74% of EU citizens think that their country has benefited from EU membership

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Source can be downloaded from the EU website: https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/api/deliverable/download/file?deliverableId=97983

It's linked to on this page (near the bottom in the "infographics" section): https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3492

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22% are idiots

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From what I notice in the Netherlands. The people who think the EU does not benefit them are mostly people that work (or own companies) in industries that the EU regulates harshly (think farmers here). Ofc these people think its not beneficial to be in the EU, their livelihoods are at risk because of it.

I do think the EU is basically necessary for the EU countries to thrive.

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Or listening to government propaganda in Hungary

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if the netherlands is anything like sweden, farming is likely heavily subsidised by the eu. that's the annoying part; there are valid criticisms of the union (inconsistency, inertia, advisors, lobbying) but anti-pollution regulations with appropriate compensation is not it.

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As a citizen of a former EU country (UK, of course) I think that too.

I'm still salty about Brexit.

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Or view it as an imperialist institution and think their countries are better off with fiscal autonomy over a shared currency. Really, most anti-eu leftists argue mostly against using the euro than anything else from what I read

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The Dutch government has botched implementing these environmental reforms quite a bit in the past, which has caused right wing / anti enviromental parties to swoop in and claim the bigger environmental rules are the problem, instead of the way they were implemented.

There’s this one big ‘farmer’s party’ and a lot of farmers have bought into their lie of representing actual farmers, but the party was founded by lobbyists and their biggest donators are chemical companies who would benefit a ton from being allowed to pollute

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It's sad that those 20% are the ones who vote and all the others stay at home and don't vote. Gotta protect our democracy like that

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It'd be funny if all the countries in the world started a unified concerted effort of tariffs against the US. Sure I live here, and I'd suffer, but it'd still be funny.

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The red-green party here in Denmark was against EU until Brexit - now there's no party against EU. Thanks Britain for showing the rest of EU how big of a fuckup it is to stand outside Schengen and everything else.

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If we're talking about the big, rich EU counties, then yes. But for poorer ones, EU has genuinely fucked some of them over via imposing austerity and offloading debts onto the working classes of those nations, often via strong arming.

Greece is an explosive example of this, being fucked over by their incompetent government, sure, but also by Troika who literally strong armed them into taking bailouts fully knowing they wouldn't be able to pay them thanks to extreme austerity measures, leading into an even deeper crisis. When Greeks elected anti-austerity parties who resisted, Troika cut off Greek banks from emergency funding, leading them into a collapse and offered an even more predatory deal afterwards. Even when looking at the more successful crises (Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Cyprus), it's debatable whether or not Troika did more bad than good with their imposed austerity.

Wall of text, blah blah - EU is still overall good, don't get me wrong, but it's idiotic to say that they're free from criticism and anyone who does so is just deep in the propaganda.

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I wonder what the remaining 26% are thinking?

Maybe: Nah we'd be better off trading with Russia?
Or: We can do everything ourselves!!
Or: Just look at UK, they are doing GREAT!!
Maybe: Fuck all that tolerance, I liked it better when we beat up LGBT and foreigners because it's the moral thing to do.

Well at least it's a pretty big majority that realize there are benefits.

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I think You'll get your laugh, and USA will enter their own exclusive recession.
And Trump will claim victory somehow, and not let the pain in one foot, prevent him from shooting himself in the other foot too.

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The UK was never a part of the Schengen, even while being a part of the EU

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He shot himself in the foot so many times he now has a permanent hole where bullets go through, so that way he's not shooting himself in the foot anymore. 10D chess my friend.

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Tariffs harm the country that imposes them. Trump will bring this upon himself.

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As an irish person, brexit drove up the price of shipping on ebay, so i oppose it.

::: spoiler spoiler
/s
:::

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You're correct on your analysis, older governments and the farming industry alike essentially ignored the problem hoping it would go away (spoiler: it didnt).

Luckily that farmer party is not big anymore. They do still hold quite some seats in the Dutch senate from the 1-2 elections they were big (which they will lose in a couple of years), but not in the house anymore, where they are essentially only a small party now and are projected no more than 2-4 seats of 150 seats in total. (Sadly most of their voters jumped ship to the next group of populists, the anti immigration party 🥲)

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74% of EU citizens think that their country has benefited from EU membership