Bratislava, May 17 (CTK) – The support for the EU and NATO in the Czech Republic considerably rose, while it declined in Hungary and Poland this year, according to a poll conducted in four Visegrad Four countries (also Slovakia) and released on Thursday.
According to the poll, whose results were released at the international conference Globsec which started on Thursday, the EU is considered a good thing by 51 percent of Czechs, while it only was 35 percent last year.
The opposite view is now shared by 16 percent of the respondents as against 26 percent last year.
Some 69 percent of Czechs said if there were a referendum, they would vote for the Czech Republic staying in the EU, while the view was only held by 41 percent a year ago.
“While Poles can still be considered most pro-European from the V4, the reputation of Czechs as the biggest Eurosceptics is weakening,” the Globsec said.
“The support for the EU considerably increased in all parts of the Czech population,” it added.
In Poland, the support for the EU diminished to 62 percent from 78 percent a year ago. A slight decrease to 58 percent was recorded by Hungary, while in Slovakia, there was a very small increase in the support, up to 53 percent.
Czechs also gave a better evaluation to the country’s membership of NATO. It was denoted as a good thing by 65 percent of the respondents, while it was 53 percent a year ago.
Slovaks have the most reserved stance on NATO out of the Visegrad Four since only 37 percent of them expressed a positive view of it.
Czechs are also the smallest advocates of conspiracy theories in the Central European region.
Unlike Hungary and Slovakia, most people in the Czech Republic and Poland also said that the life of the population had improved after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989.
