The majority of EU citizens believe China's "aggressive competitive practices" are a threat to their economic interests, a new survey has claimed.

In a report published Thursday, the thinktank the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that 57% of Europeans felt their country's economy, and the wider European economy, were being insufficiently protected by lawmakers from Chinese trade practices.

The ECFR polled 60,000 people across 14 EU member states to gauge voter sentiment toward foreign policies.

Less than 20% of voters in each individual member state felt their country's interests were well insulated from aggressive Chinese competitive practices.

In France and Italy, almost three quarters of respondents felt their governments were failing to safeguard their economic interests from China's trade and economic policies, with more than 60% saying the same in Spain, Germany and Greece.

More than a third of French, Italian and Spanish voters said the EU needed to do more to keep the region's economy competitive and minimize the countereffects of China's dominance.

"(Europeans) are ahead of their politicians in understanding the need for a stronger Europe in a world where it could be pushed around by ever more aggressive and nationalistic superpowers," Susi Dennison, a senior fellow at ECFR, said in a press release Thursday.

However, there was some confidence in the EU's role as a political force. Respondents said that if the EU were to fall apart tomorrow, the third biggest loss — following the collapse of the single market and the euro — would be European states' ability to act as a continent-sized power in contests with global players such as China, Russia, and the United States.