A recent EU poll showed that among the youth of the 27 Member States, Hungarians were the least likely to say they support the European Union.
In a representative Eurobarometer survey of those aged 16-30, commissioned by the European Parliament, 30 percent of Hungarians said they supported the EU and its current functioning, while 20 percent said they supported it but do not support the way it currently operates. Compared to the previous survey conducted in 2021, the share of the former group fell the most, by eight per cent and is right after the numbers from Malta. However, while the island nation saw a drop of ten per cent, the number of those who would support the EU in a reformed form increased by roughly the same percentage there, but among Hungarian youth, there was a drop of three percent in this category as well. The share of Hungarian respondents who are Eurosceptic is 26 per cent, while eight percent are completely against the EU.
Incidentally, after the Maltese, Hungarians were the most likely (58 percent) to say that they often or very often encounter fake news and disinformation in the course of a single week.
Meanwhile, at 24 per cent, Hungarians were the least likely among young people of the Member States to say that they first and foremost felt connected to their national identity, and the most likely (20 percent) to say that they felt an equal connection to their national, local and EU identity, while 13 percent claimed that their connection to all three was weak. By their own admission, young Hungarians are among the last to understand how things in the three areas function. And when it comes to the EU, they ranked last with 29 percent.
They ranked 27th out of the 27 Member States on questions showing political engagement, such as whether they have ever signed a petition, boycotted a product for reasons of conscience or posted on social media about a political or public issue.
When it comes to core values, they were among those most likely to highlight the protection of human rights, peace and democracy (51 percent), while human dignity, including the prohibition of the death penalty, torture and slavery were the least frequently mentioned (21 percent). On this, they are in a tie with Romanian youth.
Among the three areas they believe the EU should prioritize, Hungarians were the least likely to list the environment and climate change (21 percent) and defence policy (13 percent), while they were the most likely (along with their Swedish counterparts) to list education (36 percent). Similarly to youth in other member states, most young Hungarians (43 percent) identified the cost of living as their priority for the next five years.
Hungarians are the second most likely in the EU to get news from social media via Facebook (55 percent), TikTok or Instagram (49 percent). They were last when it came to using X and WhatsApp.
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