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This survey and the results therein were generated by final year Law students at Birkbeck, University of London, as a component of their ‘Law of the European Union’ module. This allows groups of students to develop ideas they wish to pursue independently, related to the overall aims of the module.
As a general rule the questions and results from this research do not take into account any changes in European Union legislation and structure that may come into effect with the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. This is because the provisions of this treaty came into effect part way through the research.
In order to explore attitudes and knowledge of the European Union this project group has chosen to develop a survey to collect data from anonymous respondents. The general methodology of the survey is to put forward propositions on legal and political measures, that it was thought would have a generally positive reception from any audience. Such measures were then formulated in different ways to try to establish a baseline, and separately introduce a European Union aspect to the measure.
As an example, a general proposition, from which we would expect a postive response would be:
Should women expect to receive the same pay and benefits as men if they are doing the same work?
Further questions are then asked relating to similar issues, then an overarching qustion may be asked that introduces a role for the European Union:
Is it appropriate for the European Union to issue regulations relating to discrimination involving gender, age or disability in the workplace?
It was initially thought that the development of such questions would result in quite stark contrasts between a large number of respondents supporting the initial general proposition and an equally large number opposing EU involvement. In reality the results are much more subtle than that and few issues presented any contentious results. In some cases there appear to be slight variations in support when the EU was introduced as an element of the question, usually this had a negative effect on support. But in a few cases EU involvement actuallly boosted support for a measure.
Due to the small sample of respondents and the researchers’ lack of experience in developing survey methodologies, no weight should be placed on the results – they are merely indicative of the views of a small set of EU citizens.
The questions and responses from the survey have been published on this web site, along with some analysis of the results. On the whole the purpose of the analysis is to highlight the legal issues involved in the particular area of EU policy, rather than to comment on the statistics. It is hoped that this analysis will illustrate the many ways that the EU touches our lives in positive ways – that have overwhelmingly gained the support of the respondents.
This is not to be regarded as a thorough overview of EU law and policy. It is certain that, if it were so desired, one could develop a set of questions and responses that show the EU in a negative light. It is therefore conceded that there may be elements of EU law that would be considered negative to a great many people.
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