A relative majority of Maltese people feel the European Parliament’s top priority should be climate change, according to a new Eurobarometer survey.

The annual study, typically carried out door-to-door in all EU member states, asks citizens how they feel about the European Union and the specific work of the parliament.

It also asks them to gauge if they feel their country has benefitted from EU membership.

When asked what topic they would like to see addressed as a priority, the relative majority of respondents from Malta (45%) replied it should be taking action over climate change.

Of the eight countries that placed climate action as their top priority to address, Malta was the lone southern state, with the category being dominated by northern EU member states such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Finland.

With surveys being carried out between November 2 and December 3 of last year, respondents were likely being questioned while the United Nations Climate Change Conference was going on.

As a small island nation with limited resources to fall back on, discussions on how climate change is set to impact Malta have been growing in the face of the perception that the Maltese government and foreign bodies are not doing enough to mitigate climate change.

In August, biologist Sandro Lanfranco warned that the shrinking of freshwater sources due to rising temperatures would affect Malta’s winemaking industry, gardens and even render swimming pools unviable.

Climate Action Ambassador Simone Borg has also previously said that if temperatures continue to rise, life here would become “very unpleasant” and several industries from agriculture to tourism would find themselves “upended by desertification”.

In November, a joint study by the universities of Malta and Calabria found that Malta was set to lose 16% of its groundwater in the next 80 years as a result of climate change.

With the aim of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, the EU has a goal of cutting emissions by at least 55% by 2030. Initially, Malta was given a target of cutting its carbon emissions by 36% by 2030 but this was later slashed to 19% following a request by the government.

Conversely, as the COVID-19 pandemic approached the two-year mark, the majority of EU citizens said that public health should be the EP’s top priority, with 11 countries – Portugal, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia and Hungary – putting it at the top of their lists.

Lithuania, Croatia, France, Slovenia and Luxembourg said that the EP should focus mainly on the fight against poverty and social exclusion, Greece and Latvia said the priority should be supporting the economy and creating new jobs while citizens of the Czech Republic said the parliament should be primarily focusing on the EU’s security and protecting the Union’s external borders.

Some 60% of Maltese people said they are satisfied with the way democracy works in the European Union, with 29% saying they are not satisfied and 11% who did not know.

Irish citizens were the most satisfied (84%) with democracy in the European Union, while 61% of the Greek citizens said that they were unsatisfied by the current state of democracy.

When asked whether they felt their voice counted in the European Union, more than half of Maltese respondents (51%) said that they disagreed with this statement, while only 46% replied in the affirmative.

This was close to the average that was reported across all EU member states, where 52% of citizens said they did not feel that their voice counted in the EU.

Only 39% of Maltese respondents said they have a positive image of the European Parliament, dropping by one percentage point from the year prior.

The country which showed the biggest increase of positivity towards the EP was Sweden, which increased by 13 percentage points to 48%, the second- highest positivity rate among member states.

Conversely, the EP’s esteem plummeted in Bulgaria, where the number of people who felt positively about the parliament dropped by eight percentage points to 43%.

Despite this, 71% of Maltese people said they wanted to see the European Parliament play a more important role overall while 46% of Maltese people said they felt that things in the EU are going in the right direction.

Malta was also one of 11 countries whose citizens felt that democracy should be the value that the EP defends as a matter of priority.

When asked if they had a positive image of the European Union, 52% of Maltese respondents said that did, while 38% said they felt neutral and 9% negative about it.

Overall, 69% of Maltese people say they are in favour of the European Union in general, an increase of one percentage point from the year prior.

Some 89% of Maltese respondents felt that the country benefitted from EU membership, increasing the number of positive responses by one percentage point.

Overall, 64% of respondents from Malta said that it was important that their country is an EU member state, while 23% felt neutral and 12% said it was not important.

When asked whether they felt personally involved in what is going on in society, 52% of Maltese people said that they did, while 47% said that they did not.

If a European Parliament election were to be held next week, 61% of Maltese said they would be likely or very likely to vote while 19% said they were unlikely to and 18% were neutral on the issue.