A new poll shows that trust in the EU, NATO and the UN has significantly dropped among Czechs, with confidence in the EU dropping from 58% in 2022 to 46% in 2023.
The poll published on Monday was conducted between March and the end of May 2023 by the Centre for Public Opinion Research (CVVM).
While trust in the EU among Czechs has been dropping since 2016, a significant drop was recorded over the last 12 months.
A similar trend also applies to trust in NATO and the UN, though the majority of Czechs still trust both institutions.
While trust in NATO went from 67% to 56% between 2022 and 2023, for the UN, it went from 63% to 52%. At the same time, 36% of those surveyed said they do not trust NATO, while 37% said they do not trust the UN.
In Czechia, trust in the UN, NATO and the EU seem strongly linked as trust in one is far more likely to arouse trust in the other two, the survey’s authors state. “At the same time, trust between NATO and the EU is somewhat more strongly intertwined, while the relationship between trust in the EU and the UN is somewhat weaker, though still strong,” the research quoted by the Czech News Agency.
For Czechs, trust in the EU hovered around 55% from 2003 until 2011, except for 2004, when it reached an all-time high of 64% and 2007 when it dropped to half that level.
Trust dropped most significantly in 2012 and 2016, dropping to 40% and 37% – something the study’s authors said was linked to the economic and migration crisis. “Last year, trust rose significantly, and in the current year, on the other hand, it has fallen to 2017 levels,” the CVVM said.
The CVVM also surveys trust in EU institutions and officials. For all those included in the survey, distrust outweighs trust, and the share of those who do not trust has increased significantly since 2021.
In this year’s survey, the European Commission was trusted by 38% of Czech respondents, the European Parliament by 36%, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen by 31%, European Council President Charles Michel by 24%, and EU Diplomacy Chief Josep Borrell by 23%.
(Aneta Zachová | EURACTIV.cz)
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