According to a survey, crime and violence are the biggest concerns of Germans for the first time. Fear of attacks in particular has increased and is only higher in one country.
According to a survey, fear of attacks and crime has increased massively in Germany over the past year. According to the survey published on Wednesday by the opinion research institute Ipsos, the proportion of people in this country who fear attacks increased from four percent to 20 percent within twelve months. Concerns about extremism rose at the same time from 14 percent to 20 percent.
According to Ipsos, fear of attacks is only more widespread in Israel than in Germany. In the Middle East country, which is heavily affected by such violence and is involved in wars with radical Islamic militias, 50 percent of people fear it. When it comes to fear of extremism, Germany is also in second place in a comparison of the 29 countries examined, as Ipsos also announced in Hamburg. Only in France, at 23 percent, is the concern slightly more pronounced than in the Federal Republic.
The fear of crime also increased sharply. The proportion of those who are afraid of crime in Germany increased by 13 percentage points to 37 percent within a year. According to Ipsos, concerns about crime and violence were at the top of the list of worries and fears for the first time ever at the time of the survey in late August and early September. This was followed by immigration at 33 percent, poverty and social inequality at 26 percent and inflation at 23 percent.
Ipsos spoke of a shift in fears after financial concerns had dominated the past two years. Overall, according to the survey, Germans view the economic and general situation in this country as significantly more positive than they did a year ago. The proportion of people who see the country as a whole on the right path has increased by 13 percentage points to 38 percent in the past few months.
According to Ipsos, around half of German citizens, at 49 percent, currently rate the economic situation as more positive – that is also an increase of 13 percentage points compared to a comparative survey a year ago. According to its own information, the institute regularly surveys people in 29 countries online about their fears. In Germany, around a thousand people took part in the latest survey, so the results can be viewed as representative.