The EU’s timid hope for 2022

The Gallup International Association published their ‘End of Year’ survey, detailing the levels of optimism about 2022 around the world. Countries in the European Union, however, are quite pessimistic

Yesterday, the Gallup International Association published the results of their ‘End of Year’ survey, detailing attitudes around the world about what lies in 2022. The survey focuses on three main questions, namely whether 2022 will be better or worse than 2021, if next year will bring economic prosperity or not, and if the participants were personally happy.

At the end of 2021, around the globe hope and happiness are decreasing compared to last year, while fears of economic strife remain prevalent. According to researchers, COVID-19 has certainly had an impact on the results, however, it varies from region to region and country to country.

Countries in the European Union were notably more pessimistic in terms of economic prosperity, with Eastern Europe being notably the most pessimistic. The picture looks quite similar to that in 2020, although 2008 still remains the most pessimistic year for the world in the new millennium.

Timid hope for 2022

The first question in the survey asked participants if they thought that 2022 would be better than 2021. Out of all EU countries in the survey, only a majority of Spaniards (50%) and Romanians (42%) thought that it would be better.

The majority of Italians (48%), Austrians (35%) and Germans (33%) said that next year would be the same, while 48% of Bulgarians, 47% of Poles and 45% of Czechs thought it would be worse. Bulgarians are a special case in this regard, as the most pessimistic country in the EU and one of the most pessimistic in the world with only Afghanistan and Turkey yielding higher results – 56% for both.

The second question was about economic prosperity and here every surveyed EU country thought that 2022 would bring economic difficulties. The most pessimistic in this regard were Bulgaria and Poland with 64% for both, followed by Romania (61%), Germany (59%) and Austria (55%).

At the same time, the third question was about personal happiness, and here EU citizens seemed to shine with the previously pessimistic Poles taking the top with 47% saying that they are happy. The second place was an even split between Austria and Spain, with both polling at 42%. Germany came in at third place with 40% of citizens reporting they are happy.

The majority of Bulgarians (43%) and Romanians (43%) said that they were neither happy nor unhappy.