Poland has seen the largest decline in favourable views of the EU among nine member states regularly surveyed by the Pew Research Centre. However, three quarters of Poles still hold a positive opinion of the EU, which is the highest figure in any of the countries.
Pew’s data shows that support for the EU peaked in 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But since then it has declined in all countries.
This year, Poland saw the biggest decline, falling by 11 percentage points from 87% in 2023 to 76% now. The next-largest drops, of eight percentage points, were seen in Germany and Italy.
Only Hungary recorded an increase in positive views – of three percentage points – while the Netherlands remained unchanged from last year.
Behind Poland, the second-highest proportion of favourable views of the EU was found in Sweden (73%), followed by the Netherlands (73%), Spain (63%), Germany (63%), Hungary (62%), Italy (61%), France (52%) and Greece (47%).
Pew notes that the drop in favorability towards the EU in Poland “has come amid protests by Polish farmers against EU climate policies and Ukrainian imports”. Farmers in Poland, as in other European countries, held a series of protests in February and March.
They want the EU to abandon the Green Deal – a package of climate policies – and Poland to end agricultural imports from Ukraine, both of which they say threaten their livelihoods. Anti-EU banners regularly appeared at the protests.
A large protest against EU climate policies was held in Warsaw today, organised by the Solidarity trade union and attended by figures from the opposition PiS party.
They argue that the EU’s Green Deal will “destroy” the Polish economy https://t.co/VyQtqMz6kT
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 10, 2024
Pew’s findings echo those published in April by Polish state research agency CBOS, which found that support among Poles for EU membership had fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade.
Like Pew, it found that three quarters of Poles (77%) support membership. But that figure was eight percentage points lower than last year and the lowest since 2013, when it stood at 72%.
At the beginning of May, Poland celebrated the 20th anniversary of joining the EU. During that time, the country has experienced unprecedented growth and development, and has been the largest net recipient of EU funds.
We have prepared 20 charts to mark 20 years of Poland's EU membership.
They illustrate its dramatic transformation over that time – from rapid economic growth and declining poverty to the expansion of infrastructure and a reversal of migration trends https://t.co/ylV2vvBjPG
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 16, 2024
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Main image credit: Michal Osmenda / wikimedia.org (under CC BY-SA 2.0)
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
