In the past year, residents of almost all regions of Europe felt that the level of governance in the broad sense had improved, with the exception of the inhabitants of the Hungarian and Polish regions. This may be because democratic rights and institutions are significantly weakened in these two countries in response to the pandemic.
This is just one of the interesting results of research conducted by scientists at the University of Gothenburg. The European government quality index 129,000 people from 208 regions across all 27 member states of the European Union were asked to compile it. This research looks at how residents of some regions, but not countries, subjectively perceive the quality of governance based on three basic criteria. these:
- Corruption in the public sector
- Impartiality of public authority and equal treatment of citizens
- General service level experienced in everyday life.
That is, the basic premise of the research is that the area where public services are impartial and of good quality, with low corruption, is well governed.
This series of research has been repeated every 3-4 years since 2010, the last of which was conducted in 2017. The current data was collected during the coronavirus epidemic, between October 2020 and January 2021, compared to previous findings, which specifically included issues related to epidemic management, So the results partially answer the opinion of political leaders on the response of 208 districts. for the epidemic. Since the change in the index was fully consistent with the assessment of anti-epidemic measures, one of the results that is really interesting to us is that in Europe it was most Hungarians – except for the inhabitants of the pest area – and Poles who did it. It does not respond well to the virus. (The pest area does not cover the capital, but its periphery).
Here are some really interesting findings from the research:
- Of all the regions studied, Budapest was the only one whose residents were more connected to Europe than to their country or region.
- The overall index, with a value of more than 1.3 in the most satisfied places and less than minus 1.2 in the most dissatisfied places, shows marked differences between the western, eastern, northern and southern halves of Europe. Residents of all French, German, Austrian, Danish, Swedish and Finnish regions are more satisfied with the judgment, as the index is above zero, while residents of all Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Croatian and Greek regions are little or very dissatisfied. With one exception, the inhabitants of all Italian regions suffer from poor governance, including most of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, not to mention Cyprus.
- If we show the results to countries, only Croats, Greeks, Romanians and Bulgarians will see worse judgment than the Hungarian citizens.
- More viruses, less corruption: The dearth of in-person meetings and office closures may have caused citizens in many European countries to experience less personal corruption last year, as in Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary. .
- Good governance has saved lives and businesses: In areas where residents reported higher levels of governance in both previous and current surveys, Covid has caused fewer health and economic problems than in less managed areas.
- The least pro-European region in Europe is Yugoichen in southern Bulgaria along the Turkish border.
- The Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Romanians are more closely related to Europe than the inhabitants of most regions in the Western Core.
- The greatest patriots of the continent, that is, those most closely associated with their country, are the Danes of Central Jutland.
- In Corsica, the difference between association with region and country is the largest, which means, simply put, that they prefer their home country at least.
- The inhabitants of the three regions of the historical region of Transylvania are more and more connected with their region than with Romania.
