Average Level of Trust in the European Union Below 50 Per Cent – Study

Peter CaddleApril 13, 2022

Less than half of those living in the European Union trust it as an institution, a new study conducted by the bloc itself suggests.

Only around 47 per cent of people living within the European Union’s 27 member states trust the bloc as an institution.

This is according to a new Eurobarometer study published by the EU this week, an annual project which sees thousands from across Europe express their views on issues such as media trust and the greatest problems facing the block. Before Britain left the European Union, the Eurobarometer reliably recorded Briton’s scepticism of the EU and its institutions.

According to the latest findings of the long-term research project, less than half of those residing within the block trust the European Union, with the number of respondents expressing confidence in the institution dropping down to as low as 32 per cent in the case of France, which has recently seen strong polling for the traditionally Eurosceptic Marine Le Pen.

Furthermore, this trust average is even lower when only countries within the Euro area are polled, with just 45 per cent expressing confidence in Brussels.

Meanwhile, 44 per cent of respondents across the bloc said that they tended not to trust the European Union, with this number rising to 45 per cent for Eurozone countries.

Despite the poor confidence polling, which sees trust in the EU fall since the previous edition of Eurobarometer, the European Commission has seemingly decided to spin the research as a positive for the bloc by focusing on the number of people who have a positive view of the Union as a whole.

This is despite the fact that less than half of respondents claimed to have a positive view of the union.

“The image of the EU has also remained fairly stable,” a press release from Brussels on the study said. “44 per cent of Europeans have a positive image of the EU, 38 per cent a neutral image.”

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The issue of immigration also remains prominent across Europe, with over a fifth of respondents saying that it was one of the two most important issues facing the EU right now, though the study was conducted before Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine.

Again, for some nation-states within the bloc, this number was far higher, with around one-third of Hungarian respondents and over 60 per cent of Cypriots seeing it as one of the two most important issues facing the bloc.

The response in particular from Cyprus makes sense considering the country’s ongoing struggle with migrants, with 13,235 claiming asylum in the country in 2021.

Most of these claims were subsequently rejected, and authorities in the country have requested help from Europe in the hopes of stemming the tide.

Immigration as one of the most important issues facing the EU was only beaten out by one other talking point in the minds of Europeans according to the study, that being issues surrounding the environment and climate change.

26 per cent of European residents listed climate change issues within their top two most important problems facing the European Union, with many western nation-states seeing the number of respondents rise well above that total average.

The Danes in particular seem to be most concerned with climate politics, with over half of respondents to the EU study listing climate change as one of the two most pressing issues facing the EU right now.

However, this attitude was not shared by those in other countries, with as few as 9 per cent of respondents listing the issue as of significant importance in Bulgaria.