Prague, June 22 (CTK) – Sixty percent of Czechs share the view that their country should not accept any refugees from countries hit by war, 33 percent would accept the refugees temporarily and 3 percent would let them settle in the country, according to the latest CVVM poll conducted in April and released today.
“The Czech public opinion on accepting war refugees has been very stable since the end of 2015,” the CVVM institute writes.
In the long term, people with better education and higher incomes tend to be more open to accepting refugees temporarily, same as right-wing voters. Nearly two thirds of the people (64 percent) consider foreign immigrants a threat to the Czech Republic, while only one out of four (25 percent) say newcomers from abroad are a problem in their neighbourhood, the pollsters write.
Czechs had the most positive attitude to war refugees in September 2015 when 44 percent showed readiness to accept them, though mostly only temporarily.
Since September 2015, the share of people who reject the accepting of war refugees has been growing. It reached the highest level, 65 percent, in January 2016.
The Polish CBOS poll from last December shows that Poles are ready to accept refugees more than Czechs – not only from the Middle East and North Africa but also from Ukraine. Fifty-two percent of Poles rejected accepting refugees from war zones. In Poland 55 percent of respondents said they would accept refugees from Ukraine, while in the Czech Republic only 36 percent supported such a step.
The CVVM poll showed that half of Czechs (51 percent) follow the migration developments, which is a considerable drop in the interest in the issue compared with late 2015 and 2016.
Same as before, a prevailing majority of Czechs consider refugees a threat to the security of their country (74 percent), of Europe (88 percent), and of international peace (79 percent). The threat refugees posed to the Czech Republic is not seen as strong as it was last year, the pollsters write.
The poll was conducted on 1033 people aged over 15 in April 2017.
