"Polls indicate that an exit referendum might pass in other countries, particularly ones which are also part of the monetary union," Portland State University Economics Professor Robin Hahnel said on Wednesday.
Hahnel warned that EU political and financial leaders were likely to seek to harshly punish the United Kingdom in order to discourage other nations from seeking to exit the bloc.
"I suspect the establishment running the EU [and] Euro Zone are trying to come up with a strategy to ward off this threat, beginning with making the divorce expensive for the United Kingdom to frighten others out of doing the same," Hahnel cautioned.
However, unless the EU’s policymakers revised their harsh and inflexible economic policies, popular pressure to leave the European Union would inevitably grow in other countries as well, Hahnel predicted.
"If EU leaders do not change course on economic policy or on accepting refugees from the Mideast and Africa, if they ‘double down’ on what they have been doing, because this is unsustainable I foresee more exits eventually," Hahnel stated.
New York-based foreign affairs analyst and author Dan Lazare agreed that following the Brexit vote on June 24, other European nations would seek to negotiate improved terms with Brussels.
"The after-shocks will be felt around the world. Greece, Spain, and Portugal will no doubt feel emboldened to seek a better deal from the European Union… while a fed-up Germany will probably wind up less accommodative [toward them]," Lazare predicted.
The Brexit vote would also weaken the European Union by exposing racial resentments between different ethnicities among its member-states, Lazare explained.
A chain-reaction effect in different nations with angry popular movements more openly expressing long-held grievances will create a new general climate of suspicion and confrontation among the EU’s remaining 27-member-states, Lazare warned.
Increased nationalism in countries like the United Kingdom and Poland "will in turn strengthen the far right throughout ‘Old Europe’," he observed.
The long-term future of the EU project had been thrown into confusion and doubt by the Brexit vote, Lazare pointed out.
"Where do people go from here? No-one knows. The only thing that is certain is that British voters have upset the applecart and given the establishment a resounding vote of no confidence," he said.
The elites in the United States and Europe faced the same kind of popular anger at their increasing failure to deliver prosperity and economic security, Lazare concluded.
