The poll of 4,000 people in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, the four largest nations using the currency, showed 78 percent of Germans and 65 percent of French people wanted Greece to leave the euro zone, with 51 percent in Spain and 49 percent in Italy also backing a Greek exit.
Large majorities in all four European countries, each of which contains an overall population of 254 million, did not expect that Greece would ever repay its bailout loans even as most said that not saving Greece would increase the euro region’s difficulties “dangerously.”
The poll, conducted by the Ifop Fiducial Institute for the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag and leading newspapers in France (Le Journal du Dimanche), Spain (Madrid-based ABC) and Italy (Corriere della Sera), revealed only small minorities in the four states want to scrap the euro and return to their respective national currencies.
The surveys were carried out from June 18 to June 21 and questioned 976 people in Spain, 1001 in France, 1003 in Germany and 967 in Italy, ABC said. No margin of error was given.
“The poll shows two things,” German Finance Minister Schaeuble said on the matter. “An overwhelming majority want the euro …and secondly it shows how much trust Greece has forfeited among Europeans.”
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