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- [00:00]
Nathan Hager
Indiana University is shaping the future of healthcare, advancing discoveries that become treatments for Alzheimer's, obesity and cancer, and training the providers trusted to deliver them. See how IU solves what's Next iu. Edu Impact.
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Bloomberg Host
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio news so new polling from YouGov from across nine EU countries is giving us a fresh insight into the biggest political issues facing the continent and how voters think their governments and the European Union is handling them. The company surveyed more than a thousand people in countries including France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland. And Gemma Connor, Associate Director, YouGov, joins me now in studio for more to discuss. Gemma, good morning. Let's start with some of the big issues in this survey as well. We know that inflation has come down massively in the euro area since 2022, but economic and cost of living issues still very prominent across your survey. How does that play out among the various countries where you survey?
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Gemma Connor
Absolutely. So if we look at the data from these nine European countries, we can see that there's generally a pretty gloomy outlook from their national economies. People generally think that their government is doing a bad job of managing the economy and actually the EU are doing a bad job of managing the European economy as well. If we look particularly at the cost of living, people are struggling. We asked one particular question when we asked about people's personal experiences of the cost of living and people are generally finding that they're having to make cuts or they expect to make cuts in the future. This is particularly felt quite strongly In Romania where 58% of people, people say they've already made cuts to their, their typical spending at home and expect to make further cuts in the future. So people are really struggling at the moment and actually expect to continue to struggle into the future.
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Bloomberg Host
Yeah, because the perceptions of the future are very interesting here as well. How worried are people about their future economically and sort of the risks of a downturn of the economy?
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Gemma Connor
Absolutely. So we ask a question where we say, what do you think the economy will look like in 12 months time? And people are really negative here. So across most of the countries, people think that the economy will be in recess. The only outlier here is Denmark, where 42% think that the economy will be stable, but that is stable rather than growing. There's no country where people actually have a positive outlook in that next year or so.
- [02:20]
Bloomberg Host
You tackled some of the big fiscal questions in this survey as well, and in particular around defence spending, something that many European countries have been ramping up their spending on that provoking difficult decisions as we know about what exactly the governments are going to choose to spend their money on as well. How supportive are the Europeans that you surveyed of increasing spending on defence?
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Gemma Connor
So when it comes to defence, geography really matters. So those countries that are closest to Russia, or at most at threat from Russia, have really different attitudes to those in more Western Europe. So countries like Poland, Romania are much more supportive of increasing financial spending, contributing more to NATO. They're also much more likely to say that NATO is important to their country's defence. And when we ask what they think are the biggest threats facing Europe, those countries that are at threat from Russia and feel most threatened are most likely to say that Russian aggression is the biggest threat facing the whole of Europe.
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Bloomberg Host
And I was interested in the way that the question around defence spending was phrased because it did make reference to the other difficult decisions that governments have to make and do they support it, regardless of the other issues that those governments are facing? So it's an interesting one to reflect on as well. I want to also touch on some of the issues around technology which you covered in this survey, because particularly the use of. Of AI and who's using it and where, because it perhaps may not be as widespread as we may otherwise have thought.
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Gemma Connor
Yes, absolutely. So people generally have an idea of what AI is. They're less sure about the issues around AI, and they're really not sure about whether it's a positive or negative thing in terms of use. There's quite a few people who've never used AI at all for either work or for leisure, particularly for work. For example, 40% of those in Free FR in France say they've never used AI for work. There is more uptake in countries like the Netherlands or Romania, where people are slightly more likely to say that they're using AI, but the jury is still really out on AI for the public.
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Bloomberg Host
And you did also ask as well about the question of regulation of this technology, because, of course, the EU has its AI Act. It's something that's been quite controversial. It's come up, for example, in negotiations with the US over trade as well. What's the view among the public of how the EU is regulating AI?
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Gemma Connor
This is one area where the public are very certain how they feel. So they may not know that much about AI, they may not know how they personally feel about it, but they're absolutely certain that the AI industry should be regulated over, being allowed to kind of roam free and innovate as quickly as it may want to. A majority across all countries polled feel that regulation is more important than that.
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Bloomberg Host
Development, which is, I think, very interesting in the conversation that we're having around AI as well. Now we're speaking to you just ahead of European leaders arriving in Brussels for the European Council later this week. In terms of a big picture conclusion for policymakers out of your survey as well, where do people feel like they should be focusing their efforts in terms of the policy sphere?
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Gemma Connor
It's certainly the economy. The economy is a big issue for many countries, but actually the threat from Russia is very real for those countries that are certainly geographically closer or are in a strategic position for Russia. So places like Denmark with the Baltic Passage, and those countries are feeling the threat from Russia and they're very supportive of having more cooperation from the us, between the US and the EU on security matters. They want NATO to be playing a role. They want that defence. They want countries to be contributing more to NATO, to really feel that they are being protected and that that threat from Russia is very real. In Western Europe, the issue is more cost of living. That is something that people are feeling the pinch still, and they don't feel that their national governments or the EU are doing enough to support them at the moment.
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Karen Moscow
Bloomberg Daybreak is your best way to get informed first thing in the morning, right in your podcast feed. Hi, I'm Karen Moscow.
- [06:23]
Nathan Hager
And I'm Nathan Hager. Each morning we're up early putting together the latest episode of Bloomberg Daybreak US Edition. It's your daily 15 minute podcast on the latest in global news, politics and Internet international relations.
- [06:36]
Karen Moscow
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- [06:43]
Nathan Hager
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