Croatian citizens trust EU institutions more than they do their government, according to a survey by Eurofund, the biggest European NGO for labour market and quality of life research, Vecernji List daily said on Wednesday.

On a scale of one to ten, Croatian citizens graded their government 2.9 and the EU leadership 4.2. At the start of the coronavirus epidemic in April, the Andrej Plenkovic Cabinet was given a four, but this trust evaporated by July.

Vecernji List noted that during that time Plenkovic’s HDZ party won a parliamentary election and that Plenkovic himself won a significant number of votes.

According to the Eurofund survey, only the Polish government was given a lower grade by its citizens than Croatia’s (2.4).

Bulgarians, Hungarians, Slovenians, Romanians, the Czech and Belgians have little trust in their governments too, while Scandinavians, Germans, the Irish, the Portuguese and Austrians have the biggest trust in the steps of theirs.

The survey covered almost 90,000 respondents in EU member states.

Young people, women and the jobless are the absolute losers of the coronavirus crisis in all the member states. Many countries have invested a lot of money in job retention but this money evidently has not helped the most vulnerable population, Vecernji List said.