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EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 11 - Page 9

Stats and Facts

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION has published the results of the 52nd Eurobarometer survey which asks EU citizens for their views on many Community related subjects. From an 104 page report the European Review can only mention brief highlights: the level of trust in EU institutions had risen since the 1999 survey which was taken just after the resignation of the Santer Commission (40% to 45%); support for EU membership at 51% was fairly low and for enlargement (30%), even lower.

This bar chart shows the results when people were asked to say how much they knew about the EU on a scale of 1 to 10.

NEARLY HALF OF EU citizens can take part in a conversation in another language than their mother tongue. As the following graph shows, there are wide variations between the Member States. In Luxembourg, nearly everyone speaks another language well enough for conversation. This is also true for more than 9 in 10 people living in the Netherlands and more than 8 in 10 people living in Denmark and Sweden. People in the UK and Ireland are least likely to speak another language.

Small rise in rail passenger transport masks national variations

Eurostat has published a statistical review of passenger transport by rail in the European Union in the period 1990 to 1997. For the EU as a whole there was a small rise of 1% in passenger kilometres but this hides considerable differences between Member States. Countries which invested heavily in modernisation, such as Spain (e.g. the excellent Madrid to Seville line known as the AVE) show big increases while neighbouring Portugal is the biggest loser.

Country	% change 1997 on 1990	Passengers carried per km of network (in thousands)
Spain	+53	27
Netherlands	+18	115
Sweden	+17	9
Luxembourg	+12	38
Ireland	+12	14
Italy	+7	28
UK	+6	45
Austria	+4	32
Finland	+1	8
Belgium	-4	43
Denmark	-4	63
Germany	-4	38
Greece	-5	5
France	-12	27
Portugal	-23	72

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