Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

EUROPEAN UNION

Swexit, nej tack! Most Swedes would vote ‘remain’: survey

Swedes are among the happiest in the EU with their country's membership of the union, according to a new Eurobarometer poll on behalf of the European Parliament.

Published: 17 October 2018 12:32 CEST
Updated: 17 October 2018 15:32 CEST
Swexit, nej tack! Most Swedes would vote 'remain': survey
Swedes give the red light to leaving the EU. Photo: Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT

A total of 77 percent of Swedish respondents believe EU membership is a good thing, an increase of nine percentage points over the past six months and Sweden's highest recorded level since 2007, according to the survey. Only seven percent said it was a bad thing and 16 percent described it as “neither good nor bad”.

Two thirds of Swedes (63 percent) told the survey they are against joining the European economic and monetary union with one single currency. Sweden voted against adopting the euro with 56 percent no votes to 42 percent yes votes in a national non-binding referendum in 2003.

If a referendum was held tomorrow regarding Sweden's membership of the EU, 83 percent said they would vote to remain and ten percent said they would vote in favour of a Swexit.

Support for remaining is only stronger in Luxembourg and Ireland (85 percent), and Sweden scored significantly higher than the EU on average (66 percent remain, 17 percent leave). Notably, in the UK, currently preparing for Brexit, 53 percent said they would vote remain if a referendum was held today, compared to 35 percent who would vote leave.

Swedish respondents also appear to be content with the level of democracy in the EU (61 percent said they are satisfied with European democracy) with 90 percent saying they believe that their vote counts.

Election Q&A: Where do the Swedish parties stand on Swexit?

A total of 48 percent said however that the EU is “going in the wrong direction”, despite Sweden showing an extraordinary increase in a positive direction when it came to almost all other indicators in the survey.

Pollsters also asked EU residents which areas they consider as threats. Climate change is the top threat for Swedes (62 percent) as well as the Danes and Dutch, compared to terrorism in the UK and France, poverty and social exclusion in Greece, and illegal immigration in Malta, the Czech Republic, Italy and Greece.

A total of 44 percent of Swedes cited organized crime as a threat that they wanted the EU to protect them against, 43 percent cited poverty and exclusion, 42 percent terrorism, 34 percent political extremism, 32 percent religious radicalism, 30 percent armed conflict, 24 percent fake news and disinformation online, 19 percent illegal immigration, 15 percent unemployment and 10 percent cited abuse of personal data online.

The figures are the result of face-to-face interviews with 27,474 EU citizens aged above 15, carried out between September 8th and 26th, at the time of Sweden's general election on September 9th.

Read the full Eurobarometer report HERE.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

EUROPEAN UNION

INTERVIEW: ‘We must make it easier for non-EU citizens to move around Europe’

The European Union needs to urgently allow non-EU citizens to be able to move more freely to another EU country, the MEP leading the talks on changes to residency laws says. He tells Claudia Delpero why current rules mean Europe is losing out to the US.

Published: 8 June 2023 11:52 CEST
Updated: 8 June 2023 14:20 CEST
INTERVIEW: 'We must make it easier for non-EU citizens to move around Europe'

“Even under Donald Trump, the US was more attractive for international talent than the EU is,” says Damian Boeselager, a German Member of the European Parliament (MEP).

Boeselager, a member of the Greens/European Free Alliance group is leading the campaign at the European parliament to bring about a rule change that would effectively make it easier for non-EU citizens to move to another EU country.

“The EU has a huge benefit of a large labour market having freedom of movement for EU citizens,” he says.

“But the truth is that Europe needs labour migration in all areas and all skill levels and therefore, if we want to be more attractive, we should make it easier (for non-EU citizens) to move from one member state to the next.

“If you are fired in New York, you can move to San Francisco and Miami. So… if third-country nationals choose to relocate to Europe, they should have a similar freedom, they should see a single market and not 27 ones,” he said.

The European Parliament recently voted to simplify rules for non-EU nationals to allow them to acquire EU long-term residence status and make it easier to move to other EU countries.

Under a little known EU-law third-country nationals can in theory acquire EU-wide long-term residence if they have lived ‘legally’ in an EU country for at least five years. 

They also must not have been away for more than 6 consecutive months and 10 months over the entire period (the rules are different for Brits covered by Withdrawal agreement). In addition, they have to prove to have “stable and regular economic resources”, health insurance and can be required to meet “integration conditions”, such as passing a test on the national language or culture.

The status, which was created to “facilitate the integration” of non-EU citizens who have been living in the EU for a long time, ensures equal treatment in the country that grants it and, on paper, some free movement rights.

However in practice, this law has not worked as planned. 

Specific rules on residency are applied in each EU country. Most countries require employers to prove they could not find candidates in the local market before granting a permit to a non-EU citizen, regardless of their status. And as well as that most applicants are simply unaware the EU status exists and the rights that come with it.

Free movement for third country nationals is just “an illusion,” says Boeselager.

READ ALSO: What is the EU’s plan to make freedom of movement easier for non-EU nationals?

“The EU does not give out a status. It is always the national governments which have the competence to give out visas or grant asylum, and even the EU long-term residence status is not an EU status, it is a national status regulated under EU law,” Boeselager says.

The MEP says that the European parliament will not change this, but that it will seek to get closer to freedom of movement by adjusting the criteria for applications “so that can you have the long-term residence status in the second member state immediately if you already have it in the first.”

“So, if you get the German card of EU long-term residence, which is basically a German visa, you could go to France and say ‘I have already fulfilled the requirements under the EU long-term residence in Germany, please give me the status in France immediately’… I call it portability of status,” he says.

A change to the rules would benefit UK citizens who lost free movement rights in the EU due to Brexit.

“The fact that the British could potentially benefit from this makes me super happy, but in the end the law is nationality-blind and all third country nationals will benefit and I am super convinced this is the right thing to do,” Boeselager said.

Resistance from EU governments

The European Parliament also want to bring about another change that would make it easier for third-country nationals to move to another EU country.

MEPs recently decided the period of legal residence to obtain EU long-term residence should be cut from five to three years and that it should be possible to combine periods of legal residence in different EU member states, instead of resetting the clock at each move.

Time spent for studying or vocational training, seasonal work, temporary protection (the scheme that applies to Ukrainian refugees), which currently does not count, should be included in the calculation too.

All these rules will have to be agreed by the EU Council, which brings together representatives of EU governments.

And getting all EU member states to agree to the changes being put forward by Boeselager and fellow MEPs may prove difficult.

According to a recent questionnaire circulated by Sweden, the current holder of the EU Presidency, several of the EU parliament’s proposals, including the possibility to cumulate periods of residence in different member states, are viewed negatively by certain member states due to difficulties to check continuous stays and absences.

“The issue with member states is that they don’t trust each other, at least when it comes to the processing of documents,” Boeselager says.

“The second point is that on the Council side we negotiate with the ministries of home affairs, the interior ministries. But this is not necessarily an interior ministry decision but rather an economics decision… and we might be losing out because of this focus on control and fraud that ministries of interior have, whereas we should focus on how the EU attracts talent,” he says.

Boeselager warns that “nine out of 10 companies across Europe tell us they lack labour and over the next 30 years we will lose 60 million people from our workforce.”

EU ministers will have to come up with their common position, possibly by the end of June. Then there will be talks with the parliament. Boeselager hopes interior ministers “would not block too much” and the new law will be adopted before the European parliament elections of June 2024

If that doesn’t happen negotiations and discussions will have to continue into the next legislative period and therefor face a long delay.

“What’s important is that we start having a normal discussion about migration. Migration is such a toxic topic for so many, but the reality is that we do not have endless time to figure out how to become a more competitive and attractive Union and it’s important we get there, so we just need to make a better offer,” Boeselager said.

This article was produced in collaboration with Europe Street news.

SHOW COMMENTS