Institutional trust in Hungary and the countries of the EU

Most studies on trust, and especially trust in institutions, express concern about the declining (or at best stagnating) trends of public confidence in government, the EU and other institutions (such as the law, the courts or the police). Recent decades have been characterized by observers as a period of ‘crisis of trust’ in European societies (see e.g. Hosking, 2017). The erosion of trust is worrisome because it may signal legitimacy problems and a declining willingness on the part of citizens to cooperate with state institutions. This may bring about a radicalization of politics or a weakening of law-abiding attitudes (Boda, 2013). The economic crisis of 2007–09 had a clear and negative effect on trust; and since confidence in the EU has been particularly affected, the supporters of the European project have expressed some fear concerning the future of the European Union. Our chapter analyses the trends of institutional trust in Europe using data from the Eurobarometer (European Commission, 2007–16) and the European Quality of Life Survey (Eurofound, 2018b). We build on our research done for Eurofound (Eurofound, 2018a), but this paper focuses more on Hungary. One of our conclusions is that in the past few years trust in institutions has been slowly increasing in the countries of the EU. This offers a glimmer of hope, because it suggests that the crisis of trust is not irreversible.