Some things in life are easier to take back than others. On June 23, 2016, the people of the United Kingdom voted via referendum to ditch the European Union, becoming the first and so far only member state to leave. Support for “Brexit” has been increasingly low ever since, as the economic impacts of this decision take their toll, but at the time, a bare majority of those who voted (the referendum turned out 72.2% of registered voters) thought it was very much the right thing to do.
Sound familiar? Donald Trump rose to power in the United States on a similar wave of populism, winning the 2016 presidential election in a stunning upset. And wouldn’t you know it, here’s Trump heading back to the White House in 2024, while EU democracies like Italy, Hungary and maybe even France are turning towards populist leaders.
You may recall the first wave of Brexit-like movements that sprang up in 2016, like “Grexit” for Greece and “Frexit” for France. Which country will be the first to finally join the UK in leaving the Eurozone? Here are the top two contenders according to the politics odds at a top-rated sportsbook like Bovada (find out more with our Bovada Review) as we go to press.
1. Italy (+250)
There was also some early support for “Italexit” (aka Outaly, Quitaly) in 2016, but go figure, when the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) started gaining some real power in the mid-’10s, they also started dialing down their Eurosceptic language. That led to the creation of the Italexit for Italy party in 2020, after founder Gianluigi Paragone was expelled from M5S.
According to the latest Eurobarometer surveys from the EU for Autumn 2024, of the 1,022 Italians polled, 68% said the state of their economy was “bad,” as compared to 60% across the EU as a whole. As with many other countries, the cost of living and immigration are the driving forces behind this vibecession; however, 51% of Italians said they tended to trust the EU as an institution, compared to 33% for the Italian government, which is led by PM Giorgia Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy.
Meloni’s party is aligned with the UK Conservatives (as well as both Trump’s Republicans and Likud in Israel), so it’s entirely possible an Italian Brexit will emerge from this latest anti-establishment wave. Then again, Meloni has also denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine after some hemming and hawing, and is outwardly steering her party towards “Atlanticism” (aka Atlantism, Transatlanticism) as an ideology, hoping to forge greater ties with both the EU and North America.
2. Greece (+400)
You’d think Greece would be an even stronger candidate for leaving the Eurozone, given how mired in debt they were the early ‘10s – to the point where they were worried about an accidental Grexit (“Graccident”) if they defaulted. But those murmurs died down by late 2015, and while Greece is home to some hard-line parties on the right, the current president is Katerina Sakellaropoulou, an independent progressive who has also decried the invasion of Ukraine.
The Greek economy is still in rough shape, mind you, and those Eurobarometer surveys show just 40% trust for the EU. That’s still well ahead of the 23% who trust the Greek government as an institution; as much as this country dabbled in Euroscepticism during the debt crisis, those IMF bailouts and other debt “haircuts” seem to have quieted much of that talk.
Other potential candidates for leaving the EU include Hungary and the Netherlands, each at +800, then it’s a 3-way tie for fifth at +1200 among Spain, Austria and the Czech Republic (aka Czechia). If you’re looking for a value pick on the EU politics odds board, you can get Slovakia at +5000, a much better price than the more famous half of the former Czechoslovakia. What would they call their version of Brexit, though… Slovexit? Slovacate?
