Speakers

• Mr. Bruce Stokes, Director Global Economic Attitudes, Pew Research Center
• Dr. Rosa Balfour, Senior Fellow Europe Program, The German Marshall Fund of the United States
• Mr. Pawel Swieboda, Deputy Head, European Political Strategy Centre

Moderator

• Sir Michael Leigh, Transatlantic Fellow, The German Marshall Fund of the United States

If you have any questions, please contact Laura Groenendaal at +32 223 85 277 or lgroenendaal@gmfus.org.

Last year’s British decision to leave the EU forced Europeans to think the unthinkable: whether membership in the EU is to their benefit. The past decade has seen a rise in mistrust and Euroscepticism across the continent, and the Eurosceptic wave has been exploited by populist parties to their electoral advantage, raising fears that others may demand their own vote on continued EU membership or seek to take back some powers from Brussels.

As the debate on the future of the EU shapes up, through the Rome Declaration on the 60th Anniversary of the Union and the Commission’s proposals on the future of integration, it is time to assess how public attitudes toward the EU are changing thanks to the findings of the Pew Research Center. Pew is a Washington-based non-partisan institution. It annually surveys public opinion in major EU member states and it has been surveying in Europe since 1991. In its 2017 survey it tests public support for the EU, public judgments about Brexit, whether people want their own referendum on continued EU membership and sentiment toward the growing German role in EU affairs.