EU EEAS Press Release Sentiment

EU EEAS Press Release Sentiment

After Russia invaded Ukraine, EU tone toward Iran collapsed. After Oct 7, Israel followed.
Monthly average sentiment by country

Each line is the average sentiment score across all releases in that month. Scores range from −1 (hostile) to +1 (cooperative). Two key inflection points are marked: Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Feb 2022) coincides with a sharp deterioration in EU tone toward Iran, as Iran became a direct arms supplier to Russia — a threat the EU frames as targeting European security. Oct 7, 2023 marks the Hamas attack on Israel, after which the EU's tone toward Israel dropped significantly despite initial expressions of solidarity. Turkey's line runs near neutral throughout — it appears predominantly in boilerplate EU candidate-country statements rather than substantive bilateral exchanges.

Initial solidarity lasted days — EU sentiment on Israel spiked, then fell sharply through October 2023
Israel daily sentiment · Sept 1 – Nov 30, 2023

Daily average sentiment for EU EEAS releases about Israel across the three months surrounding the Hamas attack. September bars show the pre-attack baseline. Blue bars = positive tone (solidarity / condemnation of attack). Red bars = negative tone (criticism of Israel's military response). The dotted line marks Oct 7. Hover a bar to see that day's release titles. In the ~60 days following Oct 7, 35% of Israel releases were positive — a brief solidarity window before tone turned sharply negative.

Qatar draws the EU's most positive coverage; Turkey the most neutral — nearly 3 in 4 releases treat it as routine; Iran is almost exclusively condemned
Tone breakdown by country

Share of releases scored negative (<−0.25), neutral, or positive (>+0.25) for each country. Qatar's near-zero negative share is notable — EU official statements largely sidestepped the 2022 Qatargate corruption scandal, in which MEPs were accused of taking Qatari bribes.

Qatar earns the EU's highest sentiment score; Iran the lowest — Turkey sits near-neutral in between, largely overlooked
Average sentiment by country

Overall average across all scored releases, sorted best to worst.

Qatar consistently positive; Turkey tightly clustered around neutral; Iran almost entirely negative; Israel spans the full range
Sentiment distribution

Box = middle 50% of releases (Q1–Q3); center line = median; whiskers = furthest non-outlier values. Each dot is one release — hover for citation, click to open source.