Germans unenthusiastic about next week’s EU enlargement

Lisbeth Kirk reports from Berlin, December 28, 2006 - “Germans are neither enthusiastic about their country taking over the six-month EU presidency or about the prospect of Romania and Bulgaria joining the bloc next week, a new poll has shown.”

A majority of Germans (53%) say they are opposed to Romania and Bulgaria becoming member states, while 39 percent are in favour of the bloc’s latest expansion, according to an Infratest Dimap poll reported in German daily Die Welt.

Opposition to enlargement is greatest in the conservative CDU and CSU camp, where only 33 percent are in favour of the two new countries joning the EU while a majority of the Social Democrats (49%) support enlargement, with 42% opposed.

Meanwhile, expectations among German citizens for the country’s time at the helm of the EU, beginning on 1 January, are also low. Some 62 percent do not believe Berlin’s presidency will improve the public image of the EU.

For their part, the new member countries are also approaching EU membership with uncertainty - with the Romanian government having to set up a website to counter 22 myths in circulation about the consequences of EU membership.

“I got alarmed when an old woman asked me whether it’s true she would no longer be allowed to use the parsley she’s been growing in her yard in her soup,” said Anca Boagiu, the Romanian minister in charge of EU integration, according to Bloomberg.

The truth still hasn’t reached many Romanians, particularly the 40 percent who live in rural areas, the minister said.

Some believe rich foreigners will buy Romanian property on a large scale after enlargement, that butchers and milk-processing factories are to close and that Romanians will no longer be allowed to slaughter pigs or produce home-made brandy.

Still, a majority of Romanians (65%) have a “very positive or fairly positive image” of membership, according to an Eurostat poll released on 18 December, but this is down from 76 percent in 2004.