The latest inquiry of the National center for public opinion research, dedicated to investigate the social attitude to the Bulgarian EU integration, reveals that the Bulgarians are eurooptimists. 81% of the Bulgarian people accept positively our EU membership. In 2006 there was a slight decrease in the percentage of the eurooptimists, probably because that year preceded our EU accession and the Bulgarian future within the EU wasn’t that clear for many of the respondents.

In general, we have always had positive attitude towards the Bulgarian EU membership, but this November the positive public opinion has reached its highest level since 2004. The vast majority of the respondents, satisfied with our European integration, are 29 or younger. This fact shows that the awareness on the European agenda among the youngest people has increased and the idea of introducing civic education at that early age has been successfully realized.

The other group that gives a positive assessment to our EU membership is composed of 50-59-year-old people. Their assessment could be considered the most objective one, because they have been most familiar with the situation in Bulgaria even before the emerging of the European integration idea.

In future, the “eurooptimistic” trend would probably persist in our country and the national institutions would face the main challenge – to work actively not only for the positive EU image within our country, but also to make Bulgarians feel more comfortable in the great European family.