Exiting after Brexit: Public Perceptions of Future EU Member State Departures

Despite predictions of a domino or destabilising effect, measures of EU27 public opinion on the European Union in the wake of Brexit generally appear to have shown a stable-to-positive trend. In the UK itself, public opinion on the Brexit process itself appears largely stable to moderately negative, with scholars noting the emergence of new, apparently durable political identities centring around ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ orientations after the 2016 vote. This points to Brexit conferring a new robustness or togetherness to the EU27 absent the former ‘awkward partner’. Research on benchmarking calculations of the contagion effect has to date reinforced these findings: Brexit is perceived by EU27 citizens to have gone badly for the UK, thus tempering any appetite to emulate it in other countries. Expert assessments also deem further departures unlikely, despite present threats to cohesion presently posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and democratic backsliding in several Visegrad states. But how do European publics perceive the possibility of future exits? While the current literature generally assesses public opinion relating to individuals’ own countries, this paper draws on new survey data to explore perceptions of further membership disintegration across the whole bloc. Strikingly, it finds that EU publics perceive further exits to be likely over the next decade, a perception that is only partially explained by individuals’ own exit preferences. The paper thus identifies a gap between instrumental loyalty borne out of an aversion to Brexit, and a wider sense that the current membership of the EU is not secure. It suggests that this could have meaningful repercussions as the union seeks to move beyond its decade of crisis fighting and towards new debates about its membership and purpose.