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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.

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”.

This chapter critically assesses the assumption that the European Union (EU) is undergoing a crisis of legitimation. Using survey data, it shows that support of the EU and European integration is solid and that it plays a small role in the rise of populist parties. Then, it shows that Europeans favor increasing European cooperation but are reluctant to transfer national sovereignty to the EU. Finally, it traces this reluctance to the primacy of national over European identification.

Existing knowledge about differences in well-being is still incomplete. Based on the previous research, we hypothesize that there is a positive relationship between the use of health information from the media and well-being, and that the strength of this relationship increases with the number of years of schooling.

To test the hypotheses we used the data (n = 14,835) from the Eurobarometer survey which was conducted in several European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). We analyzed the data by applying hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

The findings indicate cross-national differences in the relationship between the use of health information from the media and well-being. Moreover, they suggest that the extent of education matters for this relationship, however its influence differs across countries.

Further research is needed to explain the differences found between the countries. The research results offer some suggestions for further research and for social policy initiatives to reduce educational differences in the relationship between the use of media information on health issues and well-being.

This chapter draws attention to the interrelationship between education, use of media information on health issues and well-being, as knowledge about this is scarce.

This chapter summarizes public perceptions and expert evaluations concerning elected officials' levels of corruption, focusing on comparisons between the United States and 29 European Union “plus” (EU+) countries (28 EU Member States in 2018 plus Switzerland). While surveys of corruption have become more widely available in recent years, there is still a lack of comparable data focusing on specific government institutions, rather than general perceptions of corruption by elected or public officials. Thus, this study takes advantage of four major sources of citizens' perceptions of corruption to develop an average score and ranking for a total of 30 countries: the 2017 Global Corruption Barometer, the 2017 Eurobarometer subtitled “Integration of Immigrants in the European Union and Corruption,” the 2016 International Social Survey Program's (ISSP) Module on the “Role of Government V,” and the Pew Research Center's 2018 “Global Attitudes & Trends Survey.” Three expert assessments of levels of corruption supplement these surveys: the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project's measure of legislative corruption, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2016, and the World Bank's 2016 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) assessment of the “Control of Corruption.” Finally, the chapter tests several hypotheses derived from the literature using the various corruption measures as the dependent variable and finds that choosing a measure of corruption based on citizens' perceptions or expert evaluations is substantively important. Thus, one must exercise caution when selecting one type of measure over the other.