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Both the EU and UK want closer ties, says a survey from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
The survey looked at both EU-UK and EU/UK-US relations.
It comes at a time of heightened global uncertainty, highlighted by the looming trade war sparked by new trade tariffs by President Trump and others.
Rising tensions in the Middle East and continued war in Ukraine, plus the new Donald Trump presidency, have pushed nations to reassess their positions.
Evidence of this is the reset in relations taking shape between the EU and the UK, manifest in Sir Keir Starmer’s meeting with President of the European Council Antonio Costa and Rachel Reeves’ meeting with EU finance ministers last week, as well as in recent discussions over a €500bn joint fund for European common defence projects and arms procurement which would be open to non-EU states such as the UK and Norway.
ECFR’s latest YouGov and DataPraxis survey of six European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Poland and Spain) is one of the most comprehensive polls of public attitudes towards UK-EU relations since 2016
The pan-EU survey found that both the EU and UK want closer ties.
In Britain, a majority of 55% think the UK should get closer to the EU compared to only 10% who prefer a more distant relationship.
Across the EU, pluralities in every country polled concur. 45% of Germans want the relationship to get closer (compared to 9% who want it more distant), and similar patterns can be found in Poland (44% to 5%), Spain (41% to 11%) and Italy (40% to 11%).
The survey found that Europeans see multi-area benefits from closer links.
Pluralities in all five EU countries think greater EU-UK cooperation is the best way to:
– Boost the European economy (with 38% of respondents expressing this view in Spain, 33% in Italy, 32% in Germany and Poland, and 26% in France);
– Strengthen European security (42% in Germany, 41% in Spain, 39% in Italy and Poland, and 32% in France) and
– Manage migration efficiently (36% in France, 33% in Italy, 31% in Spain and Poland, and 29% in Germany).
When asked who the UK government should prioritise relations with, 50% choose Europe and only 17% the US.
When asked which relationship is most important for ensuring jobs for British people, a plurality of former leave voters (32%) look to Europe compared to only 13% to the US.
Most European citizens think that a new security partnership is so valuable to the EU that the institutions should be willing to offer better economic access.
A prevailing view in each of the surveyed European countries is that the EU should grant the UK special access to certain parts of the European single market in exchange for a closer security relationship.
