Is this a case of government policy disagreeing with public sentiment?
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And the survey contradicts oft-repeated narratives about the Germans: that they are paranoid about inflation, disinclined to bail out their fellow Europeans and debt-obsessed. To the contrary, Germans are among the least likely of those surveyed to see inflation as a very big problem and the most likely among the richer European nations to be willing to provide financial assistance to other European Union countries that have major financial problems. And while Germans are
worried about public debt, they are more concerned about inequality and
equally concerned about unemployment.
The European Union is the new sick man of Europe. The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal
casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in
disrepute across much of Europe.
Support for European economic integration – the 1957 raison d’etre for creating the European Economic Community, the European Union’s
predecessor – is down over last year in five of the eight European Union
countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2013. Positive views
of the European Union are at or near their low point in most EU nations,
even among the young, the hope for the EU’s future. The favorability of
the EU has fallen from a median of 60% in 2012 to 45% in 2013. And only
in Germany does at least half the public back giving more power to
Brussels to deal with the current economic crisis.
Read the study.
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