Survey says Hungarians find their pandemic management better than average

Hungarians are significantly more satisfied with their government’s pandemic measures than other Europeans are with theirs, Századvég Foundation said on Friday, citing a survey based on interviews with 30,000 European residents.

The survey dubbed Századvég Europa Projekt 2021 covering 30 European countries showed that in a minority of countries, including Hungary, respondents said they were basically satisfied with vaccination and job-protection measures, while in the majority of countries people were generally discontented with government measures to soften the economic consequences of the pandemic.

Some 82 percent of European residents considered the coronavirus pandemic a cause for concern, and only 5 percent said concerns were exaggerated.

Top of the list were southern countries including Portugal (92 percent), Malta (90 percent) and Spain (89 percent), while the other end of the list included some central and eastern European countries such as Latvia (61 percent), Czech Republic (66 percent) and Slovenia (69 percent).

Hungary was near the middle, with 79 percent saying they were more or less concerned about coronavirus and 7 percent saying fears were exaggerated.

Hungary was in the top third of European countries in terms of public satisfaction with the vaccination drive. The country led the European list, with 44 percent of those saying they had maximum satisfaction with the vaccination drive, followed by the UK and Malta.

Some 47 percent of Europeans said they were dissatisfied with the government handling of economic consequences.

At the same time, 58 percent of Hungarians said they were basically satisfied with government measures to soften economic damage, and nearly a third said they were fully satisfied, which was the highest figure in Europe. At the same time, a relatively high proportion of 22 percent said they were not satisfied with the measures.