The EU Is the Answer, Please Hold While We Locate the Question

There was a time when I believed the EU was the answer, but I was young and naive. I've since come to realise that the EU is a nascent dictatorship.

From The European Conservative

By Norman Lewis

The Eurobarometer poll invites no serious criticism of past policy choices and gives little space to the genuine concerns clearly demonstrated, time and again, by the public.

The latest European Parliament Eurobarometer has the imprimatur of social science but speaks only in terms of institutional self-affirmation. There is, of course, serious fieldwork behind the stats. But the issue is that the whole exercise is designed in advance with one outcome in mind: How can we turn public anxiety into a mandate for more of the EU?

News outlets have trumpeted the finding that 75% of Europeans agree that ‘the European Union is a place of stability in a troubled world.’ But this is anything but an endorsement of the EU’s obvious geopolitical cluelessness. The question breaks all the rules of good survey design: it makes respondents think about the “troubled world” and identifies the EU with the “stability.” It also gives no opportunity for respondents to identify other sources of stability—NATO, national governments, family life. 

It also launders the necessity of EU integration through trite questions. Should member states be more united? Should the EU promote international law? Does the EU need ‘more means’ to face global challenges? Unsurprisingly, 90% support greater unity, 90% support respect for international law, and 73% agree that the EU needs more means. These are not trivial figures, but the first two propositions are civic apple pie. Who exactly is the constituency for less unity and more international lawlessness? As for “more means”—without spelling out how much each of us is to spend on more EU, the question is worthless. 

Unsurprisingly, the most solid results from the survey are about nuts-and-bolts issues. Inflation, rising prices, and the cost of living are the top priority for citizens. But the survey is designed to make the European Parliament the actor empowered to solve these problems. It does not ask whether citizens think the Parliament is the right body to fix food prices, rent, wages, energy bills, or interest rates. A respondent saying ‘my household budget is under pressure’ is gently translated into ‘please give Strasbourg something to do about it.’

As for the hot-button issues currently reshaping European politics—mass migration, climate fanaticism, energy policy—these are subtly reshaped according to the designs of European elites. The survey does not ask about ‘illegal migration’ or ‘irregular migration’ as such. Instead, the volatile subject appears under the softer, more administrative heading ‘migration and asylum,’ chosen by 19%, down five points. Elsewhere, migration is folded into the catch-all phrase ‘demography, migration and population ageing,’ at 17%. 

The Green Deal receives similar treatment. Citizens are not asked directly whether they support the Green Deal, oppose it, want it slowed, want it made cheaper, or think its regulatory costs are bearable. Instead, its themes are dispersed into safer abstractions: ‘environment and climate change,’ chosen by 22%, down four points, and ‘climate action and emissions reduction,’ chosen by 15%, also down four points. The phrase ‘Green Deal’ invites judgement on an actual political programme. ‘Climate action,’ by contrast, is a virtue category.

Energy policy, meanwhile, is not framed around trade-offs over prices, net-zero costs, nuclear power, industrial competitiveness, household bills, sanctions, or the consequences of past policy choices. It appears as ‘energy independence, resources and infrastructures,’ chosen by 35%, up six points, and as ‘EU autonomy in industry and energy,’ chosen by 16%, up three points. Again, the language channels opinion towards strategic autonomy rather than accountability. Who opposes energy independence? Very few. But that is not the same as endorsing every EU energy policy pursued under its banner.

Reading the Eurobarometer, you would be at a total loss to understand why the populist revolt is totally reshaping Europe, why the Rassemblement National might win the French presidency next year, why the AfD is Germany’s most popular party, or why European elites are desperately assembling an arsenal of weapons to control speech and elections. The poll invites no serious criticism of past policy choices and gives little space to the genuine concerns clearly demonstrated, time and again, by the public. 

The international comparisons in the poll are also similarly massaged. Europeans think quality of life in the EU is better than in the United States and China. But what does that actually tell us? The U.S. is long demonised in European media for its lack of universal healthcare, and China is an authoritarian single-party state. What would a comparison of the EU with Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, or the citizens’ own country a decade ago tell us? 

The most revealing finding is about the European Parliament itself. 38% are positive, 41% neutral, and 20% negative. The supposed crowning jewel of European democracy is met with a giant shrug. When 60% want a more important role for the parliament, this is interpreted to mean more legitimacy for the pet issues of the European elite—but this could equally mean that people want the European Parliament, if it must exist at all, to feel like the real parliaments they know from their domestic politics.

Eurobarometer has also become oddly obsessed with emotional language. It has a large section asking people to open up emotionally about their fears, insecurities, and psychological bugbears. The ambition is clear: It is easier for politicians to claim to be ‘addressing uncertainty’ than delivering on specific policy areas. Emotional fears can be manipulated to mean whatever Brussels wants.

The Eurobarometer does not lie. It is far subtler than that. It measures real anxiety, real cost-of-living pressure, real support for cooperation, and a real desire for peace and security. But it then frames the conversation in such a way as to make all these desires an invitation for more of the EU.  

This is how all the EU institutions work. No matter the inputs—war, inflation, migration, energy, climate, China, America, public anxieties—the output has been already decided. No matter what the question, the EU is the answer. 

The European public knows better. It deserves better than the Eurobarometer.