Majority of EU voters in favour of Ukraine joining the EU, exclusive IPSOS/Euronews poll finds

euronews (in English)

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

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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]

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