(Local) Italians overestimate the numbers of non-EU immigrants to their country more than any other Europeans do, according to new research that compared survey results with population data.
While Italians believe that immigrants from outside the EU make up 25 percent — an entire quarter — of Italy’s total population, the real figure is just under 8 percent.
That makes for a “perception error” of 17.4 percent, said Bologna-based think tank the Istituto Cattaneo, which compared the results of the latest EU-wide Eurobarometer opinion poll with official data from the EU statistics office Eurostat.
No other European country showed such a wide gap, the institute said.
