Two years until the 2019 European Elections

The fieldwork for this Eurobarometer survey of the European Parliament was carried out between 18 and 27 March 2017.

The survey was conducted by Kantar Public through face-to-face meetings with 27 901 EU citizens in the 28 Member States.

The recurrent theme of the survey’s results could be summarised as follows.

First of all, Europeans are deeply worried by the latest global geopolitical developments. In the face of these uncertainties, most of them are in favour of a common EU approach to addressing them.

The very strong calls for more action by the EU in 15 key policy areas bear witness to this. And, in comparison with last year’s results, it is interesting to note that the proportion of those believing that EU action is adequate has risen markedly in most of the fields surveyed, possibly demonstrating that respondents are becoming increasingly aware that the EU is acting on their behalf. The replies on issues such as the fight against terrorism and the migration issue bear witness to this.

In this context, the feeling that belonging to the EU is a good thing has risen significantly, and is nearly at its pre-crisis level, last seen in 2007.

In this anniversary month of 60 years of the Treaty of Rome, Europeans would be more in favour of integration at varying paces rather than the approach consisting of Member States developing certain policies all at the same time. Having said that, there are very significant differences between Member States regarding this issue.

Europeans are, more than in the past, interested in European politics and the feeling that their voices count at EU level is on the rise, although it has not reached a clear majority. By comparison, six Europeans in 10 consider that their voice counts in their country, which is 10 percentage points more than in 2016.

According to the respondents, the EU still has some work to do to demonstrate that democracy is operating well within it. Just under 50% have this feeling, while just over half take this view when it comes to how democracy is working in their own country.

Finally, despite these encouraging developments, the overwhelming majority of Europeans say that inequalities between social classes are significant and a third of them doubt that the crisis will be over for many years.