how about the other parts Spin?
3) Barmaid cleavages and other regulations from the EU: The EU doesn’t always get credit for some of our laws they’re responsible for – like statutory holiday (37% correctly guessed) and two year guarantees on products (21% correctly guessed). On the other hand, we’re generally pretty good at spotting more ridiculous “Euro-myths”, but still 1 in 7 of us (15%) believe at least one Euro-myth – including bans on barmaids showing too much cleavage and forcibly renaming the snack “Bombay Mix” to “Mumbai Mix” (neither of which are real EU laws3). But EU law is complex– it’s no wonder there’s confusion. A quarter (24%) of us think bananas that are “too bendy” are banned from being imported into the UK. This is a long-standing favourite used as an example of excessive EU bureaucracy - most recently re-surfacing from Boris Johnson4. But is it a Euro-myth? Yes and no: the EU does have a regulation to stop malformed bananas being imported into the UK, but it’s a stretch to say the EU’s banned “bendy” bananas.
4) How much the UK pays in: The majority of us (67%) correctly say the UK annually pays more into the EU’s budget than it gets back - but we overestimate how much we pay compared with other countries. 84% of us put Britain in the top 3 contributors to the EU’s c.€140bn annual budget (the same proportion that picks Germany as a top contributor) and nearly a quarter of us (23%) think the UK is the single top contributor to the EU. In reality, Germany paid in twice as much as us in 2014 (21% of total EU income), followed by France (16%) then Italy (12%), with the UK in fourth place (11%)5.
5) How much the UK directly gets back: the majority of us are also correct that we get less back than other large countries. Three in five correctly (58%) rank the UK as one of the lower gross recipients from the EU budget: in 2014, the UK received less than other Western European countries like Germany, Italy, Spain and France6.
6) Child Benefit: we massively overestimate the proportion of Child Benefit awards given to families in other European countries. The actual proportion of UK Child Benefit awards going on children living abroad in Europe is 0.3%7, but 14% of us think that 30% of UK Child Benefit goes to children abroad and 23% of us think 13% does. This means that nearly 4 in 10 of us think the number of children in EU countries receiving Child Benefit from the UK is 40 to 100 times the actual level.
7) EU democracy: only 6 in 10 know that members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are elected by the citizens of each member state. One in five (18%) think that MEPs are not elected and a quarter (25%) say they don’t know whether they are or not.
8) Who our MEPs are: Unsurprisingly then, just 5% can correctly name at least one of the MEPs representing their region. This is much lower than the number who can name their local MP (41%).
9) The EU’s administration bill: we massively overestimate how much of the EU’s budget is spent on administration. The average guess is that 27% of the overall budget is spent on staff, admin and maintenance costs, when in reality it’s 6%8. If this estimate were accurate the EU would be spending €38.5bn on admin each year, instead of €8.5bn.
10) Inward investment from EU countries: we underestimate how much investment into the UK comes from EU countries. The average guess is that they contribute 30% of total investment into the UK, when it actually makes up almost half (48%). This perception gap is mirrored by an overestimation of investment from China, which people think makes up 19% of inward investment but actually only accounts for 1%9.