Post Brexit European "Superstate" To Be Unveiled, Sovereignty Forfeited

[CharlesHarris]

The Telegraph takes a different view:

UK vote raises fears of a tsunami of EU membership referendums

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/...u-members/

A survey published on Monday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that these parties are currently calling for a total of 33 popular referendums in the coming year.

The parties have disparate motivations and sit on both sides of the political spectrum, but they share a common sense of discontent about EU austerity and a nationalist bent that often favours Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Some, like France’s National Front (FN) and Netherlands Party for Freedom (PVV) want full ‘in-out’ referendums like Britain, while others, such as the ruling party in Hungary, want to attack Brussels by polling specific issues like the deeply resented mandatory refugee quotas.

As Brussels braces to deal with Brexit – a move that is already stressing Spanish and Italian banks - the government of the remaining 27 EU member states are trying to formulate a programme of reforms that turn the rising tide of anti-EU opinion.

But the waters are rising fast. A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre found that only 38 per cent of France had a favourable view of the EU, marking an astonishing negative shift in attitudes towards Brussels since the 2009 financial crisis that has been mirrored to varying degrees all across Europe.

A poll last month by Ipsos-MORI found that nearly half of voters in eight big European Union countries want to be able to vote on whether to remain members of the bloc, with a third saying they would opt to leave, if given the choice.

Here we look, country by country, at Europe’s most imperiled member states, assessing the strength of the Eurosceptic forces and the ability of establishment parties to constrain them...

Although the Netherlands is a founder EU member and currently holds the EU presidency, a June poll showed 54 per cent of people want a referendum on EU membership, while 48 per cent would vote to leave and 45 per cent to remain...

Britain’s historic Brexit vote has buoyed sovereigntists and the far-Right in France, where Euroscepticism is riding even higher than in the UK. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National instantly leapt on the referendum across the Channel as justification for a Frexit vote. "Victory for Freedom!” she tweeted minutes after the vote, “As I have been asking for years we must now have the same referendum in France and EU countries.”

Europe will be at the heart of the next presidential election in April 2017 with Ms Le Pen – who polls suggest will reach the second-round run-off – already pledging to become "Madame Frexit" and call a referendum on France's EU membership within six months, if she wins.

That remains a big ‘if’, since France’s mainstream parties are likely to unite against her, but her claims echo a rising groundswell of Euroscepticism in France, where a protracted economic crisis and anger over immigration have led an even more categoric rejection of the EU than in Britain.

A pan-European survey by the Pew Research Center released ahead of the Brexit vote found that 61 per cent of French voters have an “unfavourable” view, compared to 48 per cent in the UK.

A clear majority is opposed to “ever closer union” and wants powers returned to the French parliament, a finding that sits badly with the insistence by President Francois Hollande that “more Europe” is the answer to the EU’s problems...

Much anti-EU sentiment in France comes from the working-class French electorate who feel the whole EU project has been hijacked by “ultra-liberal” technocrats and want to see it go the other way.

They have vented their fury to the world during a string of nationwide strikes, blockages and scenes of urban unrest, leading Jean-Luc Mélenchon, French firebrand leftist MEP, to predict that France would have voted to leave the EU if asked.