Almost three in ten Europeans said they live in a precarious situation and are forced to go without essentials such as food or heating. This emerges from a report published on Wednesday by the Ipsos Institute, based on 10,000 interviews in ten countries.
According to this study commissioned by the French NGO Secours Populaire, 49% of respondents from Greece said they were in this situation, compared to 22% of French or 18% of Germans.
The survey is based on interviews with people over 18 years old from Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Romania and Serbia.
Due to “a difficult financial situation,” 62% of respondents limited their travel and 46% refrained from heating their homes despite the cold, figures similar to those in the six-country study conducted a year ago.
“Due to declining purchasing power, more than a third of Europeans regularly limit the amount of food they eat,” the report says.
38% of those surveyed forgo three meals a day, 39% forgo buying meat and 10% go to clubs in order to be able to feed themselves.
The situation has “improved slightly” compared to last year in the countries most affected by inflation, such as Greece, but remains “very worrying” in all areas analyzed, says Secours Populaire.
The NGO emphasizes that “carrying out a professional activity is not a guarantee of a comfortable financial situation”, as 36% of active people surveyed say that they cannot cover all their expenses.
The survey was conducted online in June with a representative sample of a thousand people from each country analyzed, the institute said.