Perceptions of democracy and conspiracies in Romania

Over the past few years, the European Union has coped with far-reaching political, economic and social changes and a string of successive and sometimes overlapping crises. The financial and economic crisis, refugee and migration flows and the Covid-19 pandemic all underscore both the extent to which our world is interconnected and the vulnerabilities of modern societies. Globalization, digitalization and an all-encompassing information age are indeed providing an unending challenge to all.

GLOBSEC’s report, Voices of Central and Eastern Europe: Perceptions of democracy & governance in 10 EU countries, provides unique insight into public satisfaction with the functioning of democracy and governance in ten Central and Eastern European countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

This study focuses specifically on Romania. As the Romanian partner within the project, Global Focus (GlobalFocus Center) has helped with the analysis of the country findings.

The key findings of this study are:

• Only 30% of Romanians are satisfied with how democracy works in their country.
• Less than a third of Romanians think that their needs are being well taken into account by the political system in the country.
• Only 23% of Romanians trusted their government in March 2020.
• A significant proportion of the Romanian public, on average 39%, believes in various conspiracy theories, especially with respect to potential outside forces or organisations controlling the domestic developments in the country.

Read more in the fact-sheets below (both in English and Romanian).

For more information about Romania, please visit Global Focus’ website.