Brussels, London, 18/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - The President of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine, has welcomed Europeans' popular support for the changeover to the euro, saying the distribution of kits of small change was the first large-scale test, to which Europeans responded enthusiastically. She predicted that the changeover to notes and coins would work well.
According to a survey published in the British newspaper The Guardian, 62% of the UK population believes that the UK will inevitably join the euro in the next decade, up from 31% last year. Only 14% of those polled believed the UK would still not have joined the eurozone in 2011 and 19% feel that the euro would be a failure and the original currencies would have to be reintroduced (compared with 34% in 2000). The poll also showed that the gap between opponents and supporters of the UK joining the eurozone had narrowed with 58% saying they would vote "No" in a referendum over whether to join the euro, 31% saying they would vote "Yes" - a 27 point gap in favour of Eurosceptics, down from 53 points last year.