Plenary Insights – March 2022 

Each plenary session, DG Communication provides public opinion data on key topics on the agenda:

• International Women’s Day: A new Eurobarometer survey on "Women in times of COVID-19", canvassed a representative sample of about 27000 women aged 15 years and over in all 27 EU Member States. One of the key findings touches upon the financial and economic impact of the pandemic on women’s lives: 38% of women at EU level declare that the pandemic has had a negative impact on their income. 44% also say the pandemic has had a negative impact on their work-life balance (in 8 countries, more than half of women say so).
  Respondents to the survey think the EP should tackle the following gender-related issues as a priority: trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children (47%), mental and physical violence against women (47%) and the pay gap between women and men and its impact on career development (41%). The pay gap between women and men is selected by the largest share of women in nine Member States. The proportion of women selecting this priority ranges from 28% in Romania and 33% in Germany, Greece and Ireland, to 55% in Portugal.
  About three-quarters (77%) of women across the EU think that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in physical and emotional violence against women in their country. This view is shared by about nine in ten women in Greece (93%), Portugal (90%) and Austria (89%).
• Russian aggression and invasion of the Ukraine: Defending the value of democracy should be the European Parliament's top priority, according to respondents to the EP Autumn 2021 Eurobarometer. A third of respondents (32%) sees democracy as most important value to defend, followed by freedom of speech and thought (27%) and the protection of human rights (25%). In addition, more than three in ten Europeans say that peace, human rights and respect for human life are the most important values for them personally according to the EC's Spring 2021 Standard Eurobarometer.
• Foreign interference in all democratic processes in the EU: Nearly six in ten Europeans are concerned about the possibility of ‘elections being manipulated through cyberattacks’. Just over one in two Europeans using the Internet (51%) consider that they have been exposed to ‘disinformation’ online. (Eurobarometer survey on “Democracy in the EU”)