A boy waves a
German flag on an empty tribune prior to a football match in
Frankfurt …
Germany is the most popular
country in the world despite well-publicised protests against its
insistence on austerity measures within the European Union, an
annual poll for the BBC World Service revealed on Thursday.
More than 26,000
people from around the world were asked to rate 16 countries on
whether their global influence was "mainly positive" or "mainly
negative".
Some 59 percent of
those polled rated Germany as having a positive influence, while at
the other end of the spectrum, Iran came last with only 15 percent
looking upon it favourably.
Even in Spain,
which is suffering from stringent austerity measures due to a
German-led financial rescue package, 68 percent said they felt
Germany had "a mainly positive influence in the world".
Respondents in
Greece, which has seen anti-German protests depicting Chancellor
Angela Merkel as a Nazi for her insistence on fiscal
belt-tightening, gave it the worst rating with 52 percent saying it
was a bad influence.
Germany displaced
Japan at the top of the table, with the Asian giant's popularity
falling from 58 percent last year to 51 percent.
Canada and Britain
scored second and third, both with 55 percent positive ratings,
while Pakistan and North Korea completed the bottom three.
The poll was
conducted for the BBC by GlobeScan and PIPA, and quizzed randomly
selected people in 25 countries.
