Voting on European Integration: A Long History of Skepticism

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/world/europe/europe-integration-timeline.html

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In past decades, when faced with plebiscites on whether to embrace further European integration, voters across the Continent had a habit of slamming on the brakes — though in several instances they later changed their minds.

So Britain’s vote on June 23 on whether to exit the European Union, a process often referred to as “Brexit,” could have huge ramifications.

Those who favor leaving say that Britain would have stronger control over its borders if it left the union, and that it could negotiate trade deals on its own. Their opponents warn that leaving the world’s largest trading bloc will have dire economic consequences.

Most economists say that leaving the European Union will have a negative impact in the short term, but that the longer-term consequences are less clear.

Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a research organization in London, noted that referendums in Europe had often fallen prey to oversimplification, base appeals to emotions and scaremongering on both sides. “Lots of people will not consider the issues carefully, but will instead allow their frustrations with immigration and globalization, or fears over loss of sovereignty, to influence how they vote,” he said.

Britain joined the European Economic Community, a forerunner of the European Union, in 1973, during the Conservative government of Prime Minister Edward Heath.

The Labour Party, which took power the next year, submitted the matter to a public vote.

The yes camp won a resounding victory — 67 percent — with the backing of Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

The differences between then and now are striking. At the time, it was the Labour Party that was deeply divided over Europe; the party’s left flank feared that West German fiscal reticence would push down British wages.

The Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher, supported British membership in the community, saying that it would buttress market-oriented economic policies, but it was not an easy call. Today, the Conservatives are the most deeply torn over Europe, with their right flank — led by Mayor Boris Johnson of London and Justice Secretary Michael Gove — helping to lead the camp that favors leaving.

But the European Economic Community back then was a far more modest endeavor than today’s European Union. And Britain was economically downcast in 1975 — the sick man of Europe, an economic laggard behind West Germany and France — while today it is flourishing relative to other European countries.

The bloc had nine members then, compared with 28 today. While the British news media broadly supported remaining in Europe in 1975, today it is divided and, in many cases, downright hostile.

In February 1992, 12 European nations signed a treaty in the medieval Dutch city of Maastricht, forging common foreign and defense policies and paving the way for a single currency, the euro.

Those aspirations were thrown into disarray four months later, when Danish voters narrowly rejected the treaty, which needed all member states to approve it. Opponents of the treaty preyed on fears that Denmark’s economy would be subsumed by Germany’s and would be captive to a remote bureaucracy in Brussels.

After the Danish government secured the ability to opt out of several aspects of the treaty — including the single currency — a second referendum was held, on May 18, 1993. That time, about 57 percent voted in favor. The European Community breathed a sigh of relief.

Given France’s role as a founding member of what became the European Union, the Continent was shaken when only 51 percent of French voters said yes to the Maastricht Treaty. The thin margin laid bare the deep unpopularity at the time of President François Mitterrand, who had called the referendum; French economic stagnation; and by concerns that greater unity could lead to a new wave of immigration. For some advocates of European integration, the vote highlighted the perils of direct democracy.

Ireland was expected to be the European Union’s model student. Generous European subsidies transformed the small country in the 1990s into an economic powerhouse.

Nevertheless, Irish voters rejected the Nice Treaty, which intended to clear the way for 12 new members, mostly from the former Communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Turnout was low. Opponents of the treaty feared the loss of sovereignty; warned that expansion of the European Union could draw Ireland, which has a tradition of military neutrality, into world conflicts; and stoked fears of poor migrants from Eastern Europe flooding the country.

But voters overwhelmingly approved the Nice Treaty in a second vote on Oct. 19, 2002, swayed, among other things, by a European Union guarantee that Ireland could opt out of military operations.

Swedes overwhelmingly rejected membership in the European single currency, in a big blow to Prime Minister Goran Persson, who had called the vote on the assumption that his citizens were ready to abandon their currency, the krona. The outcome highlighted anxiety about European integration in a country that had joined the bloc only eight years earlier.

The assassination of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, a proponent of the euro, days before the vote rattled Sweden, but it did not change the outcome.

(Denmark, the other Scandinavian member of the European Union, also kept its own currency, and Finland has been part of the eurozone since its inception in 1999. Iceland and Norway are not members of the European Union.)

A former president of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, helped draft a constitution of the European Union, a 300-page document that sought to pave the way for a common bill of rights and to reduce the ability of member states to veto decisions in areas like asylum and immigration.

But the French decisively rejected the proposed constitution, dealing a fatal blow to the charter as unanimous approval of member states was needed for it to go into effect. The French rejection was spurred, among other factors, by a revolt against President Jacques Chirac and his stewardship of a faltering economy, and concerns that the vaunted French social model was under threat.

Just days after the French rejected the European constitution, the Dutch did the same. Like France, the Netherlands was one of the six founding nations of what became the European Union, but Dutch voters were angered that their country was, at the time, the largest net contributor per capita to the European Union’s budget, even though it was not the richest country in the bloc.

The Netherlands was also ambivalent about losing power under proposed changes in voting rules. Opponents of the constitution also stoked fears by equating ratification of the document with the acceptance of Turkey, a longtime candidate for membership, into the European Union.

The Lisbon Treaty was a blueprint intended to rein in the bloc’s cumbersome bureaucracy and to enact some of the changes in governance that voters had rejected in the proposed constitution.

Yet voters rejected the treaty after opponents adroitly played on fears, particularly acute in smaller countries like Ireland, that even the watered-down changes would undermine national self-determination. It did not help that the treaty — which would give the European Council, a decision-making body made up of the member states’ leaders, a full-time president and would change the voting system so that fewer decisions would require simple-majority votes — was seen as opaque, even impenetrable.

The vote shook the government and the business leaders, which had campaigned for the treaty.

But 16 months later, the Irish reversed themselves and voted in favor of the treaty, as an economic crisis helped tame resistance to the European project. The flip-flop echoed Ireland’s flip-flop on European Union expansion.

Supporters of European integration suffered their most recent blow when Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected a trade and cooperation agreement between the European Union and Ukraine.

Coming less than three months before the British referendum on European Union membership, the Dutch vote was a painful reminder of the fragility of popular support for the European Union. The bloc has been buffeted by slowing or zero economic growth, a spiraling migrant crisis and worries about terrorism.

The Dutch Parliament had already given its assent to a proposed economic deal between Ukraine and the European Union, but critics forced a direct popular vote under a recent law that compels the government to submit a question directly to voters if proponents secure at least 300,000 signatures for an online petition.

The vote was officially nonbinding, but the government had said it would not disregard the results if turnout exceeded 30 percent — a threshold that was narrowly achieved. Negotiations over the accord are continuing.