According to a survey that was commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank, more than half of Europeans think that the European Union is likely to collapse within a single generation.

Of the citizens in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, and France that were surveyed, a majority concluded that the break-up of the European Union is a ‘realistic possibility’ in the next 10 to 20 years.

Of the countries surveyed, Slovakia had the most people who believed that the EU was fairly likely or likely to disintegrate within 20 years, with 66 percent of those surveyed believing so. As far as euroskepticism goes, France second came in second, with 58 percent of people believing that the EU would break apart in the next 20 years.

YouGov polled 14 European counties – which make up about 80 percent of the seats in the European Parliament – and only Sweden (44 percent), Denmark (41 percent), and Spain (40 percent) where the majority of those who were surveyed didn’t foresee a looming collapse of the political union. Surprisingly enough, a third of survey respondents stated that they believed that future armed conflict between European countries was plausible, with the figure reaching as high as 41 percent among supporters of Germany’s national populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The European Council on Foreign Relations director Mark Leonard stated that ‘pro-European’ parties need to offer voters ‘bold ideas’ to make sure that Europe’s ‘silent majority’ – as he put it – vote in the upcoming European parliamentary elections.

“There are seven days to resolve the paradox at the heart of the European project. Support for EU membership is at the highest level since 1983, and yet a majority of voters fear the EU might collapse. The challenge for pro-Europeans is to use this fear of loss to mobilize their silent majority and ensure it is not just the anti-system parties who get their say. It is not yet too late. With a volatile European electorate, there are up to 97 million voters who could still be persuaded to vote for different parties,” Mr. Leonard added.

The survey also discovered that nearly 92 percent of Europeans believed that they would suffer if the European Union happened to disintegrate – particularly with respect to work, travel, and trade.