Few Europeans are in favour of their country leaving the EU or the eurozone, including voters for far-right parties, according to a survey published on Tuesday.
The survey, which was carried out across all 27 EU Member States and the UK for the French think tank Foundation for Political Innovation by the Ipsos Institute, showed that only 13% of voters want their country to leave the EU.
The countries with the highest proportion of voters wanting to leave the EU are Bulgaria (22%), Czechia (20%), Austria (19%) and France (18%). Conversely, only 3% of Portuguese and 5% of Lithuanians want to leave the EU. In Belgium, 11% of respondents want to reconsider their membership.
For countries that have adopted the euro, only 8% want to return to their national currency. The highest figure is in Croatia (14%), the country to have most recently adopted the single currency, and the lowest is again in Portugal (3%). Among Belgians, 4% want to leave the single currency.
EU support from far-right voters
Remarkably, those who vote for far-right parties are also overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU. This is the case for 66% of voters who intend to vote for a party that is a member of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament, the group to which the French Rassemblement National (RN) and Flemish Vlaams Belang belong.
The figure is even higher (80%) for voters of a party belonging to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, of which the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's party is a member.
The same applies to the euro, which is supported by 78% of ID voters and 90% of ECR voters.
"Populist voters are overwhelmingly in favour of the euro, forcing populist leaders to convert to the idea of a European currency or lose their voters," the foundation concluded.
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Only 21% of EU citizens believe that the UK is "better off outside the EU", while 77% are in favour of Brits returning to the bloc. 68% of British voters also wanted to return to the EU, Ipsos noted.
The survey was carried out in the 27 EU Member States and the UK between 22 March and 26 April, among representative samples of the population aged 18 and over in each country. A total of 23,788 people were surveyed.
