A good half of the Swiss are looking forward to the European Championships
According to a Demoscope study, about 54 percent of Swiss people are looking forward to the upcoming European Soccer Championship. The event leaves 38 percent of the 1,005 people surveyed cold.
Whether the European Football Championship 08 will actually be a European Championship 0815 because of the disenchantment with football in Switzerland, as the Tages-Anzeiger magazine recently mockingly predicted, cannot be answered by the survey now available. What is certain is that around 54% of Swiss people are looking forward to the 2008 European Football Championships. However, and this is the less pleasing finding of the study, interest has hardly increased at all in the space of a year. Of the 1005 people surveyed in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland, a further 38% said they were not interested in the event. Two percent have not yet formed an opinion and six percent are even annoyed by it. Critical arguments have gained support. 49% of respondents believe that the European Championship is a waste of taxpayers' money and 31% are now convinced that the risk of terrorist attacks will increase massively during this major event. A year ago, 22% thought the same. On the other hand, 80% of respondents continue to believe that the European Championship is good for Switzerland's reputation in the world.
