The top two issues facing the European Union (EU), according to voters in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Lithuania, are immigration and terrorism.
The only nation where another issue occupied one of the top two spots, according to a new YouGov poll, was Italy, where they were immigration and unemployment.
Immigration was the top concern for the bloc as chosen by 53 per cent of people in Finland, 51 per cent in Greece, 49 per cent in Sweden, 47 per cent in Italy, and 39 per cent in Britain.
Terrorism was rated as number one by 43 per cent of people in Poland, 38 per cent in France, 35 per cent in the UK, and 34 per cent in Lithuania.
And when asked what caused the “crisis in dealing with the influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq” the top answer was the EU itself in all countries besides Germany and Sweden, excluding “don’t know.”
In Sweden and Germany, which opened their borders and took more migrants than many other nations, people were most likely to blame the EU’s individual member-states.
Furthermore, in Britain, France, Sweden, Greece, and Italy, more people said they were “pessimistic” about the bloc’s future that “optimistic,” and in every single nation a significant majority (mostly between 70 and 80 per cent) believed they had little or no “voice” in the EU — apart from Lithuania.
Professor Mathew Goodwin, a Senior Fellow at Chatham House, gave a brief analysis of the data on Twitter.
“There is a new issue agenda. Europe is moving rightwards,” he said.
“Unless the centre-left finds something meaningful to say it will be cast aside, not least because these issues will only likely become more important to voters,” he added, mentioning “migration, ethnic change, unresolved refugee crisis.”
He also claimed the “problem for the EU is not just the new issue agenda but that Euroscepticism is merging with identity [and] security threats whereas in [the 1990s and 1980s] it was far more a fringe constitutional issue.”
Pollsters asked a representative pool of around 1000 people in each country between the 18th and 30th April 2018 as part of the bloc’s ‘State of the Union’ study.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.