The long-term interest rate on government debt is a key indicator of the economic health of a country. The rate reflects financial market actors' perceptions of the creditworthiness of the government and the health of the domestic economy, with a strong and robust economic outlook allowing governments to borrow for essential investments in their economies, thereby boosting long-term growth.

The Euro and converging interest rates in the early 2000s

In the case of many Eurozone countries, the early 2000s were a time where this virtuous cycle of economic growth reduced the interest rates they paid on government debt to less than 5 percent, a dramatic change from the pre-Euro era of the 1990s. With the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis and the subsequent deep recession, however, the economies of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland were seen to be much weaker than previously assumed by lenders. Interest rates on their debt gradually began to rise during the crisis, before rapidly increasing beginning in 2010, as first Greece and then Ireland and Portugal lost the faith of financial markets.

The Eurozone crisis

This market adjustment was initially triggered due to revelations by the Greek government that the country's budget deficit was much larger than had been previously expected, with investors seeing the country as an unreliable debtor. The crisis, which became known as the Eurozone crisis, spread to Ireland and then Portugal, as lenders cut-off lending to highly indebted Eurozone members with weak fundamentals. During this period there was also intense speculation that due to unsustainable debt loads, some countries would have to leave the Euro currency area, further increasing the interest on their debt. Interest rates on their debt began to come back down after ECB Chief Mario Draghi signaled to markets that the central bank would intervene to keep the states within the currency area in his famous "whatever it takes" speech in Summer 2012.

The return of higher interest rates in the post-COVID era

Since this period of extremely high interest rates on government debt for these member states, the interest they are charged for borrowing has shrunk considerably, as the financial markets were flooded with "cheap money" due to the policy measures of central banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis, such as near-zero policy rates and quantitative easing. As interest rates have risen to combat inflation since 2022, so have the interest rates on government debt in the Eurozone also risen, however, these rises are modest compared to during the Eurozone crisis.

This statistic shows the change in expectations of senior bankers in Europe regarding the level of impact of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis on the banking sector between the second half of 2013 and the first half of 2014. In 2014 approximately two percent of senior bankers thought the eurozone debt crisis will have a significantly increased impact on the banking sector.

These data and syntax files can be used to replicate the published Paper in the Journal of European Union Politics by Katsanidou and Otjes "How the European debt crisis reshaped national political space: the case of Greece". The data come from the following sources: 1. CSES (2015) CSES Module 4: 2011-2016. DOI: 10.7804/cses.module4.2015-03-20 2. Preference Matcher’ consortium (www.preferencematcher.org) Gemenis K. and Triga V., data set Voting Advice Application for the Greece Parliamentary Elections May 2012, file: Greece_clean_parl_may.csv

The Abstract of the article: Where Mair (2000) saw a limited impact of Europeanisation on national party politics, other authors (e.g. Kriesi et al. 2008) proposed that in addition to the pre-existing economic left-right dimension a separate EU dimension structures the national political space. This article looks at the Greek bail-out during the European sovereign debt crisis to examine how Europeanisation can change the national political space. The bail-out came with memoranda that set the main lines of Greek economic policy for the coming years. Accepting these policies was connected with remaining in the eurozone. This restructured the political space: the economic and European integration form one dimension. A second relevant dimension focuses on cultural issues. The economic/European dimension is a stronger predictor of vote choice than the cultural dimension.

Euro Area recorded a Government Debt to GDP of 87.40 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2024. This dataset provides the latest reported value for - Euro Area Government Debt to GDP - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news.

The Eurobarometer series is a unique cross-national and cross-temporal survey program conducted on behalf of the European Commission. These surveys regularly monitor public opinion in the European Union (EU) member countries and consist of standard modules and special topic modules. The standard modules address attitudes towards European unification, institutions and policies, measurements for general socio-political orientations, as well as respondent and household demographics. The special topic modules address such topics as agriculture, education, natural environment and resources, public health, public safety and crime, and science and technology. This round of Eurobarometer surveys includes the standard modules and covers the following special topics: (1) the financial and economic crisis, (2) the future of the European Union, (3) globalization, and (4) European citizenship. Questions pertain to household financial situation, opinions on performance of the EU economy, reformation of the financial system, national currency and the Euro, public debt, the EU exiting present crisis and preparing for the next decade, and attitudes towards globalization. Other questions address country identification, opinions of European citizenship, the EU achievements for citizens, representation and democracy, the European Citizens' Initiative, and participation of citizens in society. Demographic and other background information collected includes age, gender, nationality, origin of birth (personal and parental), marital status, age when stopped full-time education, occupation, left-right political self-placement, household composition, ownership of a fixed or mobile telephone, difficulties in paying bills, level in society, and Internet use. In addition, country-specific data includes type and size of locality, region of residence, and language of interview (select countries).

This statistic shows the national debt of Greece from 2020 to 2023, with projections until 2030. In 2023, the national debt in Greece was around 420.4 billion U.S. dollars. In a ranking of debt to GDP per country, Greece is currently ranked third. Greece's struggle after the financial crisis Greece is a developed country in the EU and is highly dependent on its service sector as well as its tourism sector in order to gain profits. After going through a large economic boom from the 1950s to the 1970s as well as somewhat high GDP growth in the early to mid 2000s, Greece’s economy took a turn for the worse and struggled intensively, primarily due to the Great Recession, the Euro crisis as well as its own debt crisis. National debt within the country saw significant gains over the past decades, however roughly came to a halt due to financial rescue packages issued from the European Union in order to help Greece maintain and improve their economical situation. The nation’s continuous rise in debt has overwhelmed its estimated GDP over the years, which can be attributed to poor government execution and unnecessary spending. Large sums of financial aid were taken from major European banks to help balance out these government-induced failures and to potentially help refuel the economy to encourage more spending, which in turn would decrease the country’s continuously rising unemployment rate. Investors, consumers and workers alike are struggling to see a bright future in Greece, whose chances of an economic comeback are much lower than that of other struggling countries such as Portugal and Italy. However, Greece's financial situation might improve in the future, as it is estimated that at least its national debt will decrease - slowly, but steadily. Still, since its future participation in the European Union is in limbo as of now, these figures can only be estimates, not predictions.

The article starts by examining the idea of conservation laws as applied to market economies. It formulates a measure of financial entropy and gives numerical simula-tions indicating that this tends to rise. We discuss an analogue for free energy released during this process. The concepts of real and symbolic appropriation are introduced as a means to analyse debt and taxation. We then examine the conflict between the conservation laws that apply to commodity exchange with the exponential growth implied by capital accumulation and how these have necessitated a sequence of evolutionary forms for money, and go on to present a simple stochastic model for the formation of rates of interest and a model for the time evolution of the rate of profit.

The statistic shows the inflation rate in the European Union and the Euro area from 2019 to 2022, with projections up until 2029. The term inflation, also known as currency devaluation (drop in the value of money), is characterized by a steady rise in prices for finished products (consumer goods, capital goods). The consumer price index tracks price trends of private consumption expenditure, and shows an increase in the index's current level of inflation. In 2022, the inflation rate in the EU was about 9.32 percent compared to the previous year. The economic situation in the European Union and the euro area The ongoing Eurozone crisis, which initially emerged in 2009, has dramatically affected most countries in the European Union. The crisis primarily prevented many countries from refinancing their debt without help from a third party and slowed economic growth throughout the entire EU. As a result, general gross debt escalated annually in the euro area and more prominently in the EU. The collective sum of debt is most likely going to continue, given the current global economic situation as well as Europe’s recovering, however struggling economy. Struggles are primarily evident in the EU’s budget balance, which saw itself in the negative every year over the same timeframe as the eurozone crisis, although the balances improved on a yearly basis. Despite economical struggles, the EU still grew in population almost every year over the past decade, primarily due to a high standard of living and job opportunities, compared to many of its surrounding neighbors.

Background: In light of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its large economic consequences, we used a three-layer nested structural model (individual, community, and country), each with a corresponding measure of income, trust, and satisfaction, to assess change in their interrelationships following a global crisis; which, in this study, is the 2008/2009 financial crisis.Methods: With multilevel techniques, we analyzed data from two waves (2006 and 2012) of the European Social Survey (ESS) in 19 countries (weighted N = 73,636) grouped according to their levels of trust.Results: In high trust countries, personal life satisfaction (LS) was not related to personal, community, or national income before or after the crisis. In contrast, in low trust countries, LS was strongly related to all three forms of income, especially after the crisis. In all country groups, personal, social, and political trust moderated their respective effects of income on LS (“the buffer hypothesis”). Political trust moderated the effects of income more strongly in low trust countries. The moderating effect of political trust increased sharply after the crisis. After the crisis, national-level factors (e.g., political trust, national income) increased their importance for LS more than the factors at the local and individual levels. However, the relative importance of all the three forms of income to LS increased after the crisis, to the detriment of trust.Conclusion: Economic crises seem to influence personal LS less in high trust countries compared with low trust countries. Hence, high trust at a national level appears to buffer the negative impact of a financial crisis on personal satisfaction. Overall, the factors at the national level increased their impact during the financial crisis. When facing a global crisis, the actions taken by institutions at the country level may, thus, become even more important than those taken before the crisis.

We develop a novel high-dimensional non-Gaussian modeling framework to infer measures of conditional and joint default risk for numerous financial sector firms. The model is based on a dynamic generalized hyperbolic skewed-t block equicorrelation copula with time-varying volatility and dependence parameters that naturally accommodates asymmetries and heavy tails, as well as nonlinear and time-varying default dependence. We apply a conditional law of large numbers in this setting to define joint and conditional risk measures that can be evaluated quickly and reliably. We apply the modeling framework to assess the joint risk from multiple defaults in the euro area during the 2008-2012 financial and sovereign debt crisis. We document unprecedented tail risks between 2011 and 2012, as well as their steep decline following subsequent policy actions.

With the outbreak of the Great Recession, the European Union suffered an extraordinary crisis. More specifically, the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area had a particularly devastating impact on the Southern periphery of the EU, where unemployment levels rocketed and living standards dropped substantially (Bermeo and Pontusson 2012). At the same time, these countries have applied strong austerity policies, which have been generally rejected by the majority of the population and have contributed to a rise in inequality to levels not seen since before the 1930s (IMF, 2013). Since 2007, levels of satisfaction with democracy, trust in the democratic institutions and support for the EU and the euro dropped extraordinarily. This research project covers five surveys conducted in Spain, one of the main Southern European countries, on the topic of democratic dissatisfaction. The surveys contribute to a better understanding of the political consequences of the crisis in Southern Europe by analysing the increase in democratic disaffection and its relation with EU constraints, globalization and governments implementing policies that do not represent citizens’ preferences. The surveys also study responsibility attributions in a multilevel state like Spain. The main hypothesis of this project is that Southern European countries are undergoing a crisis of legitimation. Citizens' democratic dissatisfaction is the consequence of a responsiveness gap: that is, citizens' perception that governments are not responding to their demands anymore. The surveys allow to study how this crisis of representation and legitimation has taken place and its consequences. They provide information of what are the mechanisms by which democratic dissatisfaction increased in the decade after the Great Recession and the austerity measures implemented by the subsequent Spanish governments. All surveys include representative samples of the Spanish population. The data contains a collection of five surveys in which different views on satisfaction with democracy, views on the European Union and the financial crisis were asked in Spain.

This project wants to contribute to a better understanding of the political consequences of the crisis in Southern Europe and is motivated by the unprecedented decrease in levels of satisfaction with democracy. The main hypothesis of this project is that Southern European countries are undergoing a crisis of legitimation. Citizens' democratic dissatisfaction is the consequence of a responsiveness gap: that is, citizens' perception that governments are not responding to their demands anymore. The project will study how this crisis of representation and legitimation is taking place and its consequences. More specifically, the project answers to three main questions:

1. What explains democratic dissatisfaction in Southern Europe? This part of the project will test the core argument: the crisis of legitimation stems from national governments not being responsive to citizens' mandate given the institutional constraints of euro membership. One of the key principles of democratic systems is to provide an alternative to voters if they believe that the government has not performed well enough. The argument put forward here is that the crisis has undermined this essential function of voting in Southern Europe: elections are not able to generate governments in which political parties become a real alternative to each other.

2. What is the impact of democratic dissatisfaction on attitudes towards national democracy? The project will argue that the increase in democratic dissatisfaction and the breakup of the representation link has a strong impact on attitudes in several dimensions of national-level politics: 1) austerity policies have an impact in the expectations that citizens have from a democratic system and make citizens depart from a liberal and minimal view on democracy to conceive democracies more as a result, placing more weight on the social rights of citizens 2) the project will also test whether the crisis of legitimation increases the demand for institutions of direct democracy; 3) the project will account for whether, as a result of this representation breakup, some citizens have become less engaged with politics and others have become more mobilised. In doing this, differences between the countries of analysis will also be explored.

3. How does democratic dissatisfaction shape attitudes towards the European Union and the euro in Southern Europe? The project will assess the implications of the crisis in terms of the support and views about the European Union project and also the conditions under which citizens of Southern Europe would support a breakup of the Eurozone. This last stream of the project will fill two main gaps in the discipline: to provide an updated account of citizens' motivations to support the euro and open a new avenue of research on the support for debt repayment and the conditions of...

The political economy literature on international bailouts has repeatedly shown that the domestic politics of rescued countries influence international bailout compliance. However, we know less about the domestic politics of bailout negotiations, and especially the type of conditions negotiated by governments of more developed countries with strong ties to international lenders. This paper puts forward an argument about the role of a government’s partisanship in shaping the conditions stipulated between international lenders and developed countries when crises confront the latter. Consistent with political cover theories, we argue that governments of crisis countries seek to scapegoat international institutions in order to push domestically unpleasant reforms. However, when crises affect countries significantly close to international lenders, international institutions may tolerate the scapegoating attitude and accept to emphasize governments’ reforms in the direction of their core ideological constituencies. Focusing on bailout negotiations during the Eurocrisis (2008–2016), we maintain that while important and painful reforms were discussed at the negotiation tables, the involved international lenders also accommodated the policy preferences of both left and right governments of crisis-ridden countries, everything else constant. So, conditionality came with duress, but governments were also able to emphasize reforms on the opponents’ policy issues, hence systematically obtaining fewer measures on their voters’ main policy areas. Regression analyses of an original country-quarter dataset of EU bailout conditionality measures provide support to our hypothesis. The findings are relevant to the analysis of partisan politics in economic negotiations and of democratic deficits in international organizations. Furthermore, this study contributes to understanding the political accessibility and ideological dynamics of international lending beyond the Eurocrisis.

Background: In light of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its large economic consequences, we used a three-layer nested structural model (individual, community, and country), each with a corresponding measure of income, trust, and satisfaction, to assess change in their interrelationships following a global crisis; which, in this study, is the 2008/2009 financial crisis.Methods: With multilevel techniques, we analyzed data from two waves (2006 and 2012) of the European Social Survey (ESS) in 19 countries (weighted N = 73,636) grouped according to their levels of trust.Results: In high trust countries, personal life satisfaction (LS) was not related to personal, community, or national income before or after the crisis. In contrast, in low trust countries, LS was strongly related to all three forms of income, especially after the crisis. In all country groups, personal, social, and political trust moderated their respective effects of income on LS (“the buffer hypothesis”). Political trust moderated the effects of income more strongly in low trust countries. The moderating effect of political trust increased sharply after the crisis. After the crisis, national-level factors (e.g., political trust, national income) increased their importance for LS more than the factors at the local and individual levels. However, the relative importance of all the three forms of income to LS increased after the crisis, to the detriment of trust.Conclusion: Economic crises seem to influence personal LS less in high trust countries compared with low trust countries. Hence, high trust at a national level appears to buffer the negative impact of a financial crisis on personal satisfaction. Overall, the factors at the national level increased their impact during the financial crisis. When facing a global crisis, the actions taken by institutions at the country level may, thus, become even more important than those taken before the crisis.

The European Commission published today a Flash Eurobarometer on "Possible obstacles to using the euro in international trade" as perceived by companies in France, Germany, Italy and the UK in the aircraft and shipbuilding, energy, financial services, and electrical and mechanical engineering industries. The survey confirms that the euro is widely used by European firms in their invoicing practices with nearly eight out of ten companies invoicing more than 75% of their export in euros. Two thirds of the surveyed firms in France, Germany and Italy said they did not use any other currency for export invoicing than the euro. If companies did use other currencies, this was mostly due to client preference and the important role of the US dollar in global finance. Also, firm's trade invoicing practices appear not to be markedly affected by the European sovereign debt crisis, with around four fifths of the companies saying the crisis had no effect on their use of the euro in trade invoicing.

The results by volumes are distributed as follows:

• Volume A: Countries
• Volume AA: Groups of countries
• Volume A' (AP): Trends
• Volume AA' (AAP): Trends of groups of countries
• Volume B: EU/socio-demographics
• Volume B' (BP) : Trends of EU/ socio-demographics
• Volume C: Country/socio-demographics ---- Researchers may also contact GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences: https://www.gesis.org/eurobarometer

Code to reproduce all findings reported in the paper. Data are publicly available for download; see instructions in "Mader_Schoen_2014_reproduction_stata2mplus.do".

Since the early 1970s the European Commission´s Standard & Special Eurobarometer are regularly monitoring the public opinion in the European Union member countries. Principal investigators are the Directorate-General Communication and on occasion other departments of the European Commission or the European Parliament. Over time, candidate and accession countries were included in the Standard Eurobarometer Series. Selected questions or modules may not have been surveyed in each sample. Please consult the basic questionnaire for more information on country filter instructions or other questionnaire routing filters. In this study the following modules are included: 1. Standard EU and trend questions, 2. Economic crisis, 3. European citizenship, 4. European values.
Topics: 1. Attitudes towards the EU (standard EU and trend questions): life satisfaction; assessment of the current situation in the following areas: national economy, European economy, personal job situation, financial situation of the own household, national employment situation, quality of life in the own country, quality of life in the EU; expectations for the next twelve months regarding: personal life in general, national economic situation, financial situation of the own household, national employment situation, personal job situation, economic situation in the EU; most important problems in the own country, personally, and in the EU; trust in selected institutions: political parties, national government, national parliament, European Union, regional or local public authorities; image of the EU; meaning of the EU to the respondent; trust in selected European institutions: European Parliament, European Commission, European Central Bank; attitude towards the following issues: European economic and monetary union with one single currency, presentation of the party candidates for the post of the European Commission President at the next European Parliament elections; satisfaction with the democracy in the own country and in the EU; attitude towards a ´United States of Europe´; optimism about the future of the EU.

1. Economic crisis: impact of the economic crisis on the job market has already reached its peak.

2. European citizenship: approval of the following statements: feeling of being a citizen of the EU, knowledge of the rights of EU citizens, desire for more information on the rights of EU citizens; feeling of national and / or European identity; most positive results of the EU.

3. European values: self-rated knowledge about the EU; expected living conditions of future generations in the EU; most important personal values; values that best represent the EU; amount of shared values between member states; approval of selected statements: state intervenes too much in personal lives, necessity for more severe punishment of criminals, immigrants contribute a lot to the own country, people in the own country have a lot in common, respondent understands what is going on in the world.

Demography: nationality; left-right self-placement; marital status; age at end of education; sex; age; occupation; professional position; type of community; household composition and household size; financial difficulties during the last year; self-rated social position (scale); internet use (at home, at work, at school); self-reported belonging to the working class, the middle class or the upper class of society; frequency of discussions about political matters on national, European, and local level; own voice counts in the own country and in the EU; general direction things are going in the own country and in the EU.

Additionally coded was: respondent ID; country; date of interview; time of the beginning of the interview; duration of the interview; number of persons present during the interview; respondent cooperation; size of locality; region; language of the interview; nation group; weighting factor.

The article examines causal relationships between sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) prices for the BRICS and most important EU economies (Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain) during the European debt crisis. The cross-correlation function (CCF) approach used in the research distinguishes between causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance. In both causality dimensions, the BRICS CDS prices tend to Granger cause those of the EU counterparts with the exception of Germany. Italy and Spain exhibit the highest dependence on the BRICS, whereas only India has a negative balance of outgoing and incoming causal linkages among the BRICS. Thus, the paper underscores the signs of decoupling effects in the sovereign CDS market and also supports the view that the European debt crisis has so far had a limited non-EU impact in this market.

Life in the European Union. Voting behaviour and the European Parliament. European elections 2009. Europeans and the economic crisis. Life satisfaction in the European Union. Opinion on the European Union. Climate change. Chemically contaminated products.

Topics: 1. Life in the European Union: frequency of political discussions on national, European, and global matters with friends; life satisfaction; assessment of the present situation of the national, the European, and the global economy, of the personal job situation, the financial situation of the own household, and the national employment situation; expectations regarding improvement or worsening within the next twelve months in the general life situation, the financial situation of the own household, the national employment situation, the personal job situation, the economic situation in the European Union, and in the world; most important national and personal problems; assessment of the own country’s EU membership as a good thing; benefit from the EU membership of the own country; approval of the current development in the own country, in the EU, and in the USA; trust in institutions: national government, national parliament, EU, European Parliament, European Commission, European Central Bank; image of the EU; change in the purchasing power of the own household in the last five years; difficulties paying bills; assessment of the life of future generations as easier or more difficult; influence of the EU on national issues: fighting crime, economic situation, inflation, price stability, fighting unemployment, immigration, environmental protection, healthcare system, combating climate change, research, consumer safety, agriculture, energy supply, food prices, own country’s role in the world, security situation of the own country; most important issues in the EU; assessment of the role of the EU in protecting its citizens from negative effects of globalisation; opinion on the role of the EU: should take a more important role in developing new rules for the global financial market, has sufficient power to defend the European economic interests in the world; prioritized fields in which the EU should take action to overcome the financial crisis; satisfaction with selected aspects of everyday life: housing, residential area, standard of living, state of health, medical services and job opportunities in the local area; assessment of the personal risk of poverty and feeling of social exclusion; assessment of the likelihood to become homeless; trust in media; preferred source of information about politics.

1. Voting behaviour and the European Parliament (only in EU 27): voting behaviour in the last elections to the national parliament; party identification in general and in relation to European issues; reception of information about the European Parliament in the media; image of the European Parliament on the basis of the information received through the media.

Again all: knowledge test about the European Union: direct election of the members of the European Parliament, same number of MEPs per country, sovereignty of the EU Parliament in budget decisions and in legislation; seating plan of the members of the European Parliament according to their nationality or political opinion; preference for increased influence of the European Parliament; strengthening of the role of the European Parliament in the European Union in the last decade; preferred issues and values that should have priority in the European Union.

1. European elections 2009 (only in EU 27): knowledge of the date of the next European elections; interest in the elections; likelihood to vote (scale); main criteria for the own voting decision; reasons for abstention (political inefficacy of the own voice, rejection of the European Union, ignorance about the role of the European Parliament, inadequate consideration of problems that concern the respondent by the European Parliament; insufficient knowledge to vote); preferred issues of the campaign for the European elections.

2. Europeans and the economic crisis: significance of the current and future repercussions of the economic and financial crisis on the global, the European, and the national economy as well as on the personal situation; most competent institution to tackle the economic and financial crisis: national government, European Union, United States, G8, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF); assessment of the current joint or individua...

Italy recorded a Government Debt to GDP of 135.30 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2024. This dataset provides - Italy Government Debt To GDP - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

Since the early 1970s the European Commission´s Standard & Special Eurobarometer are regularly monitoring the public opinion in the European Union member countries. Principal investigators are the Directorate-General Communication and on occasion other departments of the European Commission or the European Parliament. Over time, candidate and accession countries were included in the Standard Eurobarometer Series. Selected questions or modules may not have been surveyed in each sample. Please consult the basic questionnaire for more information on country filter instructions or other questionnaire routing filters. In this study all question modules are in the standard Eurobarometer context: 1. Standard EU and trend questions, 2. Financial and economic crisis, 3. Europe 2020, 4. Globalisation, 5. European Citizenship.
Topics: 1. Attitude towards the EU (standard EU and trend questions): general life satisfaction; frequency of discussions about national, European and local political matters; personal opinion leadership; assessment of the national, the European economy and of the economy in the world; evaluation of the personal job situation and of the financial situation of the household; assessment of the employment situation in the own country and the situation of the environment; assessment of the national economy, the national employment situation, the cost of living, energy prices, the quality of life and the situation of the environment in comparison with the average of the EU countries; expectations for the future regarding the personal life situation, the economic situation of the country, the financial situation of the household, the employment situation of the country, the personal job situation, the economic situation in the EU and in the world, and the environmental situation in the country; most important problems of the country and impact on the respondent personally; the country´s membership in the EU as a good thing; favorability of the country´s membership in the EU; main reasons for the perceived benefits and disadvantages of the EU membership; development of the country, of the European Union and of the United States in the right direction; trust in institutions (in the political parties, the national government, the parliament, the European Union, the UN and local public authorities; positive or negative image of the EU; meaning of EU for the respondent; awareness of European institutions such as European Parliament, European Commission, Council of the European Union, European Central Bank, European Ombudsman, Committee of the Regions, European Council, Court of Justice of the EU, European Economic and Social Committee, and trust in these institutions; knowledge test on the European Union (the number of Member States, direct election of Members of the European Parliament, target of the Lisbon Treaty, Switzerland is a member of the EU); support of the single currency (euro) and of an enlargement of the EU; attitude towards a common foreign policy; priorities for future strengthening of the EU; preferred decision-making level (country or EU) in the areas of fighting crime, unemployment and terrorism, taxation, defense and foreign affairs, immigration, educational system, pensions, environment, health, social welfare, agriculture, consumer protection, research, support for regions facing economies difficulties, energy, competition, transport, economy, fighting inflation; satisfaction with democracy in the country and in the EU; consideration of national interests in the EU; knowledge how the EU works; optimism about the future of the European Union; awareness of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union; importance of the Spanish presidency.

1. Financial and economic crisis: the impact of the crisis has reached its peak; assessment of the current situation of the own household; most important actor to tackle the economic and financial crisis (split: extension of the response categories on the closed question and change of the question text); better protection of the country while keeping the former national currency; impact of the euro on the financial crisis; preferred initiatives to improve the performance of the European economy; preferred measures of the EU to address the financial crisis; attitude towards the reform of the economic system (scale: Financial crisis makes it easier (Split A) or more difficult (Split B) to adopt reforms, promoting reforms to relieve future generations, demand for more reforms in the country (Split A), and the adopted reforms are already sufficient (Split B), demand for increased cooperation among the EU Member States, willingness to lower standards of living to secure the future of the next generations, measures to reduce the public deficit are primarily (Split A) or are not a priority (Split B); demand for a rapid reduction of public debt; it is necessary to increase public deficits to create jobs; effectiveness of selected measures...