LONDON, 22 October — Hours after a referendum in Ireland gave the European Union’s enlargement the green light, a new poll showed that only half of all European voters back plans to admit 10 new countries — with support for the project lowest in the United Kingdom.
Fewer than one in four Britons say they support expansion of the EU, although there is more outright hostility to the project in three other countries including France, where nearly half the population says it is opposed.
The latest findings from a Eurobarometer survey illustrate how much the political elite needs to do to convince a skeptical public to support the admission of 10, mainly ex-Communist countries in little more than one year’s time.
Danes and Greeks are most likely to be in favor of admitting the 10 nations: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
But the document also shows that people in Britain think they know less about the EU than those in any other country, replying "don’t know" to a host of questions. The report’s authors argue that fuels euroskepticism.
"Our analyses show that the more people feel they know about the EU, the more likely they are to support it," the document says. Drawn from opinion polls conducted in each member state at the end of March, the survey was published as celebrations over the Irish referendum left something of a hangover.
On Sunday, EU leaders hailed the Irish referendum result as a vote of confidence in enlargement from the only electorate which has been given the chance to cast a ballot on the issue.
But yesterday, EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg to try to remove some of the other roadblocks jeopardizing the timetable for enlargement.
Last night, they were examining how to placate Moscow over the addition of Lithuania and Poland to the EU, which will isolate the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad from the rest of the country and could force Russians into using visas to travel to and from it.
Today, there will be talks over even more substantial problems, including disputes over how the process of expansion will be financed. A Franco-German clash over reforming EU farm subsidies and funding enlargement could block agreement on when EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. France has so far rejected German calls for a reduction in farm subsidies from 2006.
Berlin, which pays most into EU coffers, has called for this pledge in exchange for supporting a plan to offer farmers in the new countries 25 percent of the agricultural direct payments, phasing in the full 100 percent over a decade. France, which benefits significantly from the Common Agricultural Policy, has so far not agreed. (The Independent)
