Double Dutch: The Referendum on the European Constitution

Abstract

On 1 June 2005 the Dutch rejected the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in a referendum which asked the voters whether parliament should approve it, yes or no. About 63 per cent of the persons eligible to vote actually cast a vote, and nearly 62 percent of them answered ‘NO’. Yet, the actual meaning of this rejection is in several respects hard to explain. This is so, particularly because of the fact that both the Dutch government and parliament have been massively supporting European integration, while – although the matter was never put to the vote – support in parliament for the draft EU Constitution previous to the referendum was about 85 %. And surprisingly, after a brief moment of confusion, members of parliament were nearly jubilant over the ‘success’ of the referendum. Part of the confusion was the call for a ‘broad social debate on Europe’ – similar to the Irish Forum on Europe organized after the negative in the first Nice referendum – which found huge support in parliament and also with the government. But once it was to be organized, it floundered on unwillingness both of the government and parliament to agree on who should do what and how. So after some three months the nearly unanimous enthusiasm over a national Europe debate, it was called off. In this brief report we try to provide some information on the background of the referendum and its results in an attempt to make sense of this double Dutch.