Europe is divided on the UK remaining part of the single market, were it to leave the European Union, research suggests. Nearly half of Germans surveyed are in favor of a post-Brexit UK staying in this trading bloc, but only a quarter of French respondents agreed.
People in Poland and Ireland are also sympathetic with 50 percent and 41 percent respectively backing continued trade in the single market — but most Swedes who were questioned remain undecided.
University of Edinburgh experts, in cooperation with German think tank d|part, surveyed more than eight thousand people in six EU member states — Germany, France, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and Spain.
The survey found broad support across all the countries for the UK to remain in the EU. Spain was the strongest in favor — 81 percent — with France the most ambivalent at 56 per cent.
There is a support in most other countries to follow Britain's example and hold a vote of their own on EU membership. Appetite for a referendum is strongest in France at 53 percent, with nearly half of people in Sweden, Germany and Spain also wanting it. In Poland and Ireland however, more people were against than in favor.
No Special Privileges for UK
The opt-out for the UK from the EU's commitment to "ever closer union" — one of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's amendments — puts the UK at odds with attitudes across the continent, according to the survey. Only five per cent of Spanish respondents disagree with this principle. France displays the weakest support for it at 41 percent, but even there only 17 per cent oppose it.
Report author Dr Jan Eichhorn of the University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science said:
"The upcoming EU referendum provides an opportunity to engage with people's views on the UK and their involvement in the EU across the whole continent. Our survey shows a willingness to reform the EU, but less so for an individual country to gain exceptional treatment."
French socialist lawmaker Virginie Rozière recently wrote an opinion column for Euractiv.com in which she hit out at "blackmail by the United Kingdom," saying the country had "taken 60 years of European construction hostage for the benefit of a short-term domestic electoral agenda.
"In exposing a view of Europe that is so at odds with the aims of the European project, the United Kingdom has made its eventual separation from continental Europe inevitable, albeit long and slow."
Another French lawmaker, Dominique Riquet, who is leading a campaign to let the British go, told the newspaper La Voix du Nord:
"I hope the English leave! I have always thought they would be better off outside than inside, so I completely disapprove of the concessions won by Cameron. We need to progress […] and the United Kingdom will do all it can to make sure this doesn't happen."
