How Much does Europe like Serbia?
Leaving the dry topics to one side the European commission conducts polls concerning EU member and non member states. One of them is to canvas opinion on how European citizens view other countries.
These are the results of the latest poll - whether EU citizens see potential Serbian EU membership as positive or negative:
Germany 37 percent for Serbian EU entry 55 percent against
France 50 percent for 41 against
Spain 50 percent for 18 against
Austria 30 percent for 65 against
Slovenia 66 percent for 29 against
Poland 60 percent for 22 against
Sweden 64 percent for 24 against
United Kingdom 41 percent for 37 against
Hungary 43 percent for 45 against
Greece 67 percent for 32 against
Slovakia 56 percent for 32 against
Looking at this from the point of view of traditional friendships there are few surprises here. The Germans and Austrians particularly oppose Serbian EU membership, the Greeks, and Scandinavian countries support Serbian membership strongly with most others broadly supportive. Another positive for Serbian EU membership is that the important players in the region like Poland and other EU countries such as Slovenia, Czech Republic and Slovakia also back Serbia.
These stats weren't from the original source which may be here:
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_255_en.pdf
Apologies, I tried to get the original stats but my computer hates pdf's just like me.
And how much does Serbia 'like' Europe? A survey was conducted from 21st July to 24th July on EU membership by Strategic Marketing.
The question was 'Do you support (Serbian) membership of the European Union?'
57 percent answered 'for' (yes)
27 percent 'dont have an opinion'
9 percent are 'against' (no)
7 percent answered 'not interested'.
Leaving the dry topics to one side the European commission conducts polls concerning EU member and non member states. One of them is to canvas opinion on how European citizens view other countries.
These are the results of the latest poll - whether EU citizens see potential Serbian EU membership as positive or negative:
Germany 37 percent for Serbian EU entry 55 percent against
France 50 percent for 41 against
Spain 50 percent for 18 against
Austria 30 percent for 65 against
Slovenia 66 percent for 29 against
Poland 60 percent for 22 against
Sweden 64 percent for 24 against
United Kingdom 41 percent for 37 against
Hungary 43 percent for 45 against
Greece 67 percent for 32 against
Slovakia 56 percent for 32 against
Looking at this from the point of view of traditional friendships there are few surprises here. The Germans and Austrians particularly oppose Serbian EU membership, the Greeks, and Scandinavian countries support Serbian membership strongly with most others broadly supportive. Another positive for Serbian EU membership is that the important players in the region like Poland and other EU countries such as Slovenia, Czech Republic and Slovakia also back Serbia.
These stats weren't from the original source which may be here:
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_255_en.pdf
Apologies, I tried to get the original stats but my computer hates pdf's just like me.
And how much does Serbia 'like' Europe? A survey was conducted from 21st July to 24th July on EU membership by Strategic Marketing.
The question was 'Do you support (Serbian) membership of the European Union?'
57 percent answered 'for' (yes)
27 percent 'dont have an opinion'
9 percent are 'against' (no)
7 percent answered 'not interested'.
posted by Bg anon at 5:43 pm
10 Comments:
Yes interesting stats but I dont have an opinion :)
The only thing that I hate not seeing on your blog is a small effort on your part to condemn Srebrenica genocide.
Serbs must start condeming genocide if reconciliation is ever possible.
Do you approve of this?
http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2006/08/srebrenica-child-raped-hung.html
Do you? You must have an opinion on this, whether it's positive or negative - voice it.
Daniel as you can see this post is about Europe and Serbia.
I've written in other places on the internet about Srebrenica. You can read and comment on my opinion concerning Srebrenica at my B92 blog here:
http://blog.b92.net/blog/441
And please, by all means comment, I dont censor unless foul language is used.
The bottom line for me is that people are given the opportunity to lead as normal lives as possible after such trauma. That means people be given the chance to move on as well. I dont think political abuse of the issue helps people either physically or emotionally.
And I must be honest with you I wont be visiting pages with stories about children that are raped. That doesnt help me or the child involved. I would think 'yeah terrible that somebody could do that'. And, how will that change anything?
You probably read my post on genocide at the Bosnia vault I'd be interested in your opinion.
I hope Serbia enters the European Union very soon.
A good thing is to support the opposite of what the Germans and Austrians want anyway.
Some interesting numbers here.
Pretty surprising to see Sweden and Greece having similar proportions (over 60%) in favour of Serbia joining the EU- given the very different press treatment Serbia got over the years in each country.
I suspect the low numbers from the UK (although still in favour) reflect enlargement fatigue. There is a bit of a media fuss ongoing here at the moment about whether immigration from eastern europe raises the level of unemployment.
Hi Daniel
I very much support what you do but I know bg anon well and he isn't your enemy.
I don't think there is anything specifically against Serbia by Austria and Germany. Albania gets similar ratings minus the extra boost that Serbia might have in France and maybe the other slav states. Support for Albania parallels the numbers you mentioned.
At the end of the day it will be Germany who will be paying for the enlargment. And Germans are also more likely to fear about their jobs. So the numbers make sense up to a point.
The question the European states should be asking themselves is whether they truly want the balkans to be politically stable.
Its the half measures or half hearted policies that have impacted so badly during the Yugoslav break up.
Germany is a net contributor but so are many other rich EU countries listed which also support entering the EU.
Then again there is something of a groundswell of opinion as Ian noted concerning immigration. (Sweden has this problem too as does Holland which both support Serbian EU membership)
The figures for Croatia are a little different particularly how the Germans and Austrians regard their application. However, it is a very bad time to be in the queue. I'm left wondering whether it will be countries like Croatia that will lose out - maybe its just as well Serbia didnt make a serious effort to join the EU. If it did and its 'advances' were rejected it would cause a backlash against EU membership. I suspect that is what is going on in Croatia at the moment.
Austria is no surprise; the country is rife with well-documented xenophobia, often directed at the country's large ex-Yugoslav community.
Interesting numbers. I wonder how different countries attitudes are towards Montenegrin accession as compared to Serbian?
It is important to note that the degree to which the public in these countries is informed about enlargement or new entrants is very low - the authors of the survey mention this at the end - so the results shouldn't be taken as particularly important, more indicative. Excellent discussion topic though.
Also, replying to Daniel, I really don't understand the place of this comment - it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. The web site he has posted, just as an aside, containes very little that would stand up to empirical scrutiny or unbiased analysis.
Post a Comment
<< Home