Letting the public have its say

Date: 28/11/1996

FEW political devices stir up as much emotion as referenda. For some, they are the most democratic way of involving people in decisions which affect their future. But for others, they are simplistic and dangerous tools which encourage demagoguery.

The debate over their use is intensifying as EU member states look ahead to the ratification procedures which will set the seal on the revision of the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro.

Pressure for referenda is coming from different quarters in different member states.

The growth of nationalist movements (as in Austria) is one source. The imperative of preserving unity within warring political parties (as in the UK) is another, with pledges for a referendum in the future used to postpone difficult political decisions today.

With the experience of Maastricht still painfully fresh in their minds, most EU governments are doing all they can to avoid committing themselves to putting the results of the current Intergovernmental Conference to a vote.

Only in Ireland, Denmark and possibly Portugal, which is now actively considering the possibility, is a referendum likely to be required by the constitution.

It may appear somewhat ironic that, as the Union's leaders stress the need to replace the 'conspiracy of élites' which characterised the EU's earlier development with greater involvement by a wider public, they remain doggedly reluctant to commit themselves to the idea of a referendum.

But the reasons for this are not hard to find. In no EU country, with the exception of Italy, is the use of referenda an established practice. In some, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, there is deliberately no constitutional provision for consulting the electorate in this way.

In addition, governments increasingly fear that the opportunity would be used by voters to pass judgement on their elected leaders rather than on the particular issue on the table.

Even the three newest recruits to the EU's ranks, all of which held referenda before taking the plunge, look most unlikely to use a similar device to ratify the revised treaty which emerges from the IGC.

“There is a general feeling that some questions are so complex that they are not suitable for a referendum. What you get is the wrong decision based on the wrong information and often an answer to a question you never asked. It is not a suitable way to do business,” explained one Nordic diplomat.

Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky made his own views clear this week when he clearly rejected calls for a referendum on joining the single currency. He argued that his country's electorate had already accepted the move when two-thirds of voters supported EU membership in a referendum in June 1994.

But even governments which are determined to leave the final decisions on ratification of the revised Maastricht Treaty and on the move to monetary union to their national parliaments may not be immune from the results of referenda in other member states.

This was graphically illustrated after the Maastricht negotiations, when a Danish No vote in the country's first referendum on the treaty and a wafer-thin majority in favour in France fuelled Eurosceptic sentiment in the UK.

Without doubt, most attention this time around will again be focused on Denmark. Memories are still fresh of the shock result on 2 June 1992 of the country's first referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. A narrow majority of 50,000 voters rejected the controversial text and brought the constitutional development of the Union to a halt until the Danish electorate was won over a year later with a series of special guarantees.

Misplaced confidence in the government's own ranks, the distribution of 300,000 copies of the complex treaty without any covering explanation and a lively article in a British newspaper claiming that small countries would soon lose many of their EU rights all contributed to the voters' initial hostility to the deal struck at Maastricht.

Lessons have been learnt and many in the Copenhagen government, including the prime minister, would like to avoid an IGC referendum this time.

Under the country's constitution, a limited transfer of sovereignty may take place without a referendum. Anything greater than this would require a five-sixths majority in parliament or approval by the public at large.

Concern over the degree of sovereignty which would be transferred explains the opposition expressed by Danish negotiators to giving the Union its own legal personality for the first time and to taking certain police and judicial matters out of the realm of EU intergovernmental cooperation. Both would make a referendum on the outcome of the IGC in Denmark inevitable.

Ironically, just when many member states are officially shying away from using referenda to endorse the outcome of the IGC, the UK - despite its general lack of familiarity with the devise - is moving towards such a widespread public consultation exercise.

The UK has had a mixed experience with referenda. They have only been called on two occasions - both times by a Labour government largely concerned with healing rifts within the party itself, rather than extending democratic decision-making.

Both gambles partially succeeded. In 1975, the government successfully won the support it sought for its renegotiated EU membership terms. But the debilitating strains placed on the party by the battle for votes between pro- and anti-Europeans continued to make themselves felt well into the next decade.

In the second UK referendum four years later, the Labour government was forced by some of its own parliamentarians to change the rules. No longer would a simple majority of voters in Scotland and Wales be sufficient to give the green light to parliamentary assemblies in both countries. On a low turn-out, voters supported the proposals, but not by the majority deemed necessary by parliament, and they were dropped.

Similar political considerations - the need to keep their parties united and boost their chances of winning the forthcoming British general election - lie behind the commitments made by both Prime Minister John Major and opposition Labour leader Tony Blair to hold a referendum not on the outcome of the IGC, but on whether the UK should embrace a single currency.

The Conservative government has agreed to an EMU referendum in a bid to paper over internal party differences and prevent its candidates from being totally exposed to attacks from the billionaire businessman and Euro MP Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party in the forthcoming election.

There are also strains within the Labour Party over the single currency issue. Blair's referendum pledge has reduced these but, more importantly, it has also removed the threat of accusations being levelled at the party - in what promises to be a general election battle with strident nationalist overtones - that it is ready to sacrifice sterling for the euro.

But neither commitment appears likely to deter Sir James from carrying out his threat to field as many as 500 electoral candidates standing solely on a platform of a full referendum on continued UK membership of the Union, a demand supported by a series of full-page advertisements already running in the country's national media.

The clamour for a referendum on the outcome of the IGC and on the introduction of a single currency in other member states is certain to grow in the months ahead as critics of the Union marshal their forces.

But the odds are that, except where required to do so for constitutional reasons or for reasons of pure political expediency, EU governments will shy away from tempting fate by using a device with such unpredictable consequences.