The survey was conducted by the Hungarian Századvág Foundation think tank. It shows a widening gap between the political establishment in Europe and ordinary voters. More than half of those surveyed said they no longer trusted their government at all nor the media, while only nine per cent said they trusted the elites.
According to Szabo, even though Europe was “deeply divided”, eastern Europe was still much more optimistic and dynamic than the west. He predicted that the main issues of 2018 would be the role of the European Union and a strong sovereigntist movement against EU centralisation.
“51 percent of all of Europe favours individual members states having more power,” he noted and added that “2018 is going to be an exciting year”.
A majority of Europeans expressed pessimism about the future, with 51 percent saying they expect their children to have a worse life than they had. Some 50 percent agreed that immigration was a serious problem for the EU and 53 percent rightly pointed out that migrants were coming to Europe for economic rather than safety reasons.
Almost two-thirds, 64 percent thought immigrants were responsible for a spike in crime, and 66 percent thought mass migration has increased the chances of terror attacks.
Unsurprisingly distrust was highest among Greeks with 82 percent expressing no faith in their elected officials followed by Croatia with 70 percent and Italy at 69 percent. In Malta most citizens trusted their government with only 32 percent negatively rating their government, followed by Hungary at 29 percent.
Trust in die mainstream media was so low that only eight percent said they trusted government controlled media very much while 45 percent said they didn’t trust it at all. According to the survey, German were the most trusting of the mainstream media in Europe.
David Szabo told Breitbart London he was surprised to see how attitudes had remained the same as in his 2016 study, but it had not been reflected in the Dutch and French elections earlier this year. He said that voters had “re-elected their elites” despite, “not sharing their opinions”.
Szabo added: “I do not expect big systematic changes in the upcoming two elections [in Germany and Austria],” because Austrian mainstream parties are currently taking a more hardline stance, as Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte did before the Dutch elections, in order to take votes from the anti-immigration Freedom Party of Austria.
“In Germany, on the other hand, I do not see room for considerable political changes,” he said predicting a win for Angela Merkel.
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