-Sweden, Germany, Italy and France all under pressure to hold referendums
-Brexit vote will cause a ‘domino effect’ – ‘it is just a matter of time’
-Right wing parties claim European wide support for EU break up
-Shocked Eurocrats went to bed fearing the ‘scrapheap’ by morning
As dawn broke over a shocked Brussels, a group of European MEPs warned that last night’s astonishing Brexit vote will cause the EU to ‘crumble to pieces’ within the next five years.
Their statement came as Britain voted to leave the EU, contrary to all projections by pollsters, to the bewilderment of the Eurocrats in Brussels.
‘This is the beginning of the end for the EU,’ Peter Lundgren, an MEP from the far-Right Sweden Democrat party. ‘So many other countries will follow the UK. Europe will fall.’
The Eurosceptic MEPs from Sweden, Germany, Italy and France said a number of governments will now be under intense pressure to hold referendums of their own, and try to renegotiate their own individual deals.
This, they said, will lead to a ‘domino effect’ in the wake of Britain’s trailblazing and unprecedented decision to leave the EU.
‘It’s just a matter of time,’ Lundgren said. ‘Britain has set a precedent. Other member states will follow and the whole thing will fall apart. It will happen very soon.’
Overnight, as it became apparent that Britain was turning against the EU establishment, Brussels Eurocrats gradually left the bars around the parliament building and went home to bed.
Several British apparatchiks were concerned about their livelihood that he was expecting ‘to be on the scrapheap in the morning’.
The Commission and European Parliament buildings remained deserted, but a number of lights burned on the upper floors as a small number of desperate bureaucrats tried to lay the groundwork for a response to the most momentous event in the Union’s history.
Last night’s extraordinary vote was a reflection of the support for Eurosceptic parties that has been steadily growing across Europe in recent years, including for the populist and far-Right movements.
The Sweden Democrats – which started as a white supremacist party before sanitising its image – became the country’s third-largest party in 2014, and topped opinion polls last year.
In France, the Front National is now finishing first in elections, and in Germany, Alternative Für Deutschland has more than 20,000 members.
Italy, Holland, Austria and other countries also have significant Eurosceptic followings, forming a wave of cynicism towards the EU and its cosseted elites.
Britain’s vote to leave will be seen as a huge boost for the Eurosceptics and populists, who have long argued that the Brussels elite are out of touch with the will of the people. Among them are inevitably a number of far-Right parties.
‘Our support is growing all over Europe,’ Lundgren said. ‘The EU cannot survive. It is too undemocratic, corruption is too high, the Eurocrats’ ambition is too much, there is too much money in the gravy train.
‘It makes ordinary people raving mad. People are gradually realising what’s going on. Britain has now started the process, and Europe will be fully dismantled by another country.’
Jeppe Koford, a mainstream Danish politician who leads the Social Democrats in the European Parliament, admitted that the EU was in dire straits but thought it was ‘too early to make that judgment’.
He said: ‘It’s not the UK referendum that could make Europe fall apart. It’s the lack of solutions to problems, whether its low wages, high unemployment or the terrorist threat,’ he said.
‘These are the main drivers of disintegration, if we’re not strong enough.’
But Beatrix von Storch, an MEP from Germany’s Alternative Für Deutschland, argued that Britain’s stunning decision would ‘start a process that can’t be stopped’, and had turned the EU upside down.
‘Let’s not forget that even those who voted to remain didn’t like the EU much,’ she said. ‘Remain campaigners kept repeating “the EU is not perfect”. They didn’t passionately believe in it, they have just been scared into supporting it.
‘Cameron’s renegotiation was going towards the Eurosceptic side, showing that even the people who are too scared to vote to leave the EU want less of it.’
Marco Zanni, an Italian MEP from the Five Star movement who is also a member of the bloc, said that there were good reasons to predict the downfall of the EU.
He said that the EU is facing ‘three crises at once’: the economic crisis, which has seen a bailout of Greece and deleterious growth across southern European countries; the migration crisis, which has caused the de facto suspension of the Schengen arrangement; and the security crisis, in which major attacks in Brussels and Paris have claimed hundreds of lives.
‘In each and every case, the EU is showing that it cannot solve these problems. It simply does not have the solutions, and people are getting fed up with it,’ he said.
‘In Italy, polls show disaffection with the EU skyrocketing. The majority is still in favour, but it is close to 50-50.
‘Italians are already agitating for a referendum. Last year, two hundred thousand Italians signed a petition demanding a referendum on our membership of the Euro, but it wasn’t granted.
‘The British referendum has given Italians an ambition to have a referendum as well.
‘There will be too much tension to hold the EU together. ‘It will collapse within the next 10 years.’
In France, the far-right National Front celebrated a Brexit ‘Victory’ and said it threatened the disintegration of the entire European project.
Marine Le Pen, the National Front (FN) leader, said the historic European Union vote was a clear indication the 28-nation bloc was ‘decaying’.
Calling for a referendum in her own country, and anticipating other exits across the EU, she said: ‘Victory for liberty!
‘As I’ve asked for many years, it is now necessary to have the same referendum in France and in the European Union.’
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, another member of the Le Pen dynasty and an FN MP, also tweeted ‘Victory!’
