Only 50% of Czechs trust the EU, according to new public opinion poll

Prague, Aug 31 (CTK) – Trust in the EU as a whole was expressed by 50 percent of Czechs, and mistrust by 45 percent, in a poll conducted by the CVVM polling institute in July and released today.

However, when it comes to individual EU institutions such the European Parliament and the European Commission, mistrust prevails. Over one-third of Czechs trust them and almost one-half do not.

The United Nations and NATO are trusted more than the EU.

Czechs trust the least the chairwoman of the European Commission, the chairman of the European Council and the EU high representative for foreign and security policy. Only one-fourth of Czechs expressed trust in them and two-fifths did the opposite.

“However, there is a large proportion of those who ignore the EU representatives, which may influence the overall evaluation,” CVVM analysts said.

Compared with the same poll conducted last April, the results from this year do not much differ.

The United Nations and NATO are trusted by 55 percent and 54 percent, respectively. In the former case, the opposite view was expressed by 32 percent, in the letter by 34 percent.

Compared to last April, trust in United Nations and NATO considerably diminished, by 8 and 7 percent, respectively.

The current trust in NATO is comparable with the results from 2009 to 2011.

The poll was conducted on a sample of 972 Czechs over 15 between July 18 and 29.