Eurobarometer Survey Spring 2012
A survey in 2012, conducted by TNS Opinion and Social on behalf of the European Commission, showed that, for the European Union overall, those who think that their country's interests are looked after well in the EU are now in a minority (42%). Those with a positive image of the EU are down from a high of 52% in 2007 to a low of 31% in May 2012 (unchanged since November 2011); this compares with 28% with a negative image of the EU, and 39% with a neutral image (up from a low of 14% in 2007).
About 31% of EU citizens tend to trust the European Union as an institution, and about 60 percent do not tend to trust it. Trust in the EU has fallen from a high of 57% in 2007 to 31% in 2012, while trust in national governments has fallen from 43% in 2007 to 28% in 2012; so the EU has moved from enjoying much more trust than national governments in 2007 to a position of enjoying only slightly more trust than national governments in 2012. Trust in the EU is lowest in the United Kingdom (16% trust, 75% distrust) and highest in Bulgaria (55% trust; 15% distrust). Trust in national governments in these two countries is 21% (distrust 77%) and 28% (distrust 64%) respectively.
Read more about this topic: Euroscepticism
Famous quotes containing the words survey and/or spring:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you—know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)