Atitudinile și percepțiile tinerilor români față de Uniunea Europeană
The Attitudes and Perceptions of young Romanians towards the European Union

Author(s): Alexandru Cicală
Subject(s): EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment, Sociology of Politics
Published by: Institutul European din România
Keywords: European Union; Euroscepticism; Populism; Youth; Romania;
Summary/Abstract: The present research aims to identify the forms of manifestation of attitudes of contestation towards the European Union (e.g. euroscepticism) among young Romanians, from the urban environment, aged between 18 and 25 years. In this sense, the research hypothesis is formulated as follows: although there is a predominantly pro-European position among the young generation in Romania, certain behaviors and collective perceptions oriented towards Euroscepticism can be detected. Euroscepticism is defined, in the context of this paper, as the contestation of European institutions, but the central attitude thus presented includes a varied series of diverse behavioral characteristics. The paper briefly presents the theories of European integration, as well as the development of anti-European and populist dynamics, with the aim of interpreting the empirical results obtained. As such, a research questionnaire addressed to the aforementioned target group was operationalized. The data, including questions likely to capture the position of the target audience towards the European community bloc, were collected through the prism of an opinion poll based on a questionnaire disseminated online among young Romanians. The answers were thus coded numerically and coherently transposed on a quantitative scale from 1 to 5, thereby quantifying the intensity of preferences displayed by the respondents, from nuanced Euroscepticism (1) to profound Euroenthusiasm (5). Based on the descriptive and inferential statistical analyzes carried out with the help of the STATA 17SE/18MP package, the study offers a series of recommendations and conclusions regarding combating the potentially Eurosceptic behaviors found among current young Romanian voters.

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