Spain and Italy are the countries for which Romanians have the most sympathy, 10 years ago the UK and Germany occupied these positions, now they are in fifth and third place respectively, according to a survey conducted by INSCOP Research commissioned by News.ro. Positive feelings towards the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine have increased compared to 10 years ago. Russia was at the bottom of the rating, the level of sympathy among Romanians has halved compared to 2013.

The countries with which Romanians feel the most sympathy are Spain and Italy, with 82.8% of respondents having fairly positive feelings towards Spain (compared to 72.9% in 2013) and 81.4% towards Italy (compared to 70.5% in 2013). This is followed by Germany with 77.6% positive sentiment (compared with 74.3% in 2013), France with 75.4% (compared with 73% in 2013) and the United Kingdom with 75.4% (compared with 75, 5% in 2013).

69.2% of survey participants say they have fairly positive feelings toward the Republic of Moldova (compared to 65.7% in 2013), and 67.5% toward the United States (compared to 70.3% in 2013).

Ukraine is rather positively perceived by 43.3% of Romanians (compared to 41.8% in 2013), Hungary by 39.7% (compared to 29.3% in 2013). China closes the rating with 36.3% of positive attitudes (compared with 56.5% in 2013) and Russia with 18.3% (compared with 36.8% in 2013).

A big failure for Russia

• “Spain and Italy, the Western countries that host the largest number of Romanian communities, dominate the ranking of positive feelings towards these countries. But the most interesting photo is the comparison with the situation 10 years ago (2013), when INSCOP Research asked a similar question as part of the Truth Barometer about Romania.
• First of all, there is a big regression in the case of Russia, for which the share of positive feelings in 2023 has halved compared to the situation in 2013, from almost 37% 10 years ago to 18% today.
• The data also correlates with the involution of trust in Russia (the indicator of great and very great trust, which reflects a much more demanding assessment of the public’s attitude, fell in the case of Russia from about 18% to about 8% at the moment) the obvious explanation for this sharp drop is the war started Russia against Ukraine. On the other hand, compared to 2013, in 2023 we noticed an increase in the weight of positive feelings towards most countries of Western Europe, as well as towards the Republic of Moldova,” explains Remus Štefuriak, director of INSCOP Research.

The survey was conducted by INSCOP Research on behalf of News.ro. The data were collected from October 23 to November 2 using the CATI method (telephone interviews), using a questionnaire. The size of the simple stratified sample is 1100 people, representative of significant socio-demographic categories (gender, age, profession) for the non-institutionalized population of Romania aged 18 and over. The maximum permissible data error is ± 3% with a confidence level of 95%.