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Majority of Austrian youth get positive opinion about EU: survey

Xinhua, May 6, 2015 Adjust font size:

Most young Austrians consider their nation's European Union (EU) membership a "good thing", a survey released Tuesday by the Austrian Society for European Politics (OeGfE) showed.

The survey showed that 61 percent of the young people in Austria hold positive opinion about the EU membership of their country.

Only 10 percent said they explicitly consider the membership a "bad thing," while a quarter declared their opinion to be neutral.

The OeGfE survey of 2,267 young people conducted between September 2014 and April 2015 also showed that three out of four respondents said they felt "European."

In addition, the younger the youth the more positive the attitude toward the EU, the OeGfE said in a press release.

Some 55 percent, however, said they felt that decisions that impacted them personally were made nationally, and only 19 percent said they felt the most important decisions impacting them were made by the EU.

Additionally, only 47 percent said they had an interest in political developments in the EU, something the OeGfE, which promotes European affairs in Austria, hoped would change, said OeGfE Secretary General Paul Schmidt.

In contrast, 71 percent of the respondents said they follow political occurrences domestically. Endi