Generally, critical views prevailed over positive opinion on the evaluation of the current economic situation. The lowest degree of dissatisfaction was recorded in Hungary (40% - bad economic situation but only 4% good), and the highest in Slovakia (70% bad, 2% good). The opinion of the Polish and the Czech general public could be inserted between the previous two and at the moment is rather similar.

For several months already Czech citizens have been expressing the highest level of confidence in the president of our country. He is regarded as trustworthy by three quarters of the respondents. In our September survey the most significant rise of the level of confidence was recorded in case of the government, now trusted by more than a third of the respondents. The least trustworthy institutions are both chambers of the Parliament.

All respondents having the right to vote were asked an open question (i.e. without a list of political parties being used) investigating which party they would vote for if an election to the Chamber of Deputies took place the following week. The structure of the answers given is summarised in the table.

The question ‘Imagine that an election to the Chamber of Deputies is held next week. Would you participate?’ was answered yes by 60% of those surveyed having the right to vote (‘definitely yes’ by 28% and ‘probably yes’ by 32%), while 31% said no (17% ‘probably not’ and 14% ‘definitely not’) and 9% did not know.

The results indicate that people attach a relatively greater importance to elections to the Chamber of Deputies than to elections to the European Parliament. Not only do citizens express more willingness to participate in elections to the Chamber of Deputies (66%) than to the European Parliament (57%), they also more frequently consider a high turnout a positive in case of national elections (70%) than in case of European elections (61%).

In June survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre we asked Czech citizens, besides other questions, also about how they trust the selected Czech and European institutions. The respondents might express their confidence or non-confidence with the help of the numerical range from 1 to 10 – 1 meaning that the interviewee does not trust the relevant institution at all and 10 on the contrary expressing absolute confidence.

The majority of Czech citizens are sceptical on how they view the possible harmony of future decisions of the European Union with the interests of the Czech Republic and their own interests. Only 30 % of respondents believe that the future decisions of the European Union will comply with the interests of the Czech Republic, while 62 % do not believe so. In relation to their own interests, respondents’ opinions sound a little more sceptical.

In June 2004, a half of the polled citizens did not feel very satisfied with how democracy is functioning in the Czech Republic. Another fifth of the respondents were not satisfied at all. Less than 1% of those surveyed expressed complete satisfaction with how democracy is functioning in our country. A quarter of the survey participants were quite satisfied.

When assessing the functioning of democracy in the European Union, the respondents expressed totally different opinions.

In a June survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre, the respondents who did not participate in the election to the European Parliament were asked to clarify their reasons.

Roughly a fifth of the polled citizens (21%) said that they had not participated in the election because they were dissatisfied with politics, a slightly smaller percentage said they did not know the candidates and that they felt their vote ‘could not decide anything’ (18 and 17% respectively), 13% of respondents said they had been outside their place of residence and roughly a tenth of those surveyed did not take interest in the European Union (or the European Parliament), politics in general or said they disagreed with the accession to the EU.

A June survey by the Public Opinion Research Centre included, inter alia, an aggregate of questions investigating what the Czech public thinks about political parties and the European integration process. Almost a third of Czech citizens over 18 years of age sympathise with no political party. Less than a quarter of respondents sympathise with the ODS, while 13% of those polled sympathise with the KSCM and 9% with the CSSD.

As regards the political parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies, citizens classify them from the left to the right as follows: Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), Christian and Democratic Union–Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU-CSL), Freedom Union-Democratic Union (US-DEU), Civil Democratic Party (ODS), with the last three parties lying in the right half of the used scale.