Most Romanians would not agree to giving up leu and associate EU to free movement right (survey)

At six years after joining the European Union, 35 percent of Romanians believe that the country’s EU accession brought rather advantages, 33.9 percent do not see any advantages in the respective process, nor disadvantages, and 21.4 percent see rather more disadvantages. 9.6 percent of respondents chose I do not know/I do not comment option.

As concerns the prospect to adopt the euro, 57 percent of Romanians would not agree to giving up leu. Only 35.4 percent would agree, while 7.5 percent did not know or did not respond.

Most of Romanians (76.2 percent) associate the European Union with the right to free movement. The following places in the top of European Union attributes are democracy and human rights (57.1 percent), peace with neighboring countries (55.6 percent), intervention in the internal politics of the country (53.9 percent), subordination to the Western European countries (50.6 percent) and spread of the economic crisis (49.8 percent).

On the other hand, 47.3 percent of respondents associate the European Union with economic development and 44.5 percent with jobs, 43.7 percent of the Romanians see the EU as bringing loss of control over the economy, while 41.6 percent adjoins it to the exploitation of natural resources. Only 31.1 percent correlate the EU with the loss of national identity and 19.9 percent with the loss of religious identity.

“The economic crisis of the past five years has been the most important event of the period, which triggered a broad set of collective fears about monetary stability included. The theme of “transition to the euro during the crisis is dangerous” echoed in the public, being supported by analysts, but also by various officials. Besides, the fear of a possible change seems justified: the transition from ROL to RON was nonetheless a success after, in the ’90s, the market economy had a debut with inflation waves and devaluations of the national currency and of the buying power that created a genuine collective trauma. The population is not ready to risk a change of the currency under conditions in which the European Union has not been able to persuade that it has managed to avoid the crisis”, says sociologist Darie Cristea, INSCOP project coordinator.

The survey was conducted by INSCOP Research, commissioned by Adevarul daily, in the period April 20 to 28. The volume of the sample was 1,050 people and is representative for the Romanian population 18 years and over 18 years old. The maximum admissible error of the data is plus / minus 3 percent, at a confidence level of 95 percent, the sample being of a multi-layer, probabilistic type.

The Opinion Barometer the “Truth about Romania” is a sociological research project, conducted periodically, of Romanians’ opinions on key aspects of the political, economic, social and cultural life. AGERPRES