Expectations for more EU involvement – Differences between Member States

The majority of citizens from almost all Member States would like to see increased EU involvement in 9 of the 15 policy areas covered in the survey. These tend to be the policy areas which are more clearly defined, and thus citizens find them somewhat easier to understand and relate to. As many as 21% of respondents said they were not able to evaluate the EU’s current involvement in industrial policy, and this is also the area with the lowest desire for increased EU involvement. Apart from that, in all other policy areas, there is a preference for more EU involvement by the majority of respondents, although there are differences between Member States. In some policy areas, the preferences expressed by citizens in different Member States are pretty similar, as in the fight against terrorism, which is also the area with the highest desire for increased EU involvement. In other areas, such as health and social security and equal treatment of men and women, there are several clusters of Member States with views similar to each other. However, these policy areas are broadly defined and further research is necessary to understand the nature of the expectations, and to clarify possible differences in what citizens from different Member States understand by the policy areas covered by the survey.