Forecast
- In the coming years, national governments, opposition
groups and civil society organizations will increasingly turn to popular
votes to decide a broad range of EU-related debates.
- National governments will probably use referenda (or, more
likely, the threat of them) to demand concessions from the European
Union, to justify domestic decisions or to increase their own
popularity.
- Votes will take place against a backdrop of growing nationalism
and fear of globalization, and the results will likely freeze or reverse
the process of EU integration.
Analysis
Europe seems to be in a referendum frenzy these days. In early May,
the Hungarian government confirmed its decision to hold a referendum on
the European Commission's plan to distribute asylum seekers among
member states. In April, Dutch citizens voted against the European Union
Association Agreement with Ukraine in a referendum organized by a
Euroskeptic organization. In June, the United Kingdom will hold a
crucial vote on whether to leave the European Union altogether. The
three votes have a common denominator: EU citizens are essentially being
asked to decide on issues connected to the process of Continental
integration.
Considering the European Union's political and economic predicament,
referenda are a very attractive tool to win the loyalty of voters. The
democratic legitimacy of the European Union is being questioned, and
moderate governments and their Euroskeptic opposition alike are turning
to the voters for their own political gain. In the coming years,
referenda will be proposed by three main sources — national governments,
opposition groups and civil society organizations — and they will touch
upon a broad range of EU-related questions.
An Interesting Paradox
The European Union has a tempestuous history with referenda. European
governments have made many crucial decisions affecting national
sovereignty without consulting the populace. The founding members of the
European Economic Community (the European Union's predecessor) did not
hold referenda when the supranational organization was created in 1957.
Four decades later, the initial members of the eurozone did not ask
voters their opinion before creating the currency union. Only Denmark
and Sweden held referenda on whether to enter the eurozone, and people
voted not to join it. The United Kingdom, in turn, negotiated an opt-out
with its EU peers.
When nations have consulted their citizens, the results have many
times tended against European integration. The Irish initially voted
against the treaties of Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2008), which transferred
more power from the national government to EU institutions. In both
cases, Dublin negotiated concessions from the European Union before
holding second referenda, which resulted in favorable votes for the
treaties. In Denmark the treaty of Maastricht, which created the
European Union, required a second referendum to pass in 1993 after
people voted against it a year earlier. Perhaps the most notorious EU
referenda were held in France and the Netherlands in 2005, when people
voted against a plan to establish an EU constitution. Such strong
popular rejection in two founding EU members caused the bloc to abort
the project.
Whether
the European Union is democratically legitimate has
been a matter of debate for decades. Aware that transferring national
sovereignty to unelected technocrats in Brussels could alienate voters,
national governments decided to enhance the role of the EU Parliament,
the only international organization whose members are elected by
universal suffrage. The idea was that, by giving the European Parliament
a greater participation in the Continent's decision-making process, the
European Union would become more democratic.
But Europe's economic and political crises have exacerbated the
debate over the bloc's democratic legitimacy, and governments are
becoming increasingly nationalistic in response. With its impending
referendum on whether to stay in the union, the United Kingdom is the
most extreme example of this trend. But other countries are likely to
make similar demands in the future. The referendum issue poses an
interesting paradox: Asking voters to weigh in on European issues seems
to be the most democratic way to reform the European Union — an arguably
undemocratic institution. But as is usually the case, things are not as
simple as they initially seem, and the practice could in fact weaken
the bloc beyond repair.
Layers of Complexity
On the surface, referenda are the most formidable tool of democracy,
giving voters a direct say on political, economic and social issues.
They allow people to re-engage with the political process and give
governments a popular mandate for major decisions that require a broad
consensus. This explains why referenda are often used to reform
constitutions or to make decisions on socially and politically sensitive
issues (such as abortion or the death penalty).
But critics of referenda argue that they force voters to make
decisions on complex issues about which they may not have complete
knowledge. Referenda tend to create the illusion that complex issues can
be presented in simple terms; the vote is often reduced to a binary
"yes" or "no" answer. Referenda are also intimately linked to domestic
political situations. Many citizens and political parties tend to see
referenda as a vote on the government rather than on the issue under
discussion, and the outcome is often determined by the economic
situation or the popularity of the government at the time.
The European supranational government creates an additional layer of
complexity. EU-related issues tend to be harder for voters to understand
than national issues, and voters tend to more closely identify with and
care about national rather than supranational issues. This means that
voters often decide on EU referenda according to domestic political and
economic conditions. Many of the French votes against the European
Constitution, for example, were actually a vote against former President
Jacques Chirac. The same happens with elections for the EU parliament;
most political parties tend to campaign on domestic issues rather than
on European issues. Thus, European Parliament election results are
widely perceived as a barometer of the popularity of national
governments.
EU-related referenda are also complex because of their impact on
decision-making in Europe. Treaties need to be ratified by all member
states before they become take effect, which means that in those
countries where referenda are needed to ratify a treaty (such as in
Ireland and Denmark), the entire process could be stalled because of the
decision of voters in a single country. This creates enormous
uncertainty about the feasibility of passing treaties, but it also gives
countries temporary albeit notable leverage to negotiate concessions
when voters vote no. Denmark, for example, received several exemptions
from EU requirements after people initially voted against the Maastricht
Treaty.
A Powerful Negotiating Tool
To a large extent, the current spate of referenda in Europe is a result of the upcoming British vote. London proved that
referenda can be used to extract concessions from Brussels, but
it also that the process of Continental integration can be frozen or
even reversed with a popular vote. In the coming years, governments will
probably use referenda (or, more likely, the threat of referenda) to
demand concessions from the European Union, to justify domestic
decisions, or to increase their own popularity. The net result of this
situation will be to further distance EU member states from the
centralized core in Brussels.
Naturally, not every country is in the same position to make demands. In 2015 the Greek government used a
referendum against austerity to
pressure its lenders to soften the terms of its bailout agreement with
little success. In Hungary's case, the government will use popular
opposition to the relocation scheme to justify its rejection of the plan
in Brussels and to improve its popularity at home. But Hungary's
position will be stronger if it coordinates its actions with other
like-minded countries in the region. Larger EU members may feel more
tempted than their smaller peers to threaten referenda, since they can
inflict more damage on the European Union.
Euroskeptic political parties will also use referenda as a part of
their electoral campaigns. The leader of the nationalist Freedom Party
of Austria recently said Austria should be "governed via referenda" as
Switzerland is. France's National Front has promised to hold a vote on
the country's EU membership if it wins the presidential election in
2017. Italy's Five Star Movement has said it would hold a referendum on
the country's membership in the eurozone if elected. Considering that
France and Italy are the second- and third-largest economies in the
eurozone, respectively, such referenda could finally doom the European
Union. Promising to put EU-related issues to a vote helps these parties
to soften their image, because a referendum looks less threatening (and
more democratic) than the promise of unilateral action. Finally,
interest groups or nongovernmental organizations may try to push their
agendas in a similar way. But their options are more limited; only a
handful of EU members have mechanisms that allow for citizens to
organize referenda.
In Italy, referenda organized by citizens are binding, but only if
voter turnout is above 50 percent. Most of the citizen-backed referenda
in the past two decades were declared void because of low voter turnout.
In the Netherlands, the threshold for voter turnout is much lower (30
percent), but the referenda organized by the public are not binding.
However, even non-binding votes can put governments in awkward
situations. The Dutch government is currently looking for ways to honor
its promise to respect the
result of a referendum
in which people asked The Hague not to sign an association agreement
between the European Union and Ukraine. Countries such as Croatia,
Lithuania and Hungary also have mechanisms that enable citizens to
propose a referendum.
Some countries have other mechanisms of direct democracy. In Austria
and Finland, for example, people can force their parliaments to discuss a
certain topic if they collect enough signatures. In late April, the
Finnish parliament held a debate on the country's membership in the
eurozone after a group of citizens collected signatures to force the
topic. While the debate was not binding, citizens sent their government a
clear signal that they are worried about the effect of the common
currency on the Finnish economy. These discussions can be particularly
awkward when, like in Finland, a Euroskeptic party is actually a member
of the government and has to find a balance between its political
manifesto and its coalition commitments.
The Upcoming Votes
There are plenty of issues in Europe that could be decided by a
referendum in the coming years. Though a new EU treaty is very unlikely
in the current political environment, any attempts to modify the bloc's
legal framework would trigger an avalanche of referenda across the
Continent. Euroskeptic political parties and organizations in Southern
Europe, as well as more moderate governments, could threaten to put
their membership in the European Union or the eurozone to a vote so as
to demand concessions from Brussels on varied topics, including fiscal
targets and debt restructuring. Euroskeptic forces in Northern Europe
could push for referenda to resist measures that undermine their
national wealth.
Separatist movements in places such as Catalonia, Scotland and Flanders will continue to push for
referenda for more autonomy or for outright independence.
Regional or municipal governments can resist EU plans to allocate
asylum seekers in their territories by putting the issue to a vote.
Cyprus' Greek south and its Turkish north are once again negotiating to
reunify the island, but any agreement will have to be ratified by both
sides in a referendum. (In 2004, Greek Cypriots rejected a U.N.-backed
plan in a referendum.)
Referenda can also affect international affairs beyond the European
Union. Popular pressure could force governments in several EU nations to
hold a referendum on trade agreements such as the Trans-Atlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership. Countries like Finland and Sweden are
unlikely to join NATO without a referendum, and Austria and Ireland are
not planning to join the military alliance any time soon, but if they
did, a referendum would be difficult to avoid.
These votes will probably be held against the backdrop of growing
nationalism and fear of globalization. They will almost certainly be
influenced by the political and economic situation at the time of the
vote and will be subject to populist manipulation from both the
organizers and their opponents (something true of most elections). The
alleged attempts to solve the European Union's crisis of representation
could therefore contribute to the bloc's weakening.
