摘要：The completion of Croatia’s EU accession negotiations was one of the hot topics in the media lately. After the initial euphoria over the achievement of one of the most important foreign policy goals died down, the public started to voice an increasing amount of displeasure and criticize political elites for the non-transparency of the process and the low level of awareness about the contents of the negotiating chapters. Educational deficit stemming from lack of information is just one of the factors that, coupled with prejudice and stereotypes, resulted in growing Euro-scepticism and aversion to the EU and European integration in general. Previous studies undertaken in the same target group showed that youth is one of the hottest groups for communication of EU-related topics because they often overestimate their knowledge about the EU, but are mostly pro-European, as EU accession opens up new opportunities and perspectives for them, mainly in terms of education with employment – not surprisingly, since this is the group that is going to live in the EU one day. The survey was carried out in late October 2011 on a sample of 105 students of communication sciences and attempted to establish how well-informed they were about the European Union, including enlargement policy and functioning of the EU’s internal market, with a special emphasis on Croatia’s European integration course and the completion of Croatia’s accession negotiations. The results revealed that students (youth) were very well-informed about Croatia’s European integration course and the completion of the negotiations. Contrary to the expectations, the respondents proved to be well-informed about enlargement policy as well. A lower level of awareness was observed, however, in the department of internal EU market, which opens up the room for improvement for the media and the political elites alike.
关键词：EU; completion of negotiations; awareness; youth; media
