We don’t love them…
Support for the EU has dropped to its lowest level in nine years. A recent poll conducted for the European Commission showed that 49 per cent of respondents from across Europe considered their countries’ EU membership “a good thing”, compared to 53 per cent last year. The level of trust in EU institutions also shrank to 42 per cent from 48 per cent a year ago. In Britain only 29 per cent considered EU membership “a good thing”, while 33 per cent thought it “a bad thing”.
We don’t love the euro either…
Opinions are no better on the euro according to a survey by German Marshall Fund of the US (GMF), a non-partisan American organisation. This found that 60 per cent of the French, and more than half the German, Spanish and Portuguese respondents said that the euro was “a bad thing for their economy”. Outside the eurozone, 83 per cent of the British, 53 per cent of Poles and 42 per cent of Bulgarians thought that using the euro would be bad for the domestic economy.
…and we don’t want them to govern us
The Commission interpreted other recent survey results to mean that European citizens favour “European economic governance”. The GMF results sharply contradict that view. It asked if “the EU should have the primary responsibility for economic decision-making in tackling the economic crisis.” This option was the least popular in Britain (25 per cent) and in new member states – Bulgaria (24 per cent), Slovakia (22 per cent) and Romania (15 per cent).
Deportation 'illegal'
AS WIDELY reported, more than 500 illegal settlements have been demolished in France in recent weeks, including about 100 Roma camps. About 80 per cent of the people affected are French; around 1,000 Roma, mainly from Romania, have been deported.
The issue disrupted an EU summit intended to discuss economic reform. The EU berated France, saying that it had broken EU laws on freedom of movement within the EU. Under EU law, no government has the right to deport any EU citizen for any reason.