More than half of Bulgarians see country’s EU membership as a good thing – European poll
About 55 per cent of Bulgarians polled in an EU-wide survey see the country’s membership of the European Union as a good thing, according to the results of a Parlemeter poll released by the European Parliament on October 18.
This is an increase of two percentage point since the previous Parlemeter poll in March 2017.
The survey was done between September 23 and October 1 through face-to-face interviews with 1036 Bulgarians. Across the EU, 27 811 people were surveyed in face-to-face interviews.
The EU average for people who saw their country’s membership of the bloc as a good thing was 57 per cent.
In Bulgaria, nine per cent of those polled saw the country’s EU membership as a bad thing, in comparison with an EU average of 12 per cent.
Fifty-six per cent of Bulgarians believed that the country had benefitted from EU membership, against an EU average of 64 per cent. Twenty-two per cent of Bulgarians said that the country had not benefitted. Since March, among Bulgarians, the number of those who believe that the country benefits from being in the EU has risen by seven percentage points.
Among the benefits, the highest-rated among Bulgarians was new work opportunities, at 52 per cent – an opinion far outstripping the EU average of 28 per cent who saw this as the main benefit.
For Bulgarians, the next greatest benefit of EU membership was strengthened co-operation with other EU countries, at 35 per cent, while in third place was improved economic growth, at 26 per cent.
Bulgarians who said “yes” to a question about whether their voice counted in the EU added up to 37 per cent. The EU average was 47 per cent.
But asked if their voice counted in Bulgaria, forty-five per cent said yes.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)