Majority of citizens supports Serbia’s membership in the European Union, in general, attitude towards the EU is a more positive one, whereas citizens’ awareness regarding the EU assistance to Serbia is on the rise, primarily because of better recognition of the assistance provided for May flood relief, showed the latest public opinion poll “Serbian citizens’ attitudes towards Serbia’s EU integration”.
The poll was conducted by TNS Medium Gallup, from 24-30 September 2014, for the needs of the EU Delegation to Serbia, and showed that 57 percent of Serbian citizens support Serbia’s membership in the EU.
The main reasons are of economic nature: better future, prosperity (42 percent), improved living standard (41 percent) and employability (32 percent). Apart from their worries about the deterioration of living standard, main reasons those against the membership list are pressures and conditioning, poverty increase and worsened living standard, as well as national identity loss.
In general, citizens’ attitude towards the European Union is more positive compared to previous surveys: 47 percent said that their attitude is “mostly positive”. In the polls conducted for the needs of the EU Delegation prior to 2014, support had never exceeded 35 percent.
Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Michael Davenport said the results were “encouraging”.
“We find the opinion of ordinary Serbian citizens on Serbia’s EU accession very important,” Davenport said.
If a referendum on Serbia’s accession to the EU were held today, 53 percent of respondents would voted “in favour”, whereas 28 of them would “opposed” to it. The number of respondents that would not vote in referendum is stable compared to the one of February poll. Encouraged by a better life and the start of negotiations in January 2014, 70 percent of respondents would turn out to vote in such referendum.
According to 62 percent of respondents, agriculture should be the top priority in terms of EU assistance, followed by health (42 percent), and development of impoverished regions (40 percent).
The awareness about European Union’s assistance programmes has been raised, primarily because of the recognition of the EU assistance to Serbia during the floods in May.
More than third of citizens (38 percent) said that, of all international partners, the EU have helped the most to combat the May floods.
When asked to name an international partner that helps the most in reconstruction and flood relief, the highest number of respondents (35 percent) said it was the EU.
“Over the last decade, more or less, the EU have allocated nearly three billion euros to support Serbia. European Commission and EU Member States together are by far the biggest donors in Serbia,” Davenport said.
According to him there is a trend of an decreasing number of Serbian citizens who consider Russia as the greatest aid-provider, but he said “this was not enough”.
“Citizens are becoming more aware of the EU funds, especially when it comes to EU’s role in dealing with the consequences of May floods. Within this, the EU have provided the greatest assistance,” Davenport said and added that “not only in this, but in every other area as well, Brussels is probably the biggest Serbian partner.”
The poll also showed that the citizens of Central West and South East Serbia more often were aware of EU’s assistance for flood relief.
In mid-May, when Serbia was hit by devastating floods, European Union offered immediate assistance through its Civil Protection Mechanism and allocated 80 million euros out of its budget that were directed to reconstruction projects in flood-affected municipalities.
Out of this amount, 30 million euros have been redirected from IPA funds and are already being used via reconstruction Programme, whereas 50 million euros will be at Serbia’s disposal in early 2015.
The poll was conducted on a sample of 1.241 adult respondents, through the face-to-face interview.
