Eurobarometer: 85 percent of Hungarians say EU should be more united on global challenges

According to a Eurobarometer survey published on Wednesday, 55 percent of Hungarians consider our membership in the European Union to be a good thing. Based on the representative opinion poll, 38 percent are neutral, while seven percent see the country's membership in the EU as a bad thing.

The data is nuanced by the fact that the number of those who view EU membership positively is four percentage points lower than six months ago. Their proportion also fell short of the EU average: on average, 62 percent were happy that their country was in the EU. On the other hand, there were fewer people in Hungary than elsewhere who viewed membership negatively.

The EU and Hungarian results were similar in terms of perception of the EU, although the differences were smaller here. Forty-six percent of Hungarian respondents had a positive impression, 41 percent had a neutral impression, and 13 percent had a negative impression (The average in the EU was 49-34-17 percent).

In the survey commissioned by the European Parliament, the vast majority of Hungarians, 72 percent, expected that their standard of living would neither increase nor decrease over the next five years. Optimists accounted for 11 percent, while 12 percent were pessimists about this. Here, too, more people were neutral than the EU average (54 percent).

Hungarians are relatively optimistic about the future of the world and the EU. While the EU average for optimism about the world is 44 percent, in Hungary it is 56 percent. When asked about the EU, 57 percent of EU citizens and 64 percent of Hungarians were optimistic. Hungarian respondents do not deviate from the EU average when it comes to their own country (57-57 percent) or their own future and that of their families (76-78 percent).

In terms of security and safety-related concerns, active conflicts and wars near the EU received the highest scores in both the EU and Hungary. 62 percent of Hungarians and 72 percent of EU respondents gave this issue a score of at least seven on a ten-point scale. Hungarian respondents were less concerned about other issues than the EU average, but the gap was smallest in relation to natural disasters made worse by climate change. Sixty percent of Hungarians were very concerned about these, giving them at least seven points (EU: 66 percent). Thus, this became the second most worrying problem in Hungary, compared to it being in fourth place in the EU. The survey did not examine whether the results of the data collected in November were caused by the summer drought or something else.

As the country heads towards the April elections, half of Hungarians were very concerned about non-EU countries trying to influence voting or politics, but this was still below the EU average.

Hungarians were also less concerned about communication and social issues than the average EU citizen, while there was almost no difference when it came to the independence of the media. In the EU, 56 percent were very concerned, 25 percent were moderately concerned, and 18 percent were less concerned, while in Hungary the figures were 54 percent, 29 percent, and 17 percent, respectively. Contrary to the EU trend, Hungarians were slightly more concerned about the protection of personal data online than about disinformation, with 63 percent giving the latter at least seven points.

More than four-fifths of Hungarians believe that Member States should be more united when facing the current global challenges (85 percent), and would want to see more tools for the EU when facing current global challenges (81 percent), while 83 percent believe that EU should have a stronger voice at the international level.

Hungarians would mainly focus on competitiveness, economy and industry when it comes to strengthening the EU's position in the world, while across the EU, defence and security ranked first on average. The importance of the latter area was preceded in Hungary by the importance of the EU focusing on the areas of energy independence, resources and infrastructures.