• English Site
• > Europe

Numbers Matter

Europeans Tell Bush - Trans-Atlantic Bruises Linger

By Josh Ward

A new survey of European attitudes toward America released this week holds that: We share your fear of terrorists. We don't like Bush. And we don't necessarily plan on being nice once he's gone. At the same time, another world poll adds: And, please, leave Iraq.

A new poll released Thursday by the German Marshall Fund of the United States shows that Europeans are down on America right now and not seeing light over the horizon. The poll is part of the report 'Trans-Atlantic Trends 2007' that surveys 12 European countries in an attempt to gauge feelings about relations between the US and Europe.

When it comes to Europeans' views of US President George W. Bush, his war in Iraq, and his foreign policies, 77 percent disapprove of him and his policies, while 17 percent voiced approval. This compares with American views, which show an approval rate of 32 percent and disapproval rate of 63 percent, according to an August survey released by the Gallup Poll.

Teasing out whether the issue was the US war or Bush himself, the Europeans seemed divided in the trans-Atlantic survey, with 38 percent choosing the war and 34 percent Bush himself.

The survey, now in its sixth year, polled 1,000 people in 13 countries by telephone, including Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Romania and the United States. It is administered by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a non-partisan policy institute, and the Compagnia di San Paolo, an Italian research foundation. The margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Regarding whether things will improve once Bush gains the moniker of "ex-President," Americans -- as is their wont -- seem more optimistic than Europeans. To the question of whether relations will improve after the 2008 election, 42 percent of Americans said yes, while only 35 percent of Europeans shared that faith. Almost half of Europeans and more than a third of Americans thought things would stay the same.

Another poll, released by the BBC on Friday, finds that almost two thirds of the world would like the US-led coalition troops to leave Iraq. In the survey of over 23,000 people in 22 countries, 39 percent thought coalition troops should leave Iraq immediately, while 28 percent said they should try to be gone within a year. Only 23 percent thought the country should be made safe before the soldiers are gone.

As relates to Germany, the Marshall Fund poll found that fears of terrorism had grown very sharply over the last two years. Whereas 32 percent of Germans felt likely to be affected by international terrorism in the 2005 poll, this year's poll found the percentage had soared to 70 percent.

This follows events such as those in July 2006, when two unexploded gas bombs were found on trains in the western cities of Dortmund and Koblenz, and the arrests this week of three Islamic militants -- two of them German converts to Islam and one a Turkish Muslim -- accused of planning to bomb targets in Germany.