(source: Unsplash)
Slovakia holds the distinction of being the only country in the region to record rising support for a pro-Western orientation, including EU and NATO membership, since 2017.
This stems from the Globsec Trends 2021 report conducted based on polls from March 2021 on a representative sample of the population in ten countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
“The only country with a clear trend in any direction is Slovakia, with support for EU membership gradually rising from 66 percent in 2018 to 78 percent in 2021,” the Globsec report reads.
(source: Globsec Trends 2021)
With few exceptions, long-term data indicates that geopolitical preferences - Western or Eastern - are rather stable among the researched countries. Two patterns are discernible from the longitudinal data in Hungary and Slovakia. Whereas preferences for a Western orientation have increased slightly in Slovakia since 2017, there has, conversely, been a slight decline in Western dispositions in Hungary.
