The next one to flip in EU will probably be France.Big majority haven't made the connection yet that it's the sanctions that are constricting supplies to Europe and increasing the cost of living. They actually think it's the Russians not willing to sell on the world markets anymore. Many of my colleagues also think Europe has warehouses full of solar panels, heat pumps, windmills etc all that is needed is a signature from provincial governor "We will innovate/build our asses out of this crisis" while i think this will become a structural thing at least for the next decade maybe even the next two decades... Big big majority are still very pro Ukraine, Russian information streams have pretty much been blocked, even RT telegram channel has been blocked over here.
What you see on the internet is mostly just a small but loud minority, so i don't expect the Netherlands to flip at least not publicly any time soon. The farmer protests over the summer was way more intense than what i'm hearing right now regarding EU sanctions. But then again winter has not yet arrived you can actually still walk around in t-shirt or sweater these days its like 14~18 degrees celsius.
Also a lot of the complaining has died down because the Dutch government for this winter has introduced a price ceiling and energy bill compensation, so most will get through this winter just fine. But at what costs, it means hundreds of millions if not billions that are not being invested in other sectors that also need financing like health care, which even now is being over loaded because of covid or education when i grew up dutch education was top 5~10 in the world now we don't or hardly even rank top 10 anymore.
Im mostly talking about rural areas the urban centres called the Randstad might be completely different but i expect them to be even more pro Ukraine and pro EU not toward sovereignty and just call Ukraine a lost cause side of things and deal with Russians diplomatically. Please don't take this as fact this is just my anecdotal experience right now at the moment.
PS: I'm sure the dutch government has loopholes for their loopholes to still do some trade with Russia, thats a bit of our specialty back stabbing Brussels while still acting like saints.
In fact it was Macron that started this trend. Back last year when CAI was off and EU and China was doing sanctions on each other Macron was the first to do a sneaky deal directly between France and China, cutting out EU in the process:
For two billion euro investment he showed up personally for the occasion. Afterwards Macron got all that bitch slapping going his way with the cancelled sub deal and so on and he started cowering. But his first breaking of the rank might have given people the idea.
Macron has already said he wants to visit Beijing and he even did that thing where he suggested he and Scholz should go together. This time the germans were clever and said oh no you la don't.
