This article was originally published on English
Approval of the European Commission is deeply divided across the EU and alarmingly low in a handful of member states, new polls show. This raises questions about Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for a second term at the head of the Commission.
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The exclusive poll by polling institute Ipsos for Euronews shows that the majority of voters (63 percent) either view the Commission’s work negatively or have no opinion. This suggests that the EU executive does not appeal to most Europeans.
Of a sample of 26,000 EU citizens in 18 member states, 37 percent said they viewed von der Leyen’s Commission’s work positively, while 31 percent said they viewed it negatively and 32 percent did not know.
The poll comes two months before around 370 million voters elect new members of the European Parliament, sparking a race to lead the Commission, the EU’s powerful executive arm with broad powers to legislate in a range of areas including technology, healthcare and social rights has.
Von der Leyen, who was surprisingly chosen as Commission President in 2019 despite not officially running for the position, is currently considered the favorite for a second five-year termafter the European People’s Party (EPP) named her its leading candidate.
To secure this second term, she must be nominated by EU leaders and find a majority in the newly elected European Parliament – a test she passed in 2019 by a slim margin of just nine votes.
Although she enjoys a good reputation in political circles, von der Leyen has been criticized for her few public appearances and her reluctance to take to the streets to meet voters – even during the election campaign.
The result is a low level of awareness of their executive power in the vast majority of member states. Only in three of the Member States surveyed did the majority of respondents have a positive opinion of their Commission: Portugal (61 percent), Denmark (54 percent) and Spain (54 percent).
In France, one of the EU’s founding members, approval falls to a low of just 18 percent, where 36 percent rate the commission’s work negatively and 46 percent don’t know.
Perception is also shockingly low in Central and Eastern European countries such as Austria, where 41 percent view the Commission negatively, and in Hungary and the Czech Republic, where 38 percent have a negative opinion.
The results also suggest that around a third of Europeans do not know enough about the Commission to form an opinion about its work.
Commission unpopular with fringe political groups
The survey shows that voters from parties belonging to the right-wing extremist group Identity and Democracy (ID) – such as France’s Rassemblement National, Italy’s Lega or the Alternative for Germany (AfD) – are most critical of the commission’s work: 61 percent rate it negative and only twelve percent positive.
The Commission is also perceived negatively by a majority of conservative, Eurosceptic voters (52 percent) and a significant proportion of far-left voters (39 percent). Support for the commission is highest among the established center-left Socialists and von der Leyen’s own center-right party, the European People’s Party (EPP).
For many right-wing populist parties, the Commission – embodied by von der Leyen – has become a useful totem of technocracy that they can attack to sow anti-Brussels sentiment.
A representative case is that the French leading candidate Rassemblement National targets von der Leyen as an ally of Macron, who accuses her of European industry to foreign powers “sell” and even that Use of French as a lingua franca in the European institutions to undermine.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz party is pursuing a similar tactic, with the government in Budapest using public money to von der Leyen in public poster campaigns denigrate.
Of all professional groups, workers are most likely to have a negative attitude towards the commission’s work (37 percent), followed by the self-employed and goods owners (35 percent).
Support for EU membership remains high
Although the Commission is struggling with its reputation in many member states, EU membership still enjoys broad support among member states, according to the survey.
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When asked whether EU membership was a good or bad thing for their country, an average of 62 percent of respondents answered “good,” with support highest in Portugal, Spain and Denmark, and highest in the Czech Republic, France and Italy was lowest.
Unsurprisingly, skepticism about the benefits of EU membership is highest among voters of the far-right ID party’s populists: 37% of them think it is bad for their country.
That number drops to just three percent among Green voters, 81 percent of whom think EU membership is a good thing.
Even among voters of parties affiliated with the ECR group – such as Vox in Spain, Fratelli d’Italia in Italy or Law and Justice in Poland – and who are generally considered Eurosceptics, 48 percent see EU membership as a good thing .
Across all voter groups, however, EU membership is seen significantly more positively than the work of the Commission itself. Voters of parties that belong to the Left, the EKR or the ID are about twice as likely to believe that EU membership is a good thing The point is that they rate the commission’s work positively.
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The data confirms what is emerging in the election campaign in many EU countries: the Commission is the institution most likely to generate Eurosceptic feelings among voters, and parties on the fringes of the political spectrum are ready to capitalize on this.