They asked.
Imagine a country suffered some kind of major crisis, and was looking for help from others. Do you think [country] should or should not be willing to offer financial help to each of the following countries?
Some quick facts:
- Country which people were most willing to help (average): Italy (+30)
- Country which people were least willing to help (average): UK (-8)
- Most generous countries: Romania, UK, and Poland (no country in Europe they weren’t willing to help).
- Strongest willingness to help: Spain willing to help Portugal (+64)
- Strongest rejection of help: Greece willing to help Germany (-36)
Here are some more numbers from the map above.
- Germany: Most willing to help Austria (+52) and least willing to help the UK (-13)
- France: Most willing to help Italy (+31) and least willing to help the UK (-25)
- UK: Most willing to help Ireland (+49) and least willing to help Lithuania (+3)
- Italy: Most willing to help Greece (+50) and least willing to help Germany (-13)
- Spain: Most willing to help Portugal (+64) and least willing to help UK (-14)
- Netherlands: Most willing to help Belgium (+60) and least willing to help Greece (-9)
- Romania: Most willing to help Bulgaria (+51) and least willing to help UK (+6)
- Finland: Most willing to help Estonia (+44) and least willing to help UK (-30)
You can see the full table below:
Note: Figures shown are net (Net = those who would help – those who wouldn’t help)
How to read:
1 Figures shown are the net willingness of people from countries listed across the top…
2 ..to help countries listed down the side
So, for instance, in Spain the % of people who would be willing to help Italy is 49 points higher
than the % who would be unwilling to help (i.e. a net score of +49)
I’m a pretty ardent Remainer but seeing these results does make me question things. The British are willing to help out most other European countries in crisis, yet most would not return the favour.
In any case what do you think?
Adam says
It would be interesting to see the change in willingness to help from 2010 to 2020. I would think Exit would have done serious damage to the UK’s standings.
Anonymous says
I am French and even if I live in the UK, I noticed when I was in France that most French people don’t like the British because of the Brexit. It would be interesting to see how it was before the Brexit.
Jimmy says
There is a mistake in the article. You say “Strongest willingness to help: Spain willing to help Portugal (+64)”. However, Greece’s willingness to help Cyprus is +67, which is larger than Spain’s willingness to help Portugal.
Brilliant Maps says
You are correct, the original statement applies to the map, whereas if you include the whole data set you are correct.
Ruben Lugo says
Likely people aren’t willing to forgive for any past wrongs they might have had them. That’s a big problem the world always been.