Majority of Germans, including far right, back the EU: poll

EU membership is strongly supported by an overwhelming 87% of Germans, with most far-right voters also in favour of remaining in the bloc, according to a new poll published on Thursday.

With just seven months to go until the European elections in June 2024, EU membership continues to enjoy a high level of support among the German population, according to a poll conducted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a think tank linked to main opposition centre-right party CDU.

In the poll conducted between June and September, 87% of respondents said they backed Germany’s continued membership, while 10% said they were against it.

Far-right AfD voters are also mostly in favour, with 52% of the respondents stating they would vote for the far-right AfD party backing Germany’s EU membership – compared to Green voters who were most in favour of staying, with 97%.

But AfD voters were also the most opposed to Germany remaining a member of the EU bloc, with 42% saying they were against membership – compared to less than 10% of voters for other parties.

While the authors of the study emphasise that “Germans are traditionally known as Europhiles”, the results among right-wing voters highlight a shift in the EU’s standing.

Exit scenarios used to be a favourite topic of right-wing populists across the bloc. But even the far-right AfD no longer dares to push for Germany to go the Brexit route and has even backtracked after its earlier call for a ‘controlled dissolution’ of the EU found its way into a draft manifesto for the 2024 European elections.

Its top candidate, Maximilian Krah, deemed a hardliner, denied that the party wanted Germany to leave while “everybody else [stayed] in”. Instead, he suggested cutting back on EU institutions, indicating the new direction for German Euroscepticism.

Amid several global crises, the EU appears to be perceived as an important actor on key issues, according to the respondents, of which less than a fifth were inclined to think that European integration had gone too far.

Instead, an overwhelming majority strongly or very strongly agreed that the economy, climate change, defence and migration should be the bloc’s responsibility.

(Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de)