BULGARIA AND ROMANIA INCLUDED IN TRANSATLANTIC SURVEY
Polina Slavcheva

Sofia Echo, Bulgaria
Issue 37: Sep. 15-21 2006

LOVE-HATE: Bulgarians generally hold oppinions consistent with those
of EU countries and 37 per cent of people in the EU consider US
leadership in the world undesirable.

Five years after September 11 2001, the image of the United States
has not recovered from its steep decline after the war in Iraq,
the Transatlantic Trends 2006 survey said.

Decline was steepest in Germany, which showed 43 per cent of support,
down from 68 per cent in 2002.

The US-Germany cooling became even clearer on September 13 when
the head of the German investigation said that US policy in Iraq
had increased the terrorist threat around the world. German support
for NATO has fallen as well, as has support for the North Atlantic
alliance in Europe in general.

Italy, Poland and Turkey, countries traditionally perceived as
strong supporters of NATO, also show reduced figures of support. This
probably explains a certain isolationist trend among Americans that
the study identified.

The biggest twist, however, comes from Turkey. The EU candidate has
been cooling toward Europe and the US and warming toward Iran since
2004. On a 100-point thermometer scale, Turkish warmth toward the
US declined from 28 degrees in 2002 to 20 in 2006, and toward the
EU from 52 degrees to 45. Elif Shafak, the Turkish writer accused of
insulting Turkish national identity in a book about Turkish genocide
against Armenians, warned about that trend as well. On September 13,
she said that the case against her and other cases like hers could
actually stop Turkey’s negotiations with the EU.

And deepen Turkish orientation toward the Muslim world that the
study identified as well. Since 2004, Turkish warmth toward Iran
rose from 34 degrees to 43. As many as 56 per cent of Turkish people,
when asked if they minded Iran’s nuclear programme, said no.

"If I was asked to do that a month ago, I would not have been able to
predict such a result," said the director of the Centre for Liberal
Studies in Bulgaria, Ivan Krustev.

For the first time, this year Bulgaria and Romania were included in
the Transatlantic survey as well.

The surprise coming from the Bulgarians, at least to Krustev, is that
Bulgarians generally hold opinions consistent with the line of EU
foreign policy, he said. At the same time, however, Bulgarians tend
to support Euro-isolationist views in the line of "the world should
leave the EU at peace", rather than "the EU should try to fix the
world", Krustev said.

Bulgarians see EU membership more as a way to escape the problems of
the world than a chance to solve them, he said.

In that, their opinions are closer to those of Slovakia than those
of other new and future EU members like Poland and Romania. The
new and future EU members are not a coherent block anyway, even if
their overall views on the EU and the United States do not differ
significantly from EU averages, the study said.

Seventy per cent of Romanians and 66 per cent of Poles support EU
global leadership and in that are closer to the 76 per cent EU average
than are Bulgaria and Slovakia. Only 56 per cent of Bulgarians and 50
per cent of Slovakians support strong EU leadership, and thus move away
from the EU trend to seek larger involvement in world affairs. European
support for a new EU foreign minister – one of the key reforms put
forth in the proposed constitutional treaty – is at a high 65 per
cent despite the French and Dutch EU "No" to the constitution.

And, contrary to public concerns about enlargement fatigue, Europeans
also see positive benefits from enlargement, which they connect
with the importance of encouraging democracy – a trend that will
increasingly find Europeans on the more active side, as opposed to
US citizens, researchers said.

When it comes to support for the policies of George W Bush, Bulgaria
and Slovakia are closer to the eight per cent EU average with their
20 and two per cent, respectively, of support than are Poland and
Romania, which score 40 and 42 per cent. Poles and Romanians, in fact,
show the greatest support of the US of all 13 surveyed countries.

Another peculiarity of Bulgarians is that they seem to be more
interested in what will be happening to Bulgaria in an EU context,
rather than what their and their country’s position in the world
should be, Krustev said.

For example, Bulgarians know little about the Bulgarian contingents in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and a lot about the case against the Bulgarian
nurses in Libya. This means that Bulgarian opinions on foreign policy
are still a reflex rather than a consciously taken position, he said.

Bulgarians also seem unable to form opinions as to whether Turkey’s
membership in the EU would be a good or a bad thing, Krustev said.

Most Bulgarians do not see Iraq as a threat, and evidence of that is
the marginalisation of the issue in Bulgarian media, Krustev said.

What is most striking, however, is the huge percentage of I-don’t-know
and I-can’t-answer responses.

Thirty-one per cent of Bulgarians could not answer if the US and
the EU have improved relations, even if that was a matter of general
knowledge, Krustev said.

This means that a third of Bulgarians have not thought on the issue
at all.

Transatlantic Trends is among the most influential public opinion
polls. It has been conducted since 2002 and is a project of the German
Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo.

Additional support comes from the Fundacao Luso-American, Fundacion
BBVA, and the Tipping Point Foundation (Bulgarian).