Around 57% of Czechs are satisfied with the country’s membership of the European Union, the highest level in 15 years, and almost two-thirds would vote against leaving the EU in a referendum, according to a survey conducted by the STEM agency after last year’s general election.
Nevertheless, the Czech public remains largely critical of the EU’s form and functioning, with the EU’s cumbersomeness being the main obstacle to economic development, the agency said. Support for the introduction of the euro in the Czech Republic also fell slightly to 23%.
The share of people satisfied with Czech EU membership has risen to 57% from 51% in a previous STEM survey in late August and early September 2024. In the four previous years, satisfaction with EU membership was below 50%. 2010 was the last time that higher support was seen than the current survey, with 65%.
“The share of anti-EU Czechs has been declining in recent years, returning to the levels of 2019, when the economic boom was at its peak,” said STEM. “At the same time, general satisfaction with EU membership is now at almost its highest level since the two major slumps in the past decade, which were linked first to the economic crisis and then to the migration crisis.”
According to the current poll, 66% of people in the Czech Republic would vote to stay in the EU in a hypothetical referendum, up from 60% a year earlier. This is the highest share recorded by STEM since 2005, though the figure was also 66% in 2008, and 65% in 2005 and 2009.
“In the context of attitudes towards the EU, pro-European segments have strengthened. However, this is probably the result of the low-conflict election campaign regarding the EU,” the authors of the survey noted.
Interestingly, they noted, significantly more Czechs feel European than feel sympathy for the EU. Some 73% of people in the Czech Republic said they felt European, up from 72% a year earlier. In 2019, this proportion was even higher (78%).
“A significant number of EU opponents also consider themselves to be Europeans. This suggests that the criticism is more related to the institutional concept of the EU than to Europeanism as such,” said STEM analyst Martin Kratochvil.
According to STEM, support among Czechs for adopting the euro remains persistently low, dropping to 23% in the current survey from 25% a year earlier. “As we know from other surveys, Czechs still associate fears of rising prices with the euro, and the feeling of losing part of our national identity is also common,” Kratochvil pointed out.
STEM surveyed people’s attitudes towards the functioning of the EU by asking them what they consider to be serious obstacles to economic development across the bloc. The leading issues mentioned were the EU’s cumbersomeness (73% of respondents), regulation and common rules (58%), a lack of support for European industry from EU money (56%), ineffective support for the EU’s less developed regions (54%), and the emphasis on green transformation, known as the Green Deal (52%).
Over 1,000 people over 18 responded to the STEM survey conducted from 9-17 October 2025, carried out by the agency for the European Commission Representation in the Czech Republic. Last year’s parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic took place on 3-4 October.
