Britain’s shock decision to leave the European Union has sparked an earthquake at home.
The British political establishment in a state of civil war. The British pound hit a 30-year low against the dollar and a range of assets in the markets reaching historic lows last week—with one of the only things that appears to be increasing is hate crimes.
What the vote has also done is make a lot of other people reconsider their own animosity towards Europe, where nearly half of Europeans wanted their own referendum on staying in the EU.
Support for the EU surged in Nordic countries, as the impact of Brexit begins to set in. In Denmark, the percentage of people backing EU membership jumped from 59.8% before Brexit to 69% after the referendum, according to a Voxmeter poll by Ritzau. Support for a Brexit-style referendum among Danes dropped from 40.7% to 32%.
There was a similar trend in Finland (link in Finnish), where 69% said they were not interested in a referendum on EU membership following Brexit. If a referendum did go ahead, 68% said they would vote to stay. In a separate poll conducted by a different organization, only 56% wanted to stay in March.
Marine Le Pen, leader of if France’s conservative National Front party, warmly embraced the results of the referendum. “As I have been demanding for years, it is now necessary to hold the same referendum in France and the EU countries,” she has said.
But Le Pen’s dream of a referendum is unlikely to come to fruition anytime soon as there seems to be little interest for a French referendum on leaving the EU—a so-called Frexit. While France’s relationship with the EU is likely to influence the presidential elections next year, 55% of those polled rejected the idea of holding a referendum on EU membership after Brexit, and 61% saying they will vote remain if such a referendum happened—and their camp’s support had risen (paywall) from before the British vote.
The increased support for the EU doesn’t mean the institution is out of trouble yet. Hungary is the latest country to call a controversial referendum—this time on whether Hungary should accept quotas for resettling asylum seekers. The EU plans to impose mandatory quotes for resettling 160,000 asylum seekers across Europe, which the government fiercely opposes.