Eastern Europeans are far less willing to have Jews in their families or as their neighbours than their Western European counterparts, a gap that is even more pronounced when it comes to attitudes toward Muslims.
According to an analysis of a series of surveys by the Pew Research Center carried out from 2015 to 2017 among some 56,000 adults in 34 European countries, the gap between Europe’s two halves is significant.
The figures are also largely unchanged among young adults, aged 18-34, suggesting that current attitudes are likely to remain constant for the foreseeable future.
Only 40 percent of Russians said they “would be willing to accept Jews as members of their family,” and just 35% of Greeks, 43% of Ukrainians, 51% of Czechs and 57% of Poles.
Among Western European nations, meanwhile, the figure was 69% in the United Kingdom and Germany, 76% in France, 79% in Spain, 89% in Belgium — and was at its highest in the Scandinavian countries: 92% in Sweden, 92% in Denmark and 95% in Norway.
Only 5% or less in Scandinavian and northern European countries said they would reject Jews as their neighbours, with the highest figure in Western Europe being 12%, in Italy.
The corresponding figures given for Eastern Europe were divided by religious affiliation within each country. Rejection of Jews as neighbours was as high as 33% among Armenia’s Christian Orthodox and 30% among that population in Romania. In Lithuania and Ukraine, 24% and 21% of Catholics, respectively, said they wouldn’t accept Jews in their neighbourhood.
The East-West gap is even more pronounced when it comes to Muslims, who are less liked than Jews in every European country except Muslim-majority Bosnia.
In the East, just 34% of Russians said they would accept a Muslim in the family, 31% of Greeks, 25% of Ukrainians, 12% of Czechs and 33% of Poles. Among Orthodox Christians, 77% in Armenia, 48% in Latvia and 40% in Belarus said they would reject Muslims as neighbours. Some 66% of Catholics in the Czech Republic and 56% of that population in Lithuania also said so.
cceptance of Jews and Muslims tends to correspond to the extent to which citizens of a particular country view their religious identity as fundamental to their national identity. In Greece, for example, where few want either Muslims or Jews in their families, 76% agreed with the statement that “to truly share their national identity” one needs to be Greek Orthodox. In Russia and Ukraine, 57% and 51% believe belonging to the national Christian church is fundamental to belonging to the nation.
In the UK, Germany, France and Denmark, meanwhile, just 34%, 34%, 32% and 19%, respectively, view religious conformity as basic to partaking in national identity — and acceptance of Jews and Muslims is correspondingly higher.
The surveys were conducted across Central and Eastern Europe in 2015 and 2016 and in Western Europe in 2017, Pew said. A separate analysis of the 24 member states of the European Union included in the studies can be found at the Pew Research Center’s website.
