EU the most popular among great powers

Citizens around the globe hope for a stronger international role for the EU to make the world a better place, this year’s ‘Voice of the People’ survey has revealed.

More than a third of respondents (35%) prefer to see the EU’s power increasing while only 20 percent want it to decline. In comparison, only 26 percent of respondents believe an increase in US power would make the world more worth living in, while 37 percent think the opposite. 

The poll, released October 24 by a new think-tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), was conducted among 57,000 students in 52 countries. 

Unlike the US, the EU seems to have a good reputation worldwide and is also “highly appreciated” among its neigbours, including potential future EU members like Macedonia and Albania, the ECFR analysts, Mark Leonard and Ivan Krastev, write. 

In contrast, citizens from most European nations name the US as the country they hate the most, even more than Iran, the only country with lower approval rates in the world, according to the survey. 

“The European Union is unique among the big four powers (the other three being the US, China and Russia) in that no one wants to balance its rise”, the think-tank commented. 

According to the authors, “it is striking that a continent with a military budget second only to the United States, and the biggest number of peace-keeping forces serving in the world seems to be perceived as a force of good”. 

However, this may be due to the failure of EU policymakers to achieve greater visibility for EU power, the authors suggest. 

“The fact that European peacekeepers tend to operate under a NATO or a national flag rather than a European one probably helps to make the EU seems less threatening”, the authors conclude. 

However, citing the decline of the EU’s soft power in the former Soviet republics, in Turkey and some of the Balkan countries, they warn that in the long-run, “softness” may generate sympathy, but not necessarily respect. “The EU must not make the mistake of confusing popularity with power”. 

The changes agreed upon in the reform treaty would make the EU more effective, “but I do not think they will bring about an immediate step-change in the EU’s global role”, Mark Leonard predicted. 

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