Europe's citizens expect the EU Commission to make environmental protection and jobs a priority in the coming years. 40 percent of respondents named environmental protection as the most important topic in a survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation. Jobs followed with 34 percent and social security with 23 percent.
While in the majority of evaluated countries jobs are more important than climate change, environmental protection in Germany is ahead. He comes here in Germany with 49 percent on the number one topics.
If the new EU Commission receives a majority in the European Parliament under the already-elected Ursula von der Leyen, the new team is expected to start work on 1 December.
"Not all topics in the competence of the Commission"
In the representative survey "Eupinions" of the Bertelsmann Stiftung more than 12,100 EU citizens were interviewed. Asked about their personal worries, rising living costs are 51 percent EU-wide. In Germany, the fears among all countries are the weakest here, at 44 percent.
"By no means all the concerns of Europeans lie within the competence of the Commission," said study director Isabell Hoffmann. It is all the more important "for Brussels to explain the functioning and the added value of Europe".
More than half of the Europeans surveyed (54 percent) support the survey further deepening the EU. And every second person (50 percent), according to the evaluation, has an optimistic view of the future of the European Union. Although nine out of ten respondents believe that the EU will continue to exist in one way or another. More than a third (35 percent) of Europeans, however, expected further withdrawals from Member States such as the United Kingdom. In Germany, this was 32 percent.