Dear Readers,
It is public opinion season here at Bertelsmann Stiftung. Today, we bring you two brand-new publications based on our latest eupinions poll that we put in the field both in the EU and in the United States.
Right before this week’s midterm election, my colleagues Brandon Bohrn and Daniela Schmidt collaborated with our colleague Courtney Flynn Martino at Bertelsmann Foundation North America to understand transatlantic attitudes on both sides of the pond. And the results are striking: While 72 percent of Americans still see Europe as trustworthy, only 36 percent of Europeans consider the US trustworthy. And we see a clear trend: While in September 2024, 51 percent of Europeans considered the US the EU’s most valuable ally, that number has shrunk dramatically to 29 percent. That is the damage the Trump administration has done to the transatlantic relationship condensed in two numbers. Yet this shift has not diminished the desire to work together: 73 percent of Americans and 62 percent of Europeans favour deeper EU-US cooperation, regardless of the administration in office.
These survey results are worth a deep look well beyond these startling headline figures. To name just one very interesting nugget: growing concern about China. We at Bertelsmann Stiftung have spent a lot of time analysing Europe’s China Shock and what it means especially for Germany (see also a new analysis by Claudia Geiser and Etienne Höra). In this transatlantic survey, we can now see also that a whopping three-quarters of Germans are worried about China’s influence on global affairs and more than two-thirds support reducing dependencies on China even if it hurts the economy in the short run.
In our second polling-based publication on digital sovereignty, Martin Hullin and Daniela Schmidt show that only half of Europeans understand the term digital sovereignty. The good news, however, is that Europeans are both in favour of Europe being in control of the technologies and open to switching to European alternatives provided that they offer comparable performance.
Finally, do take a look at Lucas Carvalho’s op-ed on the perils of the Franco-German auto compromise and at Jake Benford’s new analysis on the EU’s security partnership with the UK.
Best wishes,
Lucas Guttenberg
Director, Europe’s Future Programme
