Future EU states keener on US policy than old ones

People in future EU member states are more sympathetic towards US policy than European Union citizens, a public opinion poll showed yesterday.

But the European Commission said its Eurobarometer survey disproved the notion expounded by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of a continent split into "old" and "new" Europe.

More people in both the EU's 15 current members and the 10 which are due to join next May view the US role in keeping world peace as negative rather than positive, the study found.

In the run-up to the Iraq conflict earlier this year, the governments of most central and east European EU candidate countries backed US military action, prompting Rumsfeld to hail them as a "new Europe" in contrast to the Franco-German opposition to the war, which he branded "old Europe."

Over two-thirds of citizens in every country, regardless of its government's stance on the war, want EU foreign policy to be independent of US policy, the poll found.

And in every country of the enlarged EU, except Malta, more than 70 per cent of respondents felt Europe should agree on a common position when an international crisis erupts.