At A Fistful of Euros, Doug Muir (Halfway down the Danube) digs through a recent Eurobarometer poll on EU enlargement and finds some fascinating patterns.

The big picture holds no surprise -- those polled from countries which are newly added members are decidedly more enthusiastic about further enlargement than those from the older fifteen members. And Albania and Turkey don't generate much enthusiasm at all.

Where things get interesting is breaking down the poll further by both individual member countries and candidate countries. Among the older fifteen, the Brits are less favorable to enlargement in the abstract, and more so when considering the candidacies of specific countries. The reverse is true for Spain and Portugal. And Austrians seem to be a bunch of Dr No's across the board -- maybe that's what 50 years of neutrality will do for you.

Long-standing diplomatic ties seem to be less important for producing favorable attitudes than more recent economic links -- or else, familiarity breeds contempt -- but Romania isn't a favorite with the French public, nor is Croatia with Germans. And the biggest surprise for me is that Bulgaria seems to have had wide success in winning hearts if not minds.

Doug has lots more interesting bits.

And while we're on the subject of aFoE's coverage of Europolitics, check out guest blogger Alex Harrowell (my favorite Yorkshire Ranter) and his most recent German election watch. He reads the German press so you don't have to pretend to and sketches the permutations and combinations of coalitions, grand and not so grand, including "the possibility of the imagination-buggering Schröder-Lafontaine reconciliation."