NEWS

Greeks optimistic about the future ahead of New Year

Greeks optimistic about the future ahead of New Year

Most Greeks are optimistic about the future, with 57.1 percent of respondents in a new survey carried out by research firm About People saying they are hopeful 2019 will be a better year. This is an increase of 4 percent from last year and 10 percent from the year before that.

According to the survey published on Monday, a larger percentage of respondents also sees the Greek economy improving in the new year; 35.1 percent gave that response, compared with 28.2 percent in 2017 and 21.5 percent in 2016. Meanwhile, just 5.9 percent said they expected Greece would be ousted from the eurozone and have to return to the drachma, against 12.1 percent in 2017 and 17.2 percent in 2016.

That said, there was a slight dip in the share of respondents who said they are in favor of Greece’s membership of the European Union compared to last year, at 68.1 percent against 68.5 percent, though this is still higher than in 2016, when the pro-EU rate was 62.5 percent. And despite the turbulence rocking the bloc, just 13.4 percent of Greeks see the EU collapsing in 2019, against 15.5 percent who predicted it would come apart in 2017 and 28.9 percent in 2016.

Greeks are also more confident of peace, with just 9.4 percent seeing a global conflict on the horizon – against 21.9 percent in 2017 and 26.5 percent in 2016 – while 10.7 percent thought that Greece may experience foreign terrorist violence in 2019 – against 16.4 percent in 2017 and 13.3 percent in 2016.

On the domestic front, 62.8 percent of respondents said they believed new political parties would emerge in 2019, as Greece heads to local, European and general elections, up from 58.5 percent in 2017 and 55.7 percent in 2016.

A slightly smaller percentage, meanwhile, said they thought that a solution to the name dispute with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is likely in 2019, at 34.6 percent, compared with 35.1 percent last year.

The survey was carried out on December 2-3 on a sample of 811 men and women over the age of 18 from different parts of Greece.

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