Transatlantic Trends: Leaders 2011

This report presents the first systematic survey of the views of leaders in the European Union and the United States on the state, nature, and challenges of transatlantic relations. This study stems from the experience of Transatlantic Trends, which has surveyed the general public in Europe and the United States since 2002, and of the European Elite Survey, which has surveyed Members of the European Parliament and top-level officials of the Commission and the Council since 2006. In 2011, for the first time, this survey included American leaders as well in order to offer a systematic comparative analysis of the views of European and American leaders, and to allow for a comparison with the views of the public, as gauged by the 2010 Transatlantic Trends survey.

Leadership surveys on foreign and security issues have been conducted before, both in Europe and the United States. However, this is the first time, since the 1960s, in which leaders and the public on both sides of the Atlantic have been surveyed, using the same questions. This project is supported by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo, and it constitutes a further step in a more systematic understanding of the transatlantic relations, and the undercurrent attitudinal similarities and differences among Europeans and Americans.