Ukraine is the favourite candidate country to join the EU for European voters, an exclusive IPSOS/Euronews poll reveals but the bloc's enlargement is not among citizens' top priorities ahead of next June's EU elections
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 For Europeans, Ukraine is a favorite candidate country to join the EU, beating much older
00:09 contenders like Albania, Serbia and Turkey.
00:14 That`s according to an exclusive EU news poll by Ipsos.
00:19 Forty-five percent of people support bringing Ukraine into the bloc.
00:23 Twenty percent say they are not sure and 35 percent oppose.
00:28 Runner-up is Bosnia and Herzegovina with 37 percent of support.
00:34 The country with the least support among EU citizens is Turkey with 24 percent.
00:41 For so many years, enlargement was out of the agenda.
00:43 So, like enlargement was not part of the topics that was prevailing in the EU`s agenda.
00:50 And it wasn`t until the Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 that enlargement
00:55 gained momentum again.
00:56 It was put on the table again, leaders understood and member states as well understood that
01:01 enlargement was necessary in order to strengthen the union.
01:05 And the narrative of -- about enlargement also adopted a more positive approach.
01:15 Support for Ukrainian membership is highest in Finland, Portugal and Spain.
01:19 Sweden, Poland, Denmark and Romania are also strongly in favor at over 50 percent.
01:30 The least supporting Europeans are in Hungary, followed by Slovakia and Czech Republic.
01:38 For Bosnia and Herzegovina, the strongest support come from its neighbors, Romania and
01:43 Bulgaria.
01:44 Georgia`s candidacy is supported by Romania and Spain.
01:51 In general, Spain and Portugal are the countries that mostly support the enlargement, while
01:56 residents in France and the Netherlands are mostly negative.
02:00 In the case of like France and Netherlands, for instance, this low support for enlargement
02:04 can be explained by the fact that its governments have been traditionally critical towards enlargement
02:09 and have been reluctant to enlarge.
02:13 We saw it, for instance, in 2019 when the Netherlands and France blocked the opening
02:17 of EU accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia or recently it also happened
02:22 with Bosnia that the Netherlands was one of the most critical countries about taking such
02:26 decisions.
02:30 Mainstream political powers back EU enlargement, though the extreme right identity and democracy
02:36 are against.
02:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]