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A new Eurobarometer asked Europeans if they agree with the EU granting candidate status to Ukraine in order to let it enter the block in the future. 61% of Czechs disagree with this move, the highest number in the Union. What could be behind this?

Written by Ondřej Plevák| Euractiv.cz

The Standard Spring Eurobarometer asks what Europeans think on a range of issues. In the context of Ukraine, it asks, for example, whether arms should continue to be sent to the war-torn country or whether Russia poses a security threat to Europe.

One of the questions was about whether the European Union was right to grant Ukraine candidate status in 2022. The question was therefore practically directed at whether Kyiv should join the Union at some point in the future. On average across the EU, 60 % of respondents agreed with this statement, 34 % disagreed and 6 % did not know or had no opinion.

However, the figures for the Czech Republic are surprisingly “opposite” than the average. According to the survey, only 31 % of Czechs view the granting of candidate status positively, while 61 % view the matter negatively.

Compared to the rest of the EU, only the Hungarians have the same negative opinion as the Czechs, with 60 %, while other countries are some distance away - Slovenia is the closest with 47 %.

What could be behind this?

The Czech Republic is one of the biggest supporters of Ukraine at the political, diplomatic and military level, and is also loudly calling for its admission to the EU. The question arises why this is not also reflected in the opinions of the population.

Jaromír Mazák, director of research at the STEM Institute of Empirical Research, offered a look into longer-term data and trends. In the past, he said, EU enlargement was an unimportant topic for the Czech public, and the situation around Ukraine has opened a new chapter.

“The Czech public has been split into two similarly sized groups from the beginning, which has made it one of the most rejecting countries in the EU. According to the Eurobarometer in 2023, 43 % of Czechs approved of candidate status for Ukraine and 46 % of Czech women and men rejected it,” Mazák said, adding that the new data therefore show a significant decline.

“Personally, I believe that this is related to the parliamentary opposition's long-standing rejection of Ukraine's accession to the EU, as well as other forms of support for the embattled state. The drop is indeed unprecedentedly large, but sometimes we see it on issues on which the public does not have very anchored attitudes. Systematic communication can then significantly influence these attitudes. So far, the communication of opponents of Ukraine's accession to the EU has been more successful in this respect,” the director argued.

Mazák also added another important context – apart from Ukraine, the general attitude of the Czech public towards EU enlargement has been mostly negative for almost a decade. The Czech Republic has begun to resemble countries such as Germany and France, which are among the biggest net contributors to the EU budget and whose publics have therefore long rejected enlargement (because they “need to pay” for the newly admitted states).

“However, when we at STEM surveyed attitudes towards the accession of Ukraine in June 2023, about one in four people wanted early accession and another 30 % agreed that 'prospectively yes, but it should not be rushed'. This is more than half. Only 20 % were clearly opposed at the time and around 25 % could not judge. The openness of the Czech public was quite high at that time,” Mazák explained.

“I interpret the new Eurostat data to mean that the public has not been convinced over the past two years that Ukraine's accession would be beneficial for us,” the expert added.

Poor communication or ignorance of how the EU works

Analysts of the EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy – Jana Faktor Juzová and Maria Gorbatova – also offered their interpretation of the Eurobarometer results. According to them, a number of factors play a role.

“The Czech Republic is the largest recipient of Ukrainian refugees per capita. Although the country has managed this challenge well overall, there has been room for speculation and negative news, which unfortunately has not been balanced by communication about how the refugees are actually doing (including open communication about the problems),” Gorbatova believes.

In her opinion, Czech citizens do not have much idea of what aid to Ukraine really means as a result of poor communication by government politicians and the spread of disinformation.

“A dichotomy is emerging between 'aid to Ukraine versus investment in solving domestic problems'. The government's current communication is not clear and credible to citizens, creating space for other actors to shape public opinion,” Gorbatova added.

According to Faktor Juzová, general Czech euroscepticism and poor public awareness of how the EU and EU decision-making works, and the fact that Czechs perceive it as something external and distant, also play a role.

“In the case of EU enlargement in particular, the Czech (and European) public in general is mostly unaware that countries applying for membership must first meet some conditions, which are very demanding. People also don't understand the technical nature and language of the integration process – candidate status, the start of accession negotiations, the opening and closing of negotiation chapters versus the accession itself, and how these are decided (unanimity of all member states at each step of the accession process),” Faktor Juzová listed.

According to the analysts, the combination of these factors may lead to the perception among Czechs that Ukraine's EU accession process is perceived as a “fast track”, as accelerated and hastened, without sufficient consideration of the real problems and risks that Ukraine's EU membership may entail.

Other possible reasons why Czechs oppose Ukraine's EU accession are mentioned in a survey by the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO).

The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
The project is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea.