Eurobarometer’s findings when measuring opinion in the EU can produce misleading results, warns Helen Szamuely of the UK’s Bruges Group think-tank. She traces the confusions in public opinion between “European values” and the EU itself

Eurobarometer is the instrument that supposedly measures public opinion across the European Union. Yet there is a lack of agreement – of synchronicity – between opinion in most member states and the results produced by Eurobarometer. Do people give answers to independent pollsters that differ from their responses to interviewers from Eurobarometer? Do they perhaps think differently when confronted with questions that pre-suppose European integration is inevitable and, in one way or another desirable?

Eurobarometer’s results sometimes appear odd, especially in the way they are their interpreted when reported in the media. In a Chinese news agency report on a Eurobarometer survey last year it was claimed that “more than 62% of the public in the old 15 member states are interested in scientific research, compared with only 38% in those member states that joined the bloc in 2004 and after.” Although this might appear to show that “Old Europe” is the more scientifically-minded, a careful look at the details of the survey shows that science is apparently of interest throughout the EU. The people of “New Europe” – the post-communist countries that joined the EU recently – are interested in what one might call hard science, to do with technology and space; those of “Old Europe” concentrate on the more life-style sciences, medicine, environment and energy, that also happen to be those more covered by the media.

In another report on the same survey, this time on the European Commission’s Europa website, different figures have been selected: “According to Eurobarometer, some 57% of Europeans claim to be interested in scientific research. Interest is particularly high (over 70% of citizens interested) in the Nordic and Benelux countries plus France, while at the other end of the scale three-quarters of Bulgarians claim to have little or no interest in the subject.” Those questioned also showed themselves to be largely (56%) satisfied with the science they read in the media, while most scientists were horrified by the way the media, especially TV, turned their researches and discussions into black and white issues.

But being satisfied with the way the media presents scientific work does not mean being genuinely interested in science, only that those questioned were content with accepting what TV programmes choose to tell them on the subject – a most unscientific attitude. We can see from just one example that it is very hard to come to any conclusion about people’s opinions on the basis of Eurobarometer or, probably, any other opinion poll responses.

With this uncertainty about the reliability of people’s responses, what is there to say about the value of Eurobarometer’s efforts? By the early years of this century even Eurobarometer was reflecting a disenchantment with what might be termed “the European project”. That is to say, the European Union. The Laeken Declaration of 2001 was the EU’s response. It was argued on the basis of national opinion polls, of Eurobarometer and of views expressed in various parts of the media that the people of Europe had become dissatisfied with the way the EU was developing. It seemed that integration was moving too fast for most people, who had not fully realised that the end aim was a single European state with an integrated political and economic structure. The Laeken Declaration led to the setting-up of the European Convention, whose solution, as we know, was a constitution for Europe, which fell at the first hurdles of popular opinion – referendums in France and the Netherlands. The EU’s subsequent pronouncements on the need to listen and engage in dialogue did not much change the situation.

By the time Germany took over the rotating presidency of the EU in the first half of 2007, it had become a more or less established fact that the EU and the integration process was not popular across Europe. For the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the German presidency issued a paper on communicating European values, which it was assumed would achieve the Holy Grail that had eluded Europe’s rulers since the late 1990s: to “re-connect” the people with what is sometimes described as “Europe” but is actually the European Union, a political construct that is not much understood and, it would appear, liked even less.

Confronted with signs of the EU’s declining popularity, Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the need for finding a “new rationale to the historical reasons for the foundation of the European Union” as early as May 2006. She argued that the narrative of Europe as a “community of pacific interests”, once the central reference point for legitimising European integration, had lost its appeal. Even if the unification of the European continent, which was almost completed with the Union’s fifth and biggest enlargement round in 2004/2007, was a great historical achievement after the disastrous experience of two World Wars, this pattern of justification was not sufficient any more to ensure popular support for the Union.

As Merkel acknowledged, a new narrative had to be found that could clearly be attributed to the EU. The chancellor’s approach has been two-fold: on the one hand, the Union’s output was to be strengthened to benefit its citizens materially. On the other, the Union should be developed towards a “community of values”. Merkel referred to such inclusive and universal values laid down in the Union’s treaties such as peace, freedom, democracy and human rights.

Merkel’s strategy during Germany’s EU presidency was not to talk too much about the Union and where it was heading, but about European values, and to focus the Eurobarometer on those. To some extent this has been successful. When asked, people make it clear that they think highly of “European values”, even though these values seem to be rather randomly chosen from Europe’s complicated history.

Eurobarometer reported as follows: “When asked about the most important personal values, Europeans mention peace (52%), respect for human life (43%) and human rights (41%). With regard to the European Union, human rights (38%), democracy (38%) and peace (36%) as most important values are mentioned (see Eurobarometer 66). At a first glance, the answers seem to indicate a high support for the values communicated by the German presidency. However, the question has to be raised why, despite an obvious support for the general European principles, an alarming alienation between the Union and its citizens can be observed.”

The most obvious answer to this question is that people might not be quite as stupid as politicians sometimes seem to think. Even if one accepts that these values are entirely European, and are indeed the only European ones worth considering, there is no particular reason why the European Union should be seen as in any way linked to them. The seeming popularity of the European project in various Eurobarometer studies has really shown the popularity of certain concepts. Just as people have said that they are interested in science when really they like to watch TV programmes about the environment, so they have in the past implied that they supported further extension of EU powers and European integration because they feel positively about peace and respect for human life and human rights. It does not necessarily mean that they agree with the EU being the only purveyor of these shibboleths, or that they consider that further European integration is needed for human rights to be safeguarded in European countries.

Can this dichotomy be breached? There does not seem to be a solution at the moment. Political leaders have reproduced almost exactly the old, rejected constitution and re-named it the Lisbon Treaty, having first called it the Reform Treaty. And they have explained, as if to a group of backward children, that as it is now called something else, there will be no referendums on it. This is likely to increase popular alienation from the European project, though that may not show up strongly in Eurobarometer surveys.

European politicians appear to hope that by abandoning much of the discussion about the European Union as such, and instead concentrating on “European values”, people will, when asked by Eurobarometer, keep on saying they approve of them. And that they will somehow perceive a connection between such notions as peace and human rights and the European Union.