Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. So new polling from Yugo 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 Jema Connor Associate director Yugov joins me now in
studio for more to discuss JMA, 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 twenty twenty two, 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 people.
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 do a bad job for managing the European economy as well. If we look
particularly at the cost of living. People are struggling. We ask one particular question where we ask about people's personal experiences of the cost of living, and people generally finding that they're having to make cuts or they expect to make cuts in the future. This has particularly felt quite strongly in Romania where fifty eight percent of people so they've already made cuts to their typical spending at home
and expect to make further cuts in the future. So people really struggling at the moment and actually expect to continue to struggle into the future.
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.
Absolutely, so we ask a question where we say, what do you think the economy will look like in twelve months time? And people are really negative here. So across most of the countries people think that the economy will be in recession. The only outlier here is Denmark, where forty two percent think that the economy will be stable, but that is stable rather than growing. There's no country where people who actually have a positive outlook in that next year or so you.
Tackle some of the big fiscal questions in this survey as well, and in particular around defense spending, something that many European countries have been ramping up. They're 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 defense.
So when it comes to defense, geography really matters. So those countries that are closest to Russia or at most a 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 contriting more to NATO. They're also much more likely to say that NATO is
important to their country's defense. And when we ask what they think of the biggest threats face in Europe, those countries that are at threat from Russia and feel most threatened are most likely to say that Ussian aggression is the biggest threat face in the whole of Europe.
And I was interested in the way that the question around the fans banding was phrase because it did make reference to the other difficult decisions that governments have to make and that what 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 AI and who's using it and where, because it perhaps may not be as widespread as we may otherwise have thought.
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. Often there's quite a few people who've never used AI at all for
either work or for leisure. Particularly for work. For example, forty percent of those in France say they've never used AI for work, and there is more uptake in countries like the Netherlands of Romania where people slightly more likely to say that they're using AI. But the jury is still really out on AI for the public.
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, and negotiations with the US over trade as well. What's the view among the public of how the EU is regulating AI.
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 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 sera as well, where do people feel like they should be focusing their efforts in terms of the policy sphere.
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 defense, They want countries to be contributing more to NATO to really feel that they are being protected, and that threat from Russia is very real. In Western Europe, the issue is more cost of living that 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.