ABSTRACT
Public opinion belies a relatively low level of awareness of the EU as a discrete or important actor, a pattern parallel to (or caused by) the under-representation of the EU in the press (see below). Questions about the EU were absent from the major foreign policy public opinion surveys. Neither the public opinion surveys conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations nor the surveys conducted by the German Marshall Fund and Pew Global Attitudes Survey included questions about the EU until 2002. Both surveys demonstrate that the public perceives the EU as a positive force in global affairs, but its precise role is poorly defined. Respondents have consistently held that the EU should exert global leadership (ranging from 81 per cent in 2002 to 73 per cent in 2005) and that Europe and the USA should remain as close or even closer (77 per cent in 2004 and 63 per cent in 2006) (German Marshall Fund 2005, 2006). There is also public support for the EU to emerge as a superpower, presumably on a par with the USA (rising from 33 per cent in 2002 to 47 per cent in 2005). For those believing that the USA should remain the only superpower, 45 per cent would allow that the EU become one if it shared the military burden of global governance, while 80 per cent of those who believe that the EU should emerge as a superpower did not change their mind with the prospect of an EU opposing US policies. The clear majority of the respondents, however, view the EU as an economic rather than military actor and they are not in favour of granting the EU a permanent seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council. There is a great deal of ambivalence about the EU; even those who concede that the EU has attained global power status do not agree that the EU is the appropriate actor for assuming global security responsibilities. Perhaps more surprising is the view that the EU is not an economic power on the same level as the USA, China or Japan (Saad 2008). These public assessments of the EU as a foreign policy actor are consistent with the self-confessed lack of knowledge about the EU as revealed by a 2004 Gallup poll: only 22 per cent of respondents selfassessed themselves as having either a great deal (2 per cent) or fair amount (19 per cent) of knowledge about the EU, while 37 per cent claimed to have very little knowledge or none at all (40 per cent) (Gallup and Saad 2004).
