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The Czech population clearly felt the economic crisis and issues related to it, such as loans for a bankrupt Greece and other southern states, the formation of a [58] European mechanism for solving the crisis, etc. It is only possible to speculate about direct reasons for increasing Czech dissatisfaction with the EU, whether the reason was the loans to Greece, or instead news about growing unemployment in the CR. However, the fact is that affection for the EU among Czechs fell sharply during the crisis. On the basis of Eurobarometer, in the period shortly after the accession of CR to the EU, between slightly less than half and half of those polled supported Czech membership in the Union, while only about 10% regarded membership as a “bad thing.” The number of EU opponents began to increase after 2008; more interestingly, however, there is a clear decline in the number of those who regarded the EU as a “good thing,” which originally hovered around 50% in 2008, but fell to around 30% in 2010.¹

Graph 2: Generally speaking, do you think that (your country’s) membership of the EU is...?

Source: Eurobarometer Surveys

These and similar statistics illustrate that while in 2006 the EU had a “very positive” or “fairly positive” image for about half of Czechs, by 2009 this number began to steeply slide; in 2013, only a fifth shared this feeling, with opponents of the EU over 35%. Slight growth in the positive image of the EU among Czechs occurred after 2012, incidentally correlating with the marked upturn in the Czech economy and the fall in unemployment. The relatively negative relationship of the Czech population to the Union is reflected in the context of election results (especially in the founding of the populist Dawn party) as well as in the context of the debate on euro adoption in the CR, which parties [59] avoided (see above) because they were conscious of the fact that it had little support among Czechs.

Graph 3: In general, does the European Union conjure up for you a very positive, fairly positive, neutral, fairly negative, or very negative image?

Source: Eurobarometer Surveys