The 'Eurobarometer' Shows How Out Of Touch the EU Is

Every year, the EU spend more of our money in a survey of European public opinion called the 'Eurobarometer'.   It shows quite how out of touch and distant European elites have grown from ordinary people.  Of course, we didn't need an expensive piece of taxpayer funded market research to tell us that.  The casually ignored French, Irish and Dutch referenda all made that quite clear.  Nevertheless, there is plenty in the Eurobarometer report to have the bureaucrats of Brussels sobbing into their beer.  Here are the 'highlights':

A minority of Europeans now believe that EU membership is a 'good thing'

Despite the fact that we are always told that Euroscepticism is a 'little Englander' idea, it also seems to have a fairly strong following throughout the EU.  Only 49% of people regard EU membership as a 'good thing'.  The % of people who regard it as a 'bad thing' is at a record high.  Public opinion has turned against the EU in all but four member states.

More Europeans do not trust the EU than trust it.  Only 20% of people in Britain trust the EU


47% of people surveyed do not trust the EU.  Only 42% say that they trust it.

And in the UK, trust in the EU stands at a miserly 20% (hats off to my fellow countrymen).  Check out the chart below, which has a country by country breakdown (hat tip EU Referendum blog):



The only surprising thing is that 20% seems a bit high!.

British people associate the EU with 'bureaucracy' and 'waste of money'.  The Greeks associate it with unemployment.


The pollsters gave a series of nice, benign words like 'peace' and 'prosperity' for people to choose from when answering the question, 'what do you most associate with the EU'.  To this, 28% of Brits said 'waste of money' and 26% said bureaucracy.  27% of Greeks associate the EU primarily with unemployment, 28% of Portugese and 46% of Cypriots associate it primarily with unemployment (not massively surprising given the EU sponsored deflation happening in Greece and Portugal).

This annual report is useful to highlight quite how out of touch the EU is with the citizens of Europe.  They will, of course, continue to ignore the people and continue to impose top down political integration on a hostile citizenry.