Eurobarometer

Eurobarometer is a series of surveys initiated by the European Commission to measure public opinion in countries that are members of the European Union. Eurobarometer was created in 1973, when the European Parliament released a report requesting the establishment of a permanent research institute that would study European public opinion.

Eurobarometer is conducted every 6 months, and the results are released free of charge to the public. About 1,000 citizens from each European Union (EU) country are polled through face-to-face interviews, with the exception of countries with small populations such as Malta or Cyprus, where the sample for Eurobarometer averages 500 persons.

The first study was designed by the first director of Eurobarometer, Jacques-René Rabier, in collaboration with U.S. political scientist Ronald Inglehart, and was conducted in the nine EU Member States at the time (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, and Luxembourg). The results of this first survey were released in 1974. Over time, Eurobarometer grew from surveying the nine original EU countries to include new EU members. Greece was added in fall 1980, Portugal and Spain in fall 1985, the former German Democratic Republic in fall 1990, Finland in spring 1993, and Sweden and Austria in fall 1994. The 13 Central and Eastern European candidate countries that became full members of the EU in 2004 and 2007 were first surveyed in fall 2001.

The Eurobarometer questions measure attitudes toward EU institutions, attitudes toward major topics concerning European affairs, and public awareness of the EU. Another set of questions measures people's satisfaction and expectations regarding the quality of life in the EU. A third set of questions measures how citizens of European countries perceive the other EU countries. Most questions are repeated on each survey in order to measure trends and opinion change over time. Eurobarometer allows monitoring the evolution of public opinion in the Member States, which helps the European Commission with the preparation of texts, decision making, and the evaluation of its work. Eurobarometer data are also often cited by mass media and are used by research scholars in communication, public opinion, and political science.

In the 1990s, Eurobarometer initiated an additional series of surveys, conducted by telephone on smaller samples, called Flash Eurobarometer. Flash surveys differ from the main Eurobarometer studies as their purpose is to find out what the public opinion is on a specific topic, such as the introduction of the Euro currency in the new EU Member States.