citizens are now “totally positive” toward the EU (45 percent now versus 47 percent in 2022). In fact, 17 percent of respondents (down from 14 percent in 2022) express a ‘totally negative’ view of the EU. There is also some work to be done for the European Parliament itself: 37 percent of all respondents have a positive view, 43 percent are rather neutral and 19 percent show outright negativity. Six in ten Europeans also consider it unlikely that they will vote next year.
If we take a closer look at the results per policy area, it is striking that there is at least one important theme for which at least half of those questioned – both in our country and in the rest of the EU – are downright dissatisfied with the EU’s approach in recent years: asylum and migration policy. 53 percent of compatriots surveyed show themselves “not at all satisfied” with European migration policy while 45 percent agree. Two percent actually have no opinion. This shows that Belgians are even more critical than the rest of the EU, where exactly half of those questioned reject European asylum and migration policy.
Interestingly enough, the official press release from the European Parliament does not say a single word about this rather striking rejection. While it is precisely this migration policy – or the lack thereof – that has been dividing the EU for several years now, and the issue has also become prominent on the political agenda in an increasing number of EU member states. Yet European citizens are not always consistent in their responses. In the list of topics that they would like the European Parliament to prioritize, asylum and migration score remarkably low. But in the same ranking, the right to seek asylum against persecution ends up at the bottom. Understand what I mean.
