Flash Eurobarometer 298: Citizens’ awareness and perceptions of EU regional policy

Roughly a third of EU citizens said they had heard about EU co-financed projects to improve their local area; of those “aware” citizens, three-quarters felt that the EU’s support had had a positive impact on development in their city or region. A large majority of EU citizens accepted that the Union’s regional policy served as a tool to reduce the gap between development levels of the various regions in the EU. When asked where EU regional support should be targeted, 75% of respondents said that it should go to regions with high unemployment. Educational, health and social infrastructure, and environmental issues, were regarded as being among the most important policy areas by almost all respondents. After these two policy areas, just over 8 in 10 EU citizens considered support for small businesses and employment training as important policy sectors.

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