Russia, one in two Europeans do not believe in the effectiveness of EU sanctions

Brussels – In facing the Russian war in Ukraine, the European Union has done well; no, it hasn’t, it has done little and badly. Europeans are divided; they recognize that the EU is capable of handling crises such as floods or health situations such as COVID-19, but the war, that one, sees men and women of Europe at odds. So much so that one in two Europeans do not believe in the effectiveness of sanctions. What emerges from the freshly published new Eurobarometer survey is a public opinion that is struggling to understand. Compounding a war that is still dragging on, after more than two years and twelve sanctions packages, just 9 percent of respondents in the EU say the twelve-star response has been ‘very effective,’ and another 39 percent consider it ‘somewhat effective.

So, Europeans here are unconvinced and very divided. One in two citizens (48 percent) gives credit to the EU and its moves, while 46 percent does not think what has been done so far is sufficient to resolve the conflict and stop the war at the EU’s doorstep. Then there is the minority who state that they do not know to what extent the European response has been more or less effective (the ‘do not know’ registers 6 percent). “The respondents are divided,” the authors of the survey acknowledge in presenting its results. What about Italians? They are no exception.

In Italy, too, there is substantial equivalence in the responses supporting the EU’s policy reaction and the anti-Russia sanctions (49 percent) and general skepticism about the effectiveness of the action taken so far (47 percent). The first statistics showed with trade data, and then politics, show that sanctions are working. But there is no clear majority in civil society to support it, giving strength to the skeptics’ argument. For one in two Europeans, sanctions are a failure.