38 posts
Communicating Europe: Reding’s revolution
How is the European Union responding to public opinion and media trends? Conducted during the triple crisis – financial sector, economy and eurozone - Eurobarometer 73, Public opinion in the European Union (First results) recorded sinking support...
Arguing with the "Facts".
I've already written why I think opinion polls are unhelpful due to the difficulty in interpreting them for policy formulation. But I want to write down a few ideas on the Eurobarometer poll. (If you're interested in Eurobarometer analysis, Grahnlaw...
EU as a Scapegoat
Since the first signs of crisis emerged in 2008, public opinion inside the European Union started to shift steadily, and the last report which has been recently revealed by EUROBAROMETER shows that people tend to become more and more ungrateful towar...
No National European Vision
In the EUobserver today, there's an article on Barroso's response to the Eurobarometer results. Barroso says that the member state governments have failed to defend the European project during the crisis:""I admit that we should do more together in o...
European Commission’s Communication Revolution: New Scoop!
Euractiv reported it first: they got their hands on a leaked letter from Commissioner Reding to President Barroso, outlining her “Communication Revolution”. But the Brussels Jungle dug further and discovered this letter was merely the tip...
Waaah Waaahh Waaah ... It's not fair
´Jose Manual Barroso; the European Commission President is out of sorts.Faced with a plunging popularity of the EU institutions, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has blamed national capitals for not defending the European project during...
Eurobarometer: Separating the wheat from the chaff
Since the spring 2009 Eurobarometer, EU citizens see unemployment and the economic situation as the main worries facing their country. In May 2010 rising prices (inflation) are still the principal concern at a personal level (although with great diff...
Eurobarometer: Europeans worried about unemployment and economy
The media roundup of the EU-wide opinion poll, Eurobarometer, revealed four strands of news reporting and commentary: Stress on economic challenges, or plunging support for EU membership, scepticism towards public opinion polls like Eurobarometer, an...
Eurobarometer media roundup reveals four readings
From a summary of the Eurobarometer controversy we set course for our following harbour: a roundup of how the latest EU-wide poll of public opinion has been received. In Roundup haven we bunker facts and arguments for the next leg of our voyage. We f...
Eurobarometer controversy
The UK based anti-EU lobby group Open Europe managed, perhaps unintentionally, to stir up a debate at European level when they accused the European Commission of spinning the results of the Eurobarometer poll of public opinion in the European Union.
US and EU citizenry share common priority about economic woes
The sentiment, “It’s the economy, stupid,” apparently also holds prime position in the hearts of Europeans when money troubles hit, according to the results of a European Union survey just released this week (“Spring 2010 Euro...
Eurobarometer findings on EU public opinion: Open Europe blew it
In God We Trust is the official motto of the United States of America, surprisingly for a country where the first amendment enshrines the separation of church and state. What do citizens of the European Union trust in? The UK based anti-EU lobby grou...
From Paint It Black to Moses? UK public opinion on EU
Yesterday’s blog post, UK Eurobarometer score: Euromyths 68 - Trust 20, discussed the media climate and public opinion in the United Kingdom with regard to the European Union. The Eurobarometer findings are in line with what we have reported many t...
Spin, Damn Spin, and Statistics*
The latest Eurobarometer is out (PDF), charting the changes in public opinion in the EU (plus a few non-member states) over the last six months. (For some reason I imagine it delivered phone-directory-like, in a plastic coated bundle across Brussels...
Europeans want Economic Governance
There we have it: Europeans want economic governance mechanisms for Europe the new Eurobarometer found out. 75% of Europeans think that stronger coordination of economic and financial policies among EU Member States would be effective in fighting the...
An exceptionally poor attempt at spinning unfavourable poll results
The European Commission yesterday announced the results from the latest Eurobarometer poll – carried out in May during the height of the crisis – with a press release carrying the headline, “EU citizens favour stronger European...
Summer of euro-scares
What do eggs, flags, cornish pasties and nurses have in common? They are all stories we have been dealing with this summer that have to a greater or lesser extent been misrepresented in some quarters of the British press. At the same time we are clea...
Europeans ♥ EU2020
Great news: European citizens think the Europe 2020 strategy is brilliant. Only joking. But sitting in the Commission press room yesterday it seemed there was no end to the good news. Europeans are enthusiastic about economic governance and give the...
UK Eurobarometer score: Euromyths 68 - Trust 20
About three months from the conclusion of the fieldwork, the first results of the regular Eurobarometer poll are out. Yesterday, many Twitter comments about the findings were like shells fired in an artillery battle between entrenched frontlines, but...
Eurobarometer poll shows widening gap
The Eurobarometer poll published today is not a pretty read. We can only hope that it might help make some people in Brussels and around Europe’s capital cities sit up and take notice of the political reality that our continent faces today. The...
A classic example of EU spin
Here's an example of some good old EU spin for you:The European Commission today announced the results from the latest Eurobarometer poll - carried out in May during the height of the crisis - with a press release carrying the headline,"EU citizens f...
This sceptred isle or Sallust? The British are Europeans – but unaware for how long?
In an earlier post we discussed the absence of a (modern) codified Constitution and the notion of citizenship (instead, subjects of the Crown) in the United Kingdom. Many of the sources, features and procedures of the British constitutional and polit...
Western democracy in crisis
The credibility gap between the political class and the people is widening in most Member States, but there is no consensus as to what to do. The economic and financial challenges facing Europe require decisive leadership, but most national elector...
Communicating Europe
There is an interesting op ed article in today’s Financial Times about the Afghanistan conflict by Alastair Campbell. He’s a controversial figure, and some would surely accuse him of being daring or even worse for publishing such an artic...
Recession tests the EU’s positive public image
The European Commission’s spring 2009 Eurobarometer poll on public attitudes towards the European Union should be the most interesting in a long while. No such survey has been conducted with Europe’s financial system in such precario...
Google ads for politicians
Image via CrunchBase Expanding our reading beyond our traditional EN sources, we note that the use of Google Adwords for political campaigns has caught the attention of our Italian friends at left leaning daily la Repubblica. Surely our MEPs, Italia...
More EU “web streaming services”
In our excitement about Europarl TV, we missed the re-launch of the EPP-ED internet video station at www.epp-ed.tv. It is a slick new platform. As the EPP-ED points out in its press release, “EPP-ED TV first broadcast via the internet in June 2007...
