site.bta57% of Bulgarians Would Vote for Their Country to Remain in EU

57% of Bulgarians Would Vote for Their Country to Remain in EU

Sofia, July 8 (BTA) - Some 57 per cent of Bulgarians would vote for their country to remain in the EU in a referendum like the Brexit vote in the UK. Another 24 per cent would vote for leaving, and the remaining 19 per cent do not know how they would vote, shows a poll conducted by the Open Society Institute in May, weeks before the UK referendum.

The findings were unveiled on Friday by Marin Lessenski, programme director at the Sofia office of the institute. Lessenski spoke at the opening of a discussion on "Europe after Brexit, or the Future of EU Integration," organized by the European Council on Foreign Relations - Sofia.

The poll also shows that local support for Bulgaria's EU membership decreased to 57 per cent in 2016 from 70 per cent in 2013, while the share of "leave" supporters increased to 24 per cent from 14 per cent.

Bulgarians still have very high confidence in EU institutions: it is three times as high as confidence in national institutions. But 22 per cent of respondents trust neither. Some 22 per cent of those polled would vote for a political party campaigning for Bulgaria's leaving the EU, and another 58 per cent would not.

According to Lessenski, there will be consolidation in the EU around the Eurozone and the Schengen area after the Brexit vote, and Bulgaria should step up its efforts for accession.

A European study has revealed that member states want Schengen to continue to exist. Estimates show that a possible demise of Schengen will inflict 470 billion euro in losses until 2025. Countries have various reasons to support Schengen: these include free movement of people, economic and trade relations, Lessenski said. He noted that, to 75 per cent of Bulgarians, free movement of people, goods and services is the biggest benefit of EU membership, compared with an EU average of 55 per cent.

National Assembly Foreign Policy Committee Chairperson Djema Grozdanova predicted that Brexit will cause the EU to lose the balancing force for the decisions of the founding member states. Grozdanova expressed her hope that Brexit will not become a fact after all.

She expects that the Bulgarian EU Presidency, originally planned for the second half of 2018, will likely be brought forward by six months.

Grozdanova noted that Bulgaria favours the common policies for further integration in Europe. Sofia wants the EU to remain united and the European project to continue, she said.

The question of Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen area is not on the current agenda, she said. She remarked that such countries as the Netherlands believe that Bulgaria should not join Schengen until the European Commission publishes two consecutive positive reports on the country's performance in the field of combating corruption and organized crime. According to Grozdanova, Bulgaria may still aspire to join Schengen and work together with Romania to this end, but this is subject to a political decision which is yet to come. The matter will not be solved any more quickly after the Brexit vote, the Foreign Policy Committee leader said.