Furthermore, half of the respondents in the UK and Italy, and over a third of respondents in France and Germany, said they believe that more than one EU state will pursue this course of action – a dire prediction for the future of the European Union.
Rodney Atkinson, a prominent British academic and one of the country’s most successful political economists, told Sputnik Radio that this attitude is a product of the social, economic and political consequences of the EU meddling in its members’ affairs – for example, by introducing the euro and by "removing democratic accountability from nation-states and their parliaments."
"And the fact that even now, in a recovery phase, we’re talking about mass unemployment, particularly of the youth of Europe, on a scale we haven’t seen for decades if ever – so all this political and economic destruction, I think, will lead other countries to consider their position," he said.
Atkinson also remarked that the disasters plaguing the EU have "gone too far" for the union to be reformed.
He believed the EU had lost touch with the Mediterranean countries, "because of their mass unemployment and social decline," as well as with "the so-called ‘Vysegrad countries’, the Eastern European countries." He explained that "they are now being told by Germany and the European Union that they have to accept all these migrants whom Mrs. Merkel invited in and who Germany and the rest of the EU don’t want or can’t cope with.
"And now Czechs, and Poles, and Slovaks are being told ‘you've got to take them’, and of course they won’t. That could be a critical turning point,” the academic explained.
All in all, Atkinson added, it is hard to tell exactly which country is likely to leave the EU next: while EU membership affords tremendous political control and economic benefits to countries like Germany, the poorer EU members, like Spain, are almost literally "trapped" by their huge debts to the union.
"So ironically, the poorest countries that have, politically, the biggest reasons to leave are the ones that are economically most trapped. And we see some of the effect of that in Greece, which has suffered more than any [of them] and yet seems not to be as anti-EU as the British, who managed to stay out of all the systems and have done quite well," Atkinson said.
Nevertheless, he argued, certain factors like the mass youth unemployment simply cannot be ignored and will eventually affect these countries’ "political attitude towards the European Union," adding that, in his opinion, Italy "might be the next one to threaten to leave."
"I think gradually they will recognize that all the promises that the European Union brought has ended in disaster, and therefore the logical position would be to reestablish their own democratic sovereignty and nation-states," Atkinson surmised.
