Public faith in European unity has slumped as people become increasingly gloomy about economic conditions, according to Washington-based Pew Institute

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

Public support for the European project has plunged as the continent descends into mutual distrust, according to a new survey that shows the damage caused by the region's debt crisis over the last few years.

The respected Washington-based Pew Research Centre warned that support for the EU has slid from 60% to just 45% over the past 12 months.

In a report titled The New Sick Man of Europe: the European Union, Pew showed backing for European integration tumbling heavily in France.

Europeans are increasingly gloomy about economic conditions, disillusioned about their leaders, and losing faith in the whole idea of European unity, the poll found.

"Positive views of the EU are at or near their low point in most of the countries surveyed, even among the young," said the pollsters, who talked to nearly 8,000 people in eight countries – Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic. The Germans alone are in favour of handing more powers to Brussels to tackle the four-year economic and financial crisis that is severely sapping EU confidence. Pew said: "The effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe.

"The prolonged economic crisis has created centrifugal forces that are pulling European public opinion apart, separating the French from the Germans and the Germans from everyone else.

"The southern nations of Spain, Italy and Greece are becoming ever more estranged as evidenced by their frustration with Brussels, Berlin and the perceived unfairness of the economic system."

Pew findings

Pretty much the only optimism evident in the survey is in Germany, leading the pollsters to conclude that the Germans are living "on a different continent".

The survey found that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, remains by a wide margin Europe's most popular leader, not only at home but also abroad, winning approval for her handling of the economic crisis in five of the eight nations surveyed.

Other leaders, though, are in the doghouse, Pew said: "Compounding their doubts about the Brussels-based European Union, Europeans are losing faith in the capacity of their own national leaders to cope with the economy's woes.

"In most countries surveyed, fewer people today than a year ago think their national executive is doing a good job dealing with the euro crisis."

Pew's findings dovetail with Eurobarometer poll results revealed last month in the Guardian that showed a collapse in public support for the EU in the union's six biggest countries, making up two-thirds of the half-billion population.

The survey results are particularly spectacular for France, reinforcing the sense of drift a year into the presidential term of François Hollande and underlining the estrangement between Paris and Berlin.

Dyspeptic France

It found the French are increasingly disillusioned, with 91% saying their economy is doing badly – up from 81% a year ago. Pew described the eurozone's second-largest economy as "dyspeptic", warning it is drifting away from Germany.

"The prolonged economic crisis is separating the French from the Germans – threatening the Franco-German axis that has long driven European integration. And it has separated the Germans from everyone else.

European stereotypes Photograph: /Pew Research Centre

"No European country is becoming more dispirited and disillusioned faster than France. In just the past year, the public mood has soured dramatically across the board," Pew said.

Two-thirds of those surveyed reckon president Francois Hollande is doing a poor job handling the challenges posed by the economic crisis: 24 percentage points worse that his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Worryingly for Brussels, 77% believed European economic integration has made things worse for France (a rise of 14 percentage points), and 58% now have a bad impression of the European Union as an institution (+18).

National stereotypes

The survey also polled people's views on their fellow European nations. This revealed that Europeans feel that their nation is the "most compassionate", while many chose Germany as the "least compassionate" – apart from the Germans and the French, who both named the British.

In a display of Gallic insouciance, the French identified themselves as both the most arrogant and least arrogant.

Germany was identified as the most trustworthy country by seven nations, apart from the Greeks, who chose Greece.