From a new Open Europe report [PDF], “Can struggling eurozone countries achieve the necessary ‘internal devaluation’ — and at what political cost?,” dramatic evidence that the citizens of the afflicted economics of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain have lost faith in the europols:
From the report:
Though popular discontent is impossible to quantify, perhaps the most worrying trend in PIIGS is that trust in the EU is plummeting – despite the EU in the past having been seen as a trusted and stable counter-force to unpredictable national politics. The graph. . .speaks for itself: as the PIIGS have faced EU/IMF-mandated cuts and reforms, popular trust in the EU has dropped like a stone.
Similar downward trends have been observed in terms of trust for national politicians and in the perception of whether there is a benefit from being a member of the EU (although the majority still see the latter as positive).
