According to POLITICO, a Public First survey showed that Ursula von der Leyen in Germany, France, and Spain more often elicits either negative assessments or complete lack of recognition from respondents. The piece was published a few hours before her annual State of the Union address.
In Germany, 45% of respondents said the head of the European Commission is doing a poor job, the highest level of dissatisfaction among the three countries. In Germany and Spain, about one-fifth of respondents rated her performance as good, while in France 12% said the same.
Nearly a third of survey participants in France and Spain said her performance is poor. Among German supporters of the Alternative for Germany, more than half said she is doing “very poorly”.
In France, more than one in five respondents did not know who von der Leyen was; in Spain, 10% said the same, and in Germany — 5%. In these two countries, people were more likely than in Germany to say not that her performance was good or bad, but that they had no opinion or had not heard of her at all.
The survey was conducted on September 13–15 among more than 2,000 adults in each of the countries — France, Germany, and Spain. Responses were weighted by age, gender, region, and education, and in France also by the 2024 election vote; the margin of error was ±2.2 points for Germany and Spain and ±2.1 points for France.
Public First polling chief Seb Wyre said that von der Leyen is facing the same anti-politics mood that has already pushed aside incumbent politicians across Europe, and that she will have to convince Europeans that the EU agenda addresses their concerns about the cost of living. According to the study, only about one in ten respondents in the three countries planned to follow the speech closely, about one in three only a little, and in Spain and France more than half either did not plan to follow the address or had not heard of it at all.
POLITICO also noted that these figures likely overstate real interest: some respondents said they would be following the fictional “European Convention of Authority”“.
Sources
