The Leave side’s victory in Thursday’s EU referendum, a result predicted by few pundits and fewer polls, devastated the British pound and shocked markets worldwide. But it also sparked a greater fear — of contagion and collapse. The very idea of a single Europe, a union growing closer, treaty-by-treaty and year-by-year, has now been shaken. If the United Kingdom does leave the EU, some wonder, who might be next? And if others do abandon Brussels, how long can the union itself survive?
Those aren’t specious fears. Euro-skepticism is on the rise in many parts of the continent. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, support for the EU fell by 17 percentage points in France last year, 16 percentage points in Spain and eight percentage points in Germany. Among residents of 10 EU countries surveyed by Pew, only 51 per cent viewed the union favourably. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed, meanwhile, disapproved of the EU’s handling of the refugee crisis. And a majority or plurality in nine of the 10 countries told Pew they wanted some powers returned from Brussels to their national governments.
The factors driving that discontent are economic, political and sometimes inchoate. The refugee crisis and the lingering hangover from the 2008 financial collapse have both played significant roles. But so too has the EU’s own unshakeable image as a faceless, meddling bureaucracy, said Jeffrey Kopstein, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. “Somehow it’s been sold as a project that’s distant and non-democratic,” he said.
