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This chapter provides a statistical analysis of the determinants of attitudes toward foreigners displayed by Europeans sampled in Eurobarometer surveys in 1988 and 1997. Those who compete with immigrants in the labor market are more negative toward foreigners. An increased concentration of immigrants in neighborhoods increases the likelihood of negative attitudes. Racial prejudice exerts a strong influence on anti-foreigner sentiment. Greater racial prejudices, and the decline in the strength of educational attainment in reducing negative attitudes toward foreigners, contribute to the increased anti-foreigner attitudes between 1988 and 1997.

This article presents an analysis of some particular aspects of European public opinion with respect to defence and security issues under the threat of international terrorism after September 11, 2001.

It is based on secondary data analysis from standard EUROBAROMETER surveys, Candidate Countries EUROBAROMETER surveys and Flash EUROBAROMETER surveys carried out in 2000–2006.

The analysis shows that there is an increase in the level of anxiety across European public opinion in the ‘Age of the War on Terror’ related to international terrorism and proliferation of nuclear, bacteriological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.

The existing divergence in the threat perception in Western and Eastern parts of Europe in the first years following the end of the Cold War significantly diminished after September 11, 2001, is based on the common perception of the threat from international terrorism.

An aspect of globalization is the creation of macro-regions through integration. A macro-region is a territorial unit created through the process of cooperation, cohesion, and integration. Areas of integration can be political, economic, and social. An example of a macro-region is the European Union (EU). For EU member states and for acceding countries economic integration means accepting EU rules and regulations. The rationale behind these laws and rules is to increase economic, financial, and trade cooperation among partner countries. To increase the viability of this macro-region, the EU, has emphasized the need for social integration, which is the expansion of self-identification by individuals from viewing themselves as citizens of a country to a broader European identity, a citizen of Europe. This paper evaluates the impact of joining the European Union on the labor markets of Central and Eastern Europe countries, an economic integration; and the parallel expansion of the citizens’ identity expanding to include a European self-image, a social integration.

Should the unemployed be viewed as an underclass at the bottom of the stratification heap in modern societies? In the 1930s, the answer given by social scientists was unambiguously negative. The unemployed could not be considered as a social class; they were “a mass numerically not socially” who showed no group or class consciousness (Zawadsky and Lazarsfeld, 1935, p.2). The people who were unemployed at any one point in time, the argument ran, were a mixed collection of individuals who did not necessarily share a common view of society. The attitudes of the unemployed varied according to previous experience at work (Bakke, 1933) and individual and family financial situation (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel, 1932: 45). Similar arguments have been presented more recently: the responses of the unemployed to their condition depend critically on their previous political socialisation, for example, argues Bergere (1990).

Protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indication (PGI) products form the core of the European Union (EU) quality food policy. Low and fragmented logo recognition perils the entire plan. This work aims to provide a “classification” of European consumers as regards logo awareness based on generic demographic and socio-economic characteristics and to test hypotheses relating PDO awareness with the purchasing behaviour of consumers.

The work utilises publicly available pan-European databases collected from Eurobarometer in four rolling surveys from 2012 to 2017. The statistical analysis exploits the spatially nested nature of the data.

The “logo aware” consumer is distinctively different from the average representative European consumer. A range of demographic, human capital and socio-economic characteristics and behavioural and attitudinal traits differentiate the consumers who are aware of the logo. Country and region effects are vital.

Benefits of large and representative samples accrue by utilising available Eurobarometer surveys. This comes at a cost. The individual researcher has no control over the questions included in the questionnaire.

Consumer classification forms the basis of awareness-raising strategies. It reveals the numerous segments of aware and non-aware consumers and opens a discussion about tools and methods to reach out to the European consumer.

This analysis holds an exact pan-European perspective and incorporates consumers' characteristics, behaviour, attitudes and country and region effects.

Until now, most scholars have used one of four competing theories to explain undeclared work. Political economy theories explain undeclared work as resulting from the exclusion of workers from formal work and welfare, neo-liberal theories explain such work as a voluntarily chosen rational economic decision and neo-institutionalist and post-structuralist theories explain those engaging as social actors who disagree with the formal rules or seek to help others out respectively. Recognising that each theory focuses upon different employment relationships, this paper evaluates the proposition that these different theories are more explanations of different types of undeclared work.

To evaluate this, data reported is collected in 2019 across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom) in special Eurobarometer survey 92.1 involving 27,565 interviews.

Of the 3.6% of citizens participating in undeclared work, 10% engage in undeclared waged employment, 42% in undeclared self-employment and 48% in undeclared paid favours. Reporting their rationales, 7% state purely political economy exclusion-driven reasons, 19% solely neo-liberal rational economic actor reasons, 20% purely social actor reasons and 54% mixed motives. A logistic regression analysis finds those engaging in undeclared waged employment significantly more likely to state purely exclusion-driven rationales, those engaging in undeclared self-employment significantly more likely to state neo-liberal rational economic actor and neo-institutionalist social actor rationales and those engaging in undeclared paid favours post-structuralist social actor motives.

This finding suggests that the policy initiatives required to tackle undeclared work will vary according to the type of undeclared work addressed. These are outlined.

Evidence is provided that a different weighting needs to be given to different theories when explaining each type of undeclared work.

Hungarians’ degree of knowledge of the EU has been increasing over the years, despite the mainly sovereignty-based and Eurosceptic political communication and related political and media narratives in the last 10 years. Still, whereas Hungarians tend to be familiar with factual information on the European Union, they face more challenges trying to figure out how the EU actually works. This is related to the scarcity of this type of information both in public education and the media, which can obstruct not only the adequate understanding of how the European Union functions, but also the support for its policies. The objective of this chapter is to examine how the EU-related content is taught in Hungarian educational system. The discussion covers teaching in primary, secondary and tertiary education. The investigation is based on document analysis, such as the National Core Curricula, secondary school textbooks, baccalaureate topics, as well as completion and exit requirements for bachelor and master programs of higher education institutions.

This chapter aims at contributing to the promotion of education for competent and responsible citizenship with regard to the European Dimension. It takes into consideration five points: (1) the expected profile of the active European citizen in a reliable European cooperation project; (2) the attitude of people in Europe to the European Union (EU) and to the other member countries, according to Eurobarometer and other surveys, keeping in mind the international scenario, and the internal cooperation among the EU states; (3) the situation of citizenship education, as reported by European and international studies as Eurydice (2017); (4) suitable innovative and technology-enhanced approaches to teaching and learning excellence, aiming at Education of Responsible Competent European Citizenship, including digital citizenship, focusing on knowledge, skills, attitudes, values of responsible citizenship in a democratic society, and developing thinking processes: information management, judgment and decision-making processes, working constantly under European point of view, strengthening contacts, and exchanges among EU member countries; and (5) non-formal and informal learning, influences from the family, the social environment and the mass media on the attitude of people in Europe to the European cooperation. Proposals are developed for improvement in the field of teaching/learning, teacher training, and communication, fostering interaction, engagement, and competent citizenship for the common future.

Recent academic studies, as well as media reporting, have devoted substantial attention to the ongoing “crisis of democracy.” Democratic “backsliding” of Central and Eastern Europe – sometimes referred to as an effort to establish a new system of “illiberal democracy” – is one of the most visible symptoms of this crisis. This narrative is supported by the quantitative metrics of democratic quality, reflecting professional community views on the appropriate criteria to define and assess democracy. However, once general public views expressed in the survey item of “satisfaction with democracy” are taken into account, the picture changes markedly. This chapter analyzes quantitative metrics reflecting expert community consensus and the general public assessment of the quality of democracy in the 27 EU members over the period 2010–2019. It documents substantial divergence between the perspectives of the experts and the general public – while expert-based indexes portray Central and Eastern European backsliding as the most significant trend in the EU democratic landscape, public opinion identifies a very different set of democracy's successes and failures. As experts and the general public fail to arrive at mutually accepted criteria of democratic performance evaluation, public debate has become futile. Meaningful discussion and systemic corrections have become unlikely, creating conditions easily exploitable by the populists, eager to frame it as an example of “elite” detachment from the “ordinary people”.