The refugee crisis as viewed by the Czech population

16.9.2015 | The Czech population prefers restricting movement of people within the Schengen area due to the refugee crisis even though such restriction would impact EU citizens.

Focus, Marketing & Social Research conducted in August 2015 a short representative survey concerned with the opinions of Czech population regarding the ongoing refugee crisis as a part of its regular omnibus survey. Altogether, 1040 respondents aged 18 or more were surveyed. The sample is representative of the Czech population with regard to gender, age, attained education, domicile size and the region of the respondents’ residence. The data collection was aged 15th to 24th August 2015 through direct standardized interviews between the respondents and trained interviewers.

The representative survey indicates that the issue of the ongoing immigration flow into the EU member states, and therefore also into the Czech Republic, is a closely watched and discussed topic among the Czech population. Almost every respondent has intercepted some information concerning this issue, and the issue is closely observed by more than one half of the respondents. The vast majority of the respondents consider the current refugee influx to be an issue for the Czech Republic. Nine tenths of the respondents are convinced that it is a grave issue. However, an alarming finding is that the people are significantly discontent with the way the Czech government is trying to resolve the issue, given how grave the issue is perceived by the population.

Approximately six tenths of the population endorse some form of aid for the refugees. The majority of people would however prefer aid outside the Czech territory, i.e. in their opinion, the state should repatriate the refugees to their country of origin, and help them there, or intervene there. Moreover, the idea that the state and EU in general should repatriate the refugees to their countries of origin (regardless of whether they would or would not provide help there) is shared by more than nine tenths of the respondents.

The issue of religious confession of the respondents does not play a significant role among the respondents with regard to aid provided by the member states.

Even though we can observe goodwill towards certain forms of aid for the refugees among the population, the key aspect of this issue is fear – fear of different or unknown. This is also reflected in the significantly high share of those who believe that the Czech Republic and other EU member states should renew their border control even though this would restrict freedom of movement for EU citizens as well.

Author: Martina Gerzova, analyst (gerzova@focus-agency.cz)