P.S. For those asking, this video's thumbnail was based of QA7 of the most recent European Parliament Eurobarometer poll (Autumn 2023), which measured the percentage of people in each member state who think that EU membership is, "generally speaking...a good thing". Relevant data can be found here: europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3152 (go to Report --> EP Autumn 2023 Survey: Six months before the 2024 European Elections - Report - en) Hope that clears thing up and you enjoy the video!

"France is also very dissatisfied......" Yeah, and water is also very wet.

I heard someone say 'The density of EU flags is larger in all of Georgia than in Brussels'

A Czech here for an inside view: The Idea of leaving the EU is not really popular at all... The thing is that most people are just Eurosceptic - since the eurozone crisis and the 2015 migration crisis more people started to dislike the way the EU has been doing things. The big hiccup recently has been the green deal and euro 7 and the ban of manufacturing of motor cars by 2035 that was simple something Czechs hated since the Czech economy despite being quite diverse is mostly centered around industry and services - industry in the automotive sector mainly... So it's very understandable why people don't like that... The funny part is the current government is actually Eurosceptic with the leading party being a member of ECR group, but generally they have been in some people's eyes "too soft". The only party wanting to leave the EU is the opposition SPD you have mentioned but thier probability of getting into the next government aren't that high and even so they aren't getting a referendum either way... and possibility of a referendum anytime is literally close to zero... Because the other party ANO the populist centrist party dominating the polls is critical of several EU actions but is strongly against any idea of leaving... Generally Czech people like to be in a union of free travel and free trade, but hate when others are "too green". Important to say that for example the EU parliament elections have consistently gotten more and more attention every passing term... Currently almost 30% of the population is likely to vote in the elections which is a consistent increase since the last time EU elections were held... Also mutch like the Brits some Czechs generally have no idea how the EU works and just don't like it... So lack of knowledge is also a contributing factor

Wasn't mentioned, but Romania has a medium sized eurosceptic block, due to the Schengen veto fiascos.

I'm kind of suprised hungary wasn't mentioned. Then again, support was strangely high in the poll. I wonder what the hungarian opinion is on the ground, when Orban isnt deciding it for them.

European Union needs reforms that is all. Europe needs to stay unite.

Czech here. I'd like to make one thing a bit more clear when it comes to eurosceptic parties in Czechia. ANO, the biggest non-government party, is not as anti-EU as the video might have made it seem. ANO is, and always have been, for Czechia staying in the EU and never wanted to hold a referendum on leaving the EU. They are only opposed to joining the eurozone and some other rather minor topics. The only proper anti-EU party here is the SPD, which is over a long period of time polling at around 10-15%. To conclude, I don't think Czechia is necessarily as eurosceptic as this video might make you think. The idea of a Czexit is very much exclusive to the fringe of the political spectrum.

Where’s Bulgaria on this list?

Finland in EU is in recession . Norway outside EU is not.🤔🤔🤔

Being French, skepticism is basically second nature, so this isn’t surprising at all. Also saw we have the least confidence in the future of the EU, which reminds me of a good quote ‘The French live in paradise but are convinced they live in hell.’ Great video keep it up.

ok, you did unironicaly just leave out Portugal for no reason

I know the Czech Republic fairly well, I've never heard of Czekia though.

Since when we in Bulgaria have negative opinion on the EU?

Lithuania is not a former communist country, it was occupied by a communist county.

I expected you to speak the hard European Union stance of Portugal

Regarding Czech euroscepticism: Being dissatisfied and grumble about evething is Czech national sport The only really pro-Czexit are those who have no idea how EU benefits us and at best make 9-10% of czech population, being SPD voters. Anti-Euro stance was greatest during the Euro-crisis, when people learnt about how disproportionately high Greek pensions were and how extravagant was Greek money spending prior to crisis. Public consensus was do we really want to pay for their pensions? There is also a second source of this refusal. When neighbouring Slovakia accepted Euro as it's official currency, prices of literally everything went up in every single sector over night. Yes, when you ask Slovaks about their present stance on this, they say they got used to this and things have normalized themselves, but regular Czech is scared of another price hike. Although this anti-Euro stance slowly dissipated since it's peak and overall consensus is there would be no difference in everyday use, memory of those two things is still hanging in public memory. Skepticism about west overall is also about Munich betrayal, when then Czechoslovakia was thrown to the wolfs. "About us, without us" Anti-centralization goes back to memory of being a satelite state of Moscow, where everything was decided and dictated, also cost of dissobedience in 1968. EU border non-control, when crowds of people, who unlikely to ever find a job or even search for it, because of generous social programs, are supported and tollerated doesn't sound too good to nation of people with an allergy on "parasites". Daily rape and crime reports done by those young male visitors in western countries doesn't help either. Various unpopular regulations, such as Euro 7, that threatened Czech automotive industry aren't raising positive opinion either. Despite this Czechia is not leaving EU anytime soon. Benefits outweigh the negatives, it is just Czechs are hard to satisfy and there is a need to complain about everything, that isn't perfect. Plus a little saying: "Don't destroy what works well"

You forgot to tell for the case of Greece and Cyprus, that EU, under the influence of Germany, has until now not taken any clear stance or had any real initiative on disputes with Turkey. Germany clearly does not want to pick sides, in order not to alienate Turks in Germany and thus leaves EU members vulnerable. (Speaking as a Greek/German myself)

As a cypriot national, from what I've heard and believe myself to an extent regarding general opinions on the EU, we have 3 main issues. 1. As you mentioned, there is a lack of representation as we believe that our voices aren't heard and don't matter. 2. The eurozone crisis treatment 3. EU's primarily in regards to fellow member states Germany in many people's eyes, complete absence of support during Turkeys illegal entrance of air space and exclusive economic zones, firing down Greece's airplane within the agean a few times, reopening of Famagusta in Cyprus by ertogan amongst other things. In general we have become very cynical especially the 20s to 40s age brackets about the eu just not caring. Not that our politicians complete and utter incompetence doesn't make the situation even worse. But thats another story

i think if the people in the eastern countries dont like the EU, they should just leave

If you run a club and more than half of your members are not happy, you are doing something fundamentally wrong.

This is maybe a bit of a technical video for TLDR, but I'd be interesting to see a breakdown on the economic and political impacts of eurozone expansion, both the existing eurozone, and on the countries it could expand to (probably splitting Bulgaria and Romania, which both are set to adopt the Euro, from the countries which could join the Euro but are basically choosing not to (Sweden, Czechia, Denmark....etc.)). It'd be interesting to get a take on whether expansion would make the Euro stronger (by expanding its economic reach) or weaker (due to the fiscal issues highlighted in the Eurozone crisis, which I think some efforts have gone to towards addressing). On the country side, it seems to me that the arguments for Euro adoption are pretty strong, given how much of their trade is presumably Euro-denominated, but it'd be interesting to see the analysis.

Long live the EU from Poland. The EU must be more protectionist too, it must be an alliance of Europeans who want to protect our economy from external threats of China and the US, and also from crises like the migrant crisis. We must not let ourselves be divided by alien interests, like in the case of Hungary which is on China and Russian leash.

Don’t know why Romania was placed amongst the euroskeptic countries…

Let us say it clearly: the great expansion into Eastern Europe was a big failure! The same could be said about all political expansions, i.e. Greece, Spain and Portugal. In all these cases, the countries were admitted much too fast if you think about their level of government and democracy. Why oh why was it necessary to take on countries whose leaders and thus citizens clearly don't care about human rights and the rule of law? The biggest problem in the EU at the moment simply is that there are too many leeches - Hungary being number one among them.

Crete is btw a part of greece. You highlighted it wrong in the video...

a slovak here and i´d say a big part of slovakia has the same opinion about EU as our czech brothers

Can you do one about the UK before 2020?

Italy is the third highest net CONTRIBUTOR in EU. Meaning every year, Italy contributes around 4 billion euros more than it takes from EU. So please stop writing in the comments false information like "The countries that whine the most about EU, like Italy, are the countries that receive most money from EU".

Lithuania is not a former communist country, it was a colony of soviet communism.

The UK is becoming more pro EU albeit far too late

I thought sweden would be one of the most eurosceptic countries, based on my experiences... rather surprising how things have changed so drastically.

Czechs don't want the euro currency because their entire "Bielorrusian Rubbles" money exchange industry would fall apart.

It is really amazing that so many of my fellow Bulgarians are dissatisfied with our EU membership. Especially considering the fact that the EU accession is the best thing that happened to Bulgaria over the past one century. The economic, geopolitical and other benefits are tremendous, but it seems that a lot of people around readily deny all of it...😢

Seems like you ignored Portugal and Hungary.

Not sure about this… i think Spain should be dark blue. Most people identify EU with democracy here

As an outsider's insider view: I would not have guessed that Cypriots are so critical about the EU. Maybe it is really what they remember from the finance crisis. Also, a lot of younger Cypriots seem to seek work in the EU, not on the island. So it would be fascinating who they asked. Also, because lots of older people from the UK are here, and it is obvious what the most of them would say. But well, a general distrust in the competency of politics, also likely ;-) As someone from the EU, who migrated to Cyprus, I did not notice this sentiment so far. Maybe also because I am not in the group of people who struggle financially - I noticed cost of living and rent go through the roof, though. With seemingly most salaries not going up. Like everywhere in the EU. Generally speaking, I am under the impression Cyprus benefits a lot from the EU regarding Infrastructure, protection / stability, and a really favorable barrier of entry for capital and investments, thanks to the Euro and EU Market. (Ok, I know it also have lost a lot of Russian capital, but I doubt that most of this capital really benefitted the local economy directly.) One thing I do notice is, that Cyprus would need more representation and Recognition. I think many EU citizens do not even know that Cyprus is part of the EU and where it is. It could be a great EU outpost, but it sometimes feels a bit isolated. Maybe the new Energy / Fuel Interconnectors etc. can change that, with Cyprus becoming a real bridge for the EU to Asia and Africa. Well, one the policy manages to get these projects going... I think it could be a nice move to also have an important / well known EU institution sitting in Greece, or even Cyprus. Just to get away from the centralism. The only negative thing is, that Cyprus has not made it into Schengen so far, I hope that will change. Would also be nice for Tourism. Well... and package delivery.

Portugal being the 2nd with the most good views on the EU but not getting metioned: 😔

Corruption and immigration is the main problem! More immigration more low wages, less houses and the Lost of out identity! And we are for and United Europe, but with more democracy!

Question: is the UK now more pro EU than some actual current members? That would be quite hilarious, yet plausible, since (it is well known that?) opinion has significantly improved since they now experience being outside the EU IRL 😁

Interesting video. But the blunt question: " would you want your country exit the EU? " would have given a more clear picture about the real support ( or lack of it) for the EU . For instance, there are a lot of people ( including myself) who openly criticise the EU in some aspects but who are definitly pro EU.

As a Lithuanian, I can say why the majority of people are happy. Throughout the years people just wanted to have a fair shot, not be part of the USSR, and be able to do business with other countries freely. Now that we're part of the EU our results speak for ourselves, Lithuania did one of the biggest growth in the EU. Our GDP per capita grew more than in Poland, Portugal, Greece, and other countries that we far ahead of us in the past!

Im a bit surprised you didnt talk about Poland or Hungary. Previous polish goverment was very anti-EU

Tbh part of Ireland's love of the EU is also driven by cultural antagonism toward the UK. The UK was Anti-EU so Ireland is more inclined to distinguish itself by feeling more positive to the EU, and the EU is seen as a means to be less economically and culturally tied to the UK. Additionally, Brexit was probably covered more closely in Ireland than most European countries and has consistently been seen by most Irish people as an embarrassing blunder that was based on the same sense of self-aggrandisement on the part of the UK that led it to take over and subjugate Ireland historically. Ireland has a relatively humble national psyche. There's no national myths about a glorious past of being a great power who ruled the world through conquest like many other European countries have, because up to the 20th century, Ireland was a colony, not a coloniser. I think in the same way as many former communist bloc countries, in Ireland the past is widely understood to have been a much a bleak and repressed place that nobody wants to return to, and the EU is seen as a forward path away from that.

Regarding my country Greece, though I do not question the data provided, I would like to point out that public sentiment needs some time to acknowledge that conditions have changed drastically. The financial crisis of the last decade gave rise to many negative feelings towards the EU, but things have changed, and the percentage of citizens that still are eurosceptics is, I think, lower than ever. Leaving the EU would be unthinkable today. It is more a matter of regaining and cementing our position in the Union.

No Portugal mention?? REEEEeeeee

In France, it has a lot to do with Macron. He’s one of the most unpopular Presidents in History, and a staunch europhile, so people opposed to Macron tends to dislike the EU by principle, in the left, it’s best summarized as "Europe, yes, but not this one" over how the EU enforces neoliberalism, and in the right they dislike what is seen as the loss of national sovereignty.

What EU? The EU of the people as it was supposed to be, or the EU of the big interests and the big companies? Let's not fool ourselves.

Your map in the thumbnail has Poland marked in red (significantly euroskeptic), but most of your indicators in the video suggest otherwise

Would have been interesting to talk about Portugal, their history with the EU (accession, development etc) makes it a very particular case, as they also have historically close links with the UK.

It’s ridiculous that Czechia and southeastern countries are the most sceptical about the EU but recieve much more funds than they contribute to the Union. Whereas Germany paying the most. On the other hand, not joining the eurozone seems sober for Czechs when considering the debt of anti-EU Greece.

Yeah like all protests of farmers in Holland, Feance, Germany , Poland and Greece never happened. New EU censorship laws and poor economical growth due to crazy Fit for 55 and Largest Corruption scandal with sheyks bribing never happen. 40 000 lobbysts in Brussels are no problem also, taking over more and more of every country juristiction to become one supercountry its also not a problem. 90% of people have no idea what is happening in EU Commission and EU parliment. Its beyond their interest. They just support the idea knowing nothing abou EU

i'm Spaniard and i don't know anyone who is "Euro-separatist". Even tho i'm from Catalonia where separatism is strong, but not from EU, just from Spain.

Denmark is an odd case because we know ourselves to have been more eurosceptic in the past, but things have apparently turned around... Maybe you could look into that in a future video about member states in the Union?

When in the EU we hate being in the EU. When we leave it, we hate leaving it. No matter what, we hate.

Poles support eu even though eu always punishes Poland for nothing and shows hypocrisy for example when they had problem with turów. They were trying to make Poland close it while Germany started to mine a new coal deposit, second thing is that germanty has more most harmful power plants in the EU than the Poland has, even though we are tens of years in the past because of communism. So they make a vision of Poland being not ecologic while they're even less ecologic but WE have to pay for that. And they don't see for example the fact that we have also twice national parks as them which is surely more ecologic. The worst is that with the problems like that i coud go on and on and on, (for example thet they weren't right about nord stream 2 and now Poland, which was against this, has to pay to germany for this) but still there're many Poles that unfortunetelly don't see any problems in the EU and blindly accept everything they do.

Not surprised Ireland has the highest approval rating; I imagine their support of it skyrocketed during the brexit days as they (understandably) do the opposite of whatever the UK does.

The definition of eurosceptic in this study is distorting the image significantly. It is counting two very different sides in the same box. Those who are opposed to the EU and those who are for the EU, but want policies and practices to change. I believe a better study would need to focus on that distinction.

Yeah yeah this data is 100% untrue. Bulgaria is the unhappiest. Im saying that as someone who likes the idea of the EU.

As a South American living in Europe, I am obliged to say the European Union is the greatest thing that has ever happened to this continent. People have no idea how lucky they are to be able to move countries without bureaucracy to study, work, or love. It’s a truly amazing union. It’s an extremely complex organization that is very efficient and competent.

You could do a video on the countries which are split on how they think about the EU, and why. I think that would be interesting.

For Greece and Cyprus it makes perfect sense, that region has been completely neglected on so many levels. It's not just the economy. Just look at how the EU treats Russia and then completely downplays Turkey's aggression that literally occupies a part of Cyprus. Many EU countries even sell them weapons that could at any point in the future be used to launch another invasion. Absolutely shameful, I am surprised they aren't even more negative. Of course Lithuania will have a positive view when people actually give a toss about its aggressive neighbors. And other countries like Luxembourg, wow I'm shocked that they have a positive view when so many EU headquarters are there! Most of those countries make quite a bit of sense, Czech republic makes no sense why they'd be so negative since in my opinion they have benefited a lot from the investment and trade that the EU brought them.

No talk of immigration?

We do not hate EU, we hate what EU HAS BECOME

It is funny, how (mostly) net receievers complain about EU and (mostly) net givers are content about it. 😂 it is a weird phenomena.

As an italian, there is no way in hell it is beneficial for us to leave the EU.

Why doesn't Greece like the EU? They got all the loans during the debt crisis and needed to go into austerity from how financially irresponsible their government was. Why can't they just accept the reality?

I suppose someone might not be familiar with the geography of Europe. Please compare the hues of Poland and Germany on the map at 1:59 and then compare it with the diagram at 2:17. :D

The challenge within the EU lies in its considerable bureaucracy, where well-compensated leaders appear to contribute minimally to aiding the less fortunate in Europe and supporting farmers facing tough competition from China or Vietnam. Additionally, there seems to be a lack of assistance in fostering competitiveness with the USA and China in the field of AI, along with burdensome bureaucratic procedures affecting various aspects.

There's definitely some context missing here. Denmark is generally a very EU skeptical country, but the country also has long standing culture of political trust. If the level of eu skepticism was measured by the disparity between the level of trust in the national government and the level of trust in EU, you'd get a very different picture

Is it true that Germany, Slovenia and Croatia offered to kick bulgera from EU so North Masedonia?🤔🤔

3:21 *czech painful sounds* 3:25 *czech unhinged screaming sounds*

You would think that after how horribly it went for the UK the rest of the EU would look at this live experiment and think hmmm maybe we’re better off not breaking the EU apart.

Deeper analysis of this would be interesting. Would love to know how accurate understanding of the EU correlates with trust (e.g., how EU works, decision making process), and see what happens to opinion when one takes general opinion of politics into account.

Your voice is so hard to hear. i had to put my volume to a really low settings because of it.

This is simple, the countries that like the EU are the ones that get the most money, from the EU countries that pay the most in.

I dont know why Romania is shown as Eurosceptic as the graphic clearly shows its among the more Pro-EU states ? (In fact many are also in favour of European Federalism)

I feel like the thumbnail is misleading and puts a bad light on the east.

7:21 What do you consider as benefit for country as looking by difference between red and green it can't be only money as money needs to come from somwhere and its probably not going from outside of EU, or maybe EU is in huge debt also it would probably be a humongous amount of research with a lot of impossible to percieve relations as there is a lot of money flowing under the table i.e. removal of coal heating forced by EU took away money from procucers of coal and moved money into gas industry and made money for producers of gas furnaces and now they think about going away from gas as someone who had money from it must have lost access to it (Nordstream maybe) or lost share to some competitor (to Arabia maybe?)... same with forcing to stop used cars market, making people buy new ones cash flowing to car producers again and everything is taxed... so money is kind of going under the radar to countries with strong industry realted with EU regulations instead to countries that were benefiting from more mature tech thats usually better (well most people chose it without any regulations killing alternatives or any donations to artifically make it better choice, if that's not telling that they are better, at least for now, I don't know what is) sorry just pointing out how unnecessary this diagram is (its not even explained what kind of benefits it shows) leaving more questions than answers

Why is Hungarian naunce examined further here? They are VERY euroscpetic of the EU on certain policies but are fearful of a HU-exit. Most conterversial point would be EU subsides for agriculture. They are excluded and yet they have the same if not at times better products (i.e. lavender, grain, meat, wines and spirits) than those of FR and DE. My husband who is a pro-EU and anti-Orban Hungarian is SUPER vocal about this. Hence the creation of "Hungarikums" why should FR have access to all the subsides?

Why Poland is red? Majority of Poles love EU - the reality is it’s only old people (PIS party voters) and people influenced by Russian propaganda (Konfederacja voters) that are Eurosceptic nationalists. If any party would get us out of EU this would quickly turn into civil war as most Poles are not dumb - just too lazy to vote (from the lack of adequate choice and hopelessness). Our previous gov was absolutely not representing majority of Poles but majority of retirees…

As a Czech I'd like to offer my own personal perspective on the matter. When I was younger I was very pro-EU, bordering on eurofederalist. But as I gow older I shift more and more to eurosceptism. The main reason for that is simply the ridiculous ammount of ineffective overregulation and bureaucracy that EU has been pumping out. For the last cca 10 years EU regulation has been making my job more and more time consuming and frustrating (mostly (but not only) in regards to various areas of corporate law and anti money laundering policies). I keep seeing more and more obligations being added for matters that 10 years ago would be simple to take care of but now have several useless bureaucratic hurdles to go through. All of this leads to frustration because you keep working on things you know have no effect in the end and just waste your time. Often the issue of eurosceptism is reduced to being in EU vs being outside of it but it's not that simple. EU does many great things for its member states (single market, shengen, consumer protection) but most of these things have been there for a long time. I feel like many recent policies are actually making things worse for EU. It's like the Commission has a need to just make some useless regulations just to justify its existence insted of making things that will work towards improving EU economy. Nowadays I'm one of the ones who check the box for being pessimistic about EU. But not because I want us to leave it or because I don't like what it stands for, but because I'm very pessimistic about where the EU is heading.

Another English channel misrepresenting EU related matter. How sad that a UK person living in an EU country can't shake of the British habit of not getting their facts in order, not drawing proper conclusions, but see everything through British glasses

As an odd outside perspective Norway is fairly positive in our views on the EU, we just don't want to join.

Yes, we lithuanians do love the EU 🇱🇹❤🇪🇺 hope to see more countries join, especially Moldova

Greece doesn't hate the EU, in every election pro-EU parties take 75-80% of the vote

EU needs to become a real Democracy. Elections for commissioners rather than appointments. 2 house of Parliament who pass laws and policy. Not this charade it is presently. And then term limits of 8 years how long you can be a commissioner and in Parliament.

In the last french legislative elections, two of the top three largest parties were head by outright euroskeptics. And in the first round of the presidential election, three of the top four candidates were euroskeptic.

The No1 feature the EU offers Europeans is a unified European consumer market. My country, Greece failed to capitalize on that. Greek exports were always very low in volume, and we had a very introverted economy. This is changing now rapidly, with the new generation of Greeks. I am very pro EU. Europeans should and must stick together.

As a French person, being a European federalist is especially difficult. When it comes to politics, I often come across 2 main flavors with regards to the EU: people with a broadly favorable view, mostly for economic reasons, but don't care much beyond that, and a seemingly growing number of people who blame the EU for everything wrong with society. Perhaps similarly to the UK, I think that our well-known past as a colonial power means that we have a hard time conceptualizing ourselves as a part of a larger whole.

THIS IS TOO OUT OF DATE.

Europeans have gotten comfortable and forgotten that what's happening with Ukraine once was reality across the whole of Europe and preventing another war was the purpose of its creation

Portugal?

It's not a surpise to see the Southern European countries being negative, especially after the shafting Greece got

Funny to see Czechs to be the most negative towards the EU, as I've just read a report on the relative economic benefits from the single market and Czech regions are among those benefiting the most...

I think you’ve missed Portugal as a major EU supporter.

As an Austrian I wanted to point out our view of the EU. This poll says that Austrians are very eurosceptic. But I really want to note that we really like the EU. No Party, not even the extremists, want an "Öxit". Also a lot of young peoply generally feel as much Austrian as they feel European. The roots of our euroscepticism are the migration crisis and the lack of democracy in the EU. Many Austrian would also like further EU integration if reforms would take place.

I don’t believe the way the thumbnail of this video portrayed Latvia as a “skeptic” country is accurate, perhaps it would be worth looking into statistics wise.

What people think is good for them and what is good for them are not the same things. The EU spends fortunes promoting its benefits and virtually no one spends any money explaining the disadvantages. Apparently, at least 100% of Chinese people think that the CCP works to their benefit and don't laugh, but most people in the Western world still think that the political party that they vote for gives a crap whether they live or die. The truth is of course quite different as it almost always is. The truth is that we were all born into slavery and only a tiny fraction of us ever realize the fact, never mind escape the plantation. Having said that human beings still need to make the judgment they can between the best of two evils and what works best in their own interests, however almost impossible this is deliberately made to achieve with any real certainty. So what people do in practice is that they look at where their own lives are going at any one time. If they observe that their lives are going OK or getting better and that their country is currently a member of the EU, then they will remain broadly in favor of the EU. If not because their quality of life and standards of living are going downhill then they will rapidly adjust their thinking. Plenty of enough bread and circuses and the state/EU has the people more or less where they want to keep them. This is on a real or invisible chain, paying taxes and generally doing as they are told, precisely when they are told to do it. Common sense, on the other hand, which is about as common as rocking horse poop should dictate that extra levels of extremely expensive and inherently corrupt government bureaucracies can never be a good thing in the longer term. This may seem or claim to perform a few useful purposes but these could have happened without such a thing if the will was there. IMO, there is not a member of the EU that has gained anything from EU membership that they could not have gotten by not being a member. Brexit is a prime example. Since the UK apparently left the EU, all but nothing has changed at all either for the better or for the worse. A few people have gained a few people have lost, but for the vast majority, life goes on as if Brexit had never happened at all. Multinational banking and other corporations run governments, not the other way around. While economies and standards of living are built by the people themselves greatly assisted by their small and medium-sized business owners, including farmers, carers, builders, manufacturers, shopkeepers, tradespeople, and nightclub and bar owners. These are the people that make our lives worth living not our ruling class and their utterly corrupted institutions. The EU does not give money away it only lends it to governments. What the EU lends using its most favoured banking institutions it can also take back.

as a Czech, iam proud :)