Survey: Eurobarometer, “immigration and terrorism top of the list of EU citizens’ concerns”

(Brussels) Immigration and terrorism on the increase, economic crisis and unemployment on the decrease. The Europeans’ “concerns” change, and this has been officially proven by the latest survey conducted by Eurobarometer, the EU Commission’s statistic bureau, published today. It is a study that collected interviews with 31,946 EU citizens between 21st and 31st May: this means that the public opinion had not been confronted with latest events yet, especially the series of terrorist attacks that happened in July. However, top of the list of the Europeans’ key problems – the source of personal worry and an issue that should be addressed by national and European policies, according to the respondents – is migration, mentioned by 48% of respondents (-10% compared with Autumn 2015’s survey). In late May, terrorism was already in second place (39%, with a marked 14% increase from the previous survey). Much further down in the list of sources of concern are, according to Europeans, the economic situation (19%; -2 per cent), public indebtedness (16%; -1), and unemployment (15%; -2). There are of course differences between countries, yet real everyday problems, such as unemployment, are felt as “closer” than others, such as immigrants or even worse the combination of terrorism and security.