Special Eurobarometer 151: The young Europeans in 2001

Last Spring, the European Commission (Directorate – General for "Education and Culture", "Youth" Unit) carried out a survey on young Europeans aged 15 to 241. This survey followed up an opinion poll done in 1997, which was partly repeating similar studies conducted in 1990, 1987 and 1982.2 The questions dealt with young people’s participation in society, their concerns about employment and unemployment, their everyday life, their education as well as their perception of the European Union and its contributions.
Being able to work, live and study in the EU country of their choice represents the core elements of being a European citizen. These three elements are named by respectively 57% (compared to 62% in 1997), 51 % (compared to 52 %) and 42 % (compared to 46 %) of respondents Among other results, we note that close to seven young Europeans out of ten (69 %) think that employment should be given priority to in the next five years by the European Union. Second most frequently named priority area is the fight against crime (61 %); this answer was only given by 35% of the respondents in 1997, and came in a ninth position out of twelve The area in which the European Union should not intervene is: culture clubs and associations (27 %), which also is the area that is the least often named as priority area (17%). More than one young European out of two (51 %) declares having received information about his/ her rights and duties as a European citizen through school and university. As in 1997, parents and friends are then mentioned as source of information (32 %). Of all media, television is the main source of information (54 %), followed by newspapers and radio (32 %).

The results by volumes are distributed as follows:

• Volume A: Countries
• Volume AA: Groups of countries
• Volume A' (AP): Trends
• Volume AA' (AAP): Trends of groups of countries
• Volume B: EU/socio-demographics
• Volume B' (BP) : Trends of EU/ socio-demographics
• Volume C: Country/socio-demographics

Researchers may also contact GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences: https://www.gesis.org/eurobarometer