The divisions of the EU laid bare

There is an excellent across-EU opinion poll on changing member-state population attitudes by the Washington DC-based Pew Research. There is tremendous detail and I won't attempt to summarise it here.

 

Fred Kempe at Reuters has written a good summary that focuses on the decaying Franco-German relationship that has been the glue of the EU. He quotes the Pew Research which draws attention to the way in which in the past France bridged the gap between the EU North (e.g. the Ile de France) and South (e.g the Midi).

 

But France increasingly looks like the South, is mired in its own sense of decline and despair and no longer plays the counterweight to Germany's increasingly confident assertion of its economic power.

 

Kempe ends his piece with the chilling prediction:

 

It seems almost inevitable that the next European fireworks – and the next test of the durability of the French-German relationship – will come when financial markets turn their firepower on Paris.

 

 

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