Main findings
·Almost three-quarters of EU citizens believe that people with a different background (ethnic, religious or national) enrich the cultural life of their country; 49% stated that representatives of non-mainstream cultures rather enrich their own country; and 23% indicated that such cultural diversity even highly enriched their country's cultural life. Irish and the Luxembourgish respondents agreed most that the presence of people from various backgrounds enriched the cultural life of their nation; followed by the French; the German and the Finnish. The highest levels of disagreement with this assumption were found in Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania. However, even in those countries, more than half of the citizens think that people with different cultural backgrounds (ranging from 52% to 57%) do bring benefits to everyday life.
·Day-to-day interaction among people belonging to different cultures is a reality in Europe. Two-thirds (65%) of respondents in the 27 EU Member States were able to recall any interaction with at least one person either of a different religion, ethnic background or nationality (either EU or non-EU) than their own in the seven days prior to being questioned. Out of the 27 Member States, there were only four countries where less than the half of the citizens reported such interaction with people from different cultures (Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Estonia).
·Europeans mostly encounter people with a different ethnicity (48%). Interacting with people of a different religion was mentioned by 44%; while almost as many (42%) were aware of having contact with someone from a different EU Member State. About a third of EU citizens (36%) had dealings with someone from a country outside the EU.
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