Yauhen Afnagel: “Our Future is in Europe”

74% of young Belarusians are in favour of Belarus possible joining the EU.

For two months young activists held survey in schools, universities and in the streets of the capital of Belarus. One of the initiators of the poll, an activist of the civil campaign “European Belarus” Yauhen Afnagel told Polish Radio how the action took place.

“We have prepared questionnaires for our activists. They addressed their age mates. The first question was: what is their attitude towards Belarus’ joining the EU? The second question was more practical. What a young person is ready to do for their country to join the European Community? Several variants of answer were given. We processed the results ourselves, as it was rather simple, and questions were not so difficult.

Most of the young people have a positive attitude towards Belarus’ joining the EU. And there were different questions have been given to the second question. Almost the half of the pollees expressed readiness to sign the address asking to join the EU. Many young men are ready to disseminate informational materials.

The most important thing is that during the poll our activists explained people what the EU could give Belarus, and what Belarus could do in order to join the European Union. Explanatory work was done for the people who said they support the idea of joining the EU, but didn’t know what they could do for that.

Even state-run mass media recently published the report that half of the population support Belarus joining the EU, according to the poll of the Belarusian TV. We know that these figures are much higher, and it’s an absolute majority among the young. Young people believe that our country should join the European community and that your future lies in Europe.