On Wednesday 16 July, the European Commission published a Eurobarometer report on the perceived independence of justice systems in the European Union and certain candidate countries.
According to the survey, carried out by Ipsos European Public Affairs among more than 25,000 citizens between January and February 2025, 54% of Europeans consider the independence of courts and judges in their country to be ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ good, while 36% perceive their country’s justice system as not very independent, including 23% who consider it ‘fairly bad’ and 13% ‘very bad’.
In addition, 10% of respondents ‘do not know’ how they would rate the independence of the justice system in their country.
Among those surveyed who believe their justice system is independent, 34% say that the status of judges ‘very much’ explains their opinion and 43% that this ‘somewhat’ explains it.
There are differences from one Member State to another. In Finland, Austria and Denmark, for example, over 80% of respondents have confidence in the justice system, compared with 24-27% in Poland, Bulgaria and Croatia.
Compared to the figures for 2024, public confidence improved in Slovenia, Italy and the Czech Republic, rising by 11, 10 and 9 percentage points respectively, and fell in Romania, Cyprus and Estonia, with declines of 9 percentage points for the first and 7 for the other two.
These data will be used for the EU Justice Scoreboard (see EUROPE 13671/14) and the annual reports on the Rule of law (see EUROPE 13676/27).
The report: https://aeur.eu/f/i0l (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)