The FINANCIAL — Eastern Europeans who are not part of the EU have generally positive or neutral opinions of the EU, and as we learned last week, Georgians are even friendlier.
From where does this greater warmth toward Europe come? To help understand the difference between Georgia and its neighborhood peers, we’ll look at what grand ideas are attached to the European Union in people’s minds.
Georgian Opinion Research Business International and TNS opinion just finished the most recent wave of the EU Neighborhood barometer, which polls all the countries in the EU’s immediate area. GORBI was specifically responsible for asking people in Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and the three Caucasian countries about their attitudes toward the EU, their own countries’ situations, and their general predictions for the future. For this policy project, the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument, these countries are collectively known as the ENPI East.
To get to the bottom of this friendliness-discrepancy, we’ll look at responses to the question, “Could you tell me which of the following characteristics best represent the European Union for you?” In general, ENPI Easterners agree on the top six EU characteristics: solidarity, freedom of speech, peace and security, democracy, human rights, and economic prosperity. The disagreement comes in which of these perceived qualities is the most prominent.
To Georgians the clearest face of the EU is one of solidarity, meaning perhaps they feel that recent inter-member economic tensions are more like siblings’ bickering. To the greater ENPI East, though, solidarity ranks much lower. Likewise, Georgians view freedom of speech and democracy as more important to the EU’s ethos than in the ENPI East. In fact, the two most important EU characteristics for the ENPI East are human rights and economic prosperity, which are far less important for Georgians.
If we wanted to assign some off-the-cuff interpretation to these rankings, and we always do, we could say that Georgians view the EU more as a core of stability, where the member states aresecure and there is less chance of political upheaval. It seems the ENPI East is more concerned with improvements in personal lifestyle, with economic prosperity and human rights being their strongest impressions of EU values.
Keep in mind that these are just quick guesses from one question, not strong conclusions. To truly understand Georgians’ attitude toward the EU and how it differs from their neighbors, we’re going to have to look from many different angles. Keep reading over the next few weeks, and we’ll tour through a variety of questions and frames, and build a real and valuable understanding of Georgians’ attitudes toward the EU.
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