172 The European Union – United or divided? M3 Crisis for Europe as trust hits record low Public confidence in the European Union has fallen to historically low levels in the six biggest EU countries, raising fundamental questions about its democratic legitimacy more than three years into the union’s worst ever crisis, new data shows. After financial, currency and debt crises, wrenching budget and spending cuts, rich nations’ bailouts of the poor, and surrenders of sovereign powers over policymaking to international technocrats, Euroscepticism is soaring to a degree that is likely to feed populist anti-EU politics and frustrate European leaders’ efforts to arrest the collapse in support for their project. Figures from Eurobarometer, the EU’s polling organisation, analysed by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a thinktank, show a vertiginous decline in trust in the EU in countries such as Spain, Germany and Italy that are historically very pro-European. The six countries surveyed – Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Poland – are the EU’s biggest, jointly making up more than two out of three EU citizens or around 350 million of the EU’s 500 million population. The findings, published exclusively in the Guardian in Britain and in collaboration with other leading newspapers in the other five countries, represent a nightmare for Europe’s leaders, whether in the wealthy north or in the bailout-battered south, suggesting a much bigger crisis of political and democratic legitimacy. “The damage is so deep that it does not matter whether you come from a creditor, debtor country, Euro would-be member or the UK: everybody is worse off,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the ECFR’s Madrid office. “Citizens now think that their national democracy is being subverted by the way the Euro crisis is conducted.” EU leaders are aware of the problem, utterly at odds over what to do about it, and have yet to come up with any coherent policy proposals addressing the mismatch between the pooling of economic and fiscal powers and the democratic mandate deemed necessary to underpin such radical policy shifts. José Manuel Barroso, the former European commission president, said European “dream” was under threat from a “resurgence of populism and nationalism” across the EU. “At a time when so many Europeans are faced with unemployment, uncertainty and growing inequality, a sort of ‘European fatigue’ has set in, coupled with a lack of understanding. Who does what, who decides what, who controls whom and what? And where are we heading to?” Ian Traynor, The Guardian, 24 April 2013 M4 Angela Merkel: saviour or tormentor? Europeans give verdict Efficient, organised and successful. Arrogant, dominant and authoritarian. Saviour of the European project. Merciless tormentor of anyone south of the “olive line”. For some, the Eurozone would have collapsed without German leadership. For others, tens of millions of southerners would have been better off without it. In the runup to German elections this month that will have a crucial bearing on the rest of the continent, the Guardian, Le Monde in France, El País in Spain and La Stampa in Italy asked readers for their view of German leadership in the Euro crisis, as well as of the vote itself. The exercise generated a surprisingly robust response from more than 7,000 readers. Such surveys can never be statistically relevant because of the self-selecting nature of the exercise. But among the jokes and hostility 5 10 5 10 15 20 25 30 15 20 35 40 45 50 55 60 71051_1_1_2015_Inhalt_4.indd 17 21.01.15 10:39 Nu r z P rü fzw ec ke n Ei ge nt um d es C .C .B uc hn er V er la gs