2009 - Survey - Climate Change

In spring 2008, the Commission and the European Parliament launched a major survey on the European public’s attitude to climate change (see EB 69.2). At the time, the Commission had just brought forward a set of proposals relating to that area, and Parliament had established its Temporary Committee on Climate Change. Now, one year later, the idea was to assess, via a new survey, the trends emerging within European public opinion. The survey would provide precise pointers in preparation for the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009. The two recently published EP/EBs (No 71) on the elections and on the financial crisis showed that Europeans are now primarily concerned about issues that directly affect their daily lives, such as unemployment, economic growth, inflation and purchasing power. On the other hand, there has been a clear decline in interest in collective issues of a global nature such as terrorism, immigration and climate change. This was confirmed by the findings of our latest survey.