The riposte of many of those who support the EU ideal to opinion polls which tell us, for example, that only 33% of UK citizens think the EU is ‘a good thing’ (Eurobarometer, May 06) is often to say something like, “well, they are just opinion polls”. They represent opinions, often based on tabloid Euro-scepticism, which tends to focus on the perverse effects of certain ridiculous regulations the EU produces; such as what constitutes a banana or requiring all produce be weighed in metric. Yet if people could perceive the constant undercurrent of positive impact the EU has, which is not widely reported, opinion polls would paint a very different picture. This runs with Blondel et al.’s argument that ‘more knowledge [of the EU] leads to more support’ (1998: 102). But does it?
Possibly not. I was very interested to read the undergraduate dissertation of someone who recently applied for an internship at Civitas, which studied British knowledge of the EU amongst 18-24 year-olds. Rebecca Whittle conducted a series of surveys, interviews and focus groups with 18-24 year olds in Milton Keynes looking specifically at knowledge of key events, membership and activities of the EU, and found some very noteworthy results.
To start with, she found that the majority of young people surveyed actually had a moderate level of knowledge of the EU; i.e. some grounding on which to base their opinions (though admittedly what counts as ‘moderate’ knowledge is probably far from sufficient; including, for example, that 66% of respondents could name just one or more EU policy). But – and crucially in respect of the programme Civitas is currently running on the EU – she found from the surveys and focus group research that young people feel they should, and indeed want to, know more about the EU. Rebecca found that when knowledge is learnt about EU issues, attitudes of those young people changed dramatically from seeing the EU is ‘not really relevant’ and ‘too far away’ to expressing a will to become involved in the electoral process of the European Parliament.
But back to the question in hand. When questioning the same young people on their views of the EU, Rebecca found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that as people’s level of knowledge increased, less people are ‘indifferent’ to the EU and, instead, form an opinion. But, contrary to conventional wisdom, the lowest number of positive comments on the EU came from respondents with the highest knowledge levels, suggesting that "high levels of knowledge do not necessarily generate positive opinions of, or support for, the EU among 18-24 year olds”.
Rebecca writes: “It was expected that Eurosceptic stories in the media would have generated negative opinions in young British adults and once knowledge about the EU was learnt people would uncover the truth in the ‘stereotyped frames of reference’ (Zaller, 1992) presented to them and realise that the project of European integration isn’t as negative a process as some sources make out. Yet through the research process people with low knowledge, and susceptible to Eurosceptic media stories, displayed support for British membership of the EU because of its ability to fight international issues and people with high knowledge levels displayed negative comments based on functional institutional issues such as the democratic deficit, accountability, corruption and inefficient bureaucracy.”
Interesting. Admittedly the research is from a relatively small sample of young people in one particular geographical entity, Milton Keynes. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the findings were replicated in young people across the UK. EU reform is needed.