EUROPE
Europe needs not more, but better referendums
Summer 2007
There’s nothing wrong with popular referendums or plebiscites as a means of deciding Europe’s future, argues Bruno Kaufmann. He sets out the case for simultaneous Europe-wide referendums that would bring genuine democracy to EU decision-making
EU-level democracy is at a crossroads. Referendums have played a decisive role in the European Union, with more than 45 of them in over 20 member states since the early 1970s, on issues ranging from treaty reforms to enlargement and the common currency. And contrary to what some commentators imagine, it would not be possible to turn the clock back to times when governments and parliaments alone could make the most important decisions. But nor do referendums on European affairs offer a sustainable solution to the EU’s democratic deficit. Luckily for Europe, there is a way out of this dilemma.
Earlier this year in March over a ¼m Austrians went to the offices of their local municipalities to sign an agenda initiative to the national parliament requesting a referendum on the new EU constitution and on any future membership deal for Turkey. This initiative by the right-wing FPÖ was the most recent attempt within an EU member state to play the referendum card. Austria’s Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, had in fact already announced his intention of letting the people decide as soon as Turkish membership was formally placed on the EU agenda. The same goes for France, where enlargement beyond the Balkans means a mandatory referendum, and there are similar ideas afoot in the Netherlands.
The greater use of referendums in deciding Europe’s affairs is problematic, as Tøger Seidenfaden pointed out in the Spring issue of Europe’s World. National referendums do not offer the smartest shortcut to better democracy in Europe, yet we have to acknowledge that giving the people the right to decide at elections and referendums has become an essential element of modern representative democracy. It all started in France in 1793, when nine out of ten French voters in the first national referendum said “yes” to the so-called Montagnard Constitution, which established a popular right to optional referendums if 10% of the eligible citizens sought to force a vote on a law within 40 days of its being passed in parliament.
It took more than 200 years to develop both parliamentary and direct participatory democracy in Europe´s nation states. Today, almost all the countries of Europe have some form of initiative and referendum process that gives the electorate the right to have a say between elections. It is common sense that democracy should be more than just elections, and the Council of Europe is very clear on this. It recommends the use of referendums “as a means to reinforce the democratic legitimacy of political decisions, enhance the accountability of representative institutions, increase the openness and transparency of decision-making and stimulate the direct involvement of the electorate in the political process”.
But the breakthrough for a new common approach to representative democracy came in Rome in October 2004 when the EU leaders signed the constitutional treaty that sets out the right of initiative for a million citizens from an (as yet unspecified) number of EU countries. In the eyes of Europe’s leaders, citizens should in future have the same right as the European Parliament and the European Council to invite the Commission to start a legislative process. This sounds less than it is, because the European Citizens’ Initiative will if it is among those elements of the EU Constitution to survive, be the first direct right of agenda-setting on European level by citizens.
The major problem still to be resolved is the different institutional designs of national referendums on European affairs. Five years ago, when Ireland’s small electorate was able to block the Nice treaty, the need for transnational reform became clear. In the constitutional Convention that was called after that, almost all of its members – both europhiles and eurosceptics - signed a declaration proposing a popular vote by citizens in all EU member states on the same day. “A splendid idea”, said noted Danish eurosceptic Jens-Peter Bonde – no friend of the new constitution – as “this will promote the first genuine European debate”. However, EU member governments had not learnt the Irish lesson and tried instead to sell the constitutional treaty by the old non-transparent means of ratification. To the EU’s cost, we all know the result of what will probably prove to be the last attempt to “unite” Europe from above. Although not the disaster that some of the more pessimistic pro-Europeans have portrayed it, the constitution’s fate has been a very high price to pay for a failed ‘traditional’ strategy that tried to contain popular democracy and retain member governments’ monopoly on power.
In terms of the European integration process, referendums have become a key concept of development. According to Dan O’Brien and Daniel Keohane of the London-based Centre for European Reform, referendums “inject a dose of human drama into the technocratic machinery and arid theory of EU integration” and “generate understanding and encourage participation by focusing attention on the EU and its workings”. They add, “this should be welcomed as referendums specifically on the EU are the only way of putting the Union and what it does at political centre-stage”.
No other issue has triggered as many popular votes worldwide as European integration. Between April 1972, when the French voted in favour of the European Community’s enlargement to nine, and September 2006, 4 referendums were conducted in 25 countries: 34 on accession, 12 on new treaties and one on purely constitutional matters. A closer look at these referendums − of which 34 have been since 1992 − shows that in 34 cases the voters took a pro-integration stance and average turnout was fairly stable at around 65%.
Academic studies, notably by Simon Hug, Matthias Benz and Alois Stutzer, offer some interesting conclusions. In the first place, they suggest that European policies are in greater harmony with the wishes of citizens in countries where referendums on Europe are held often, such as Ireland and Denmark, than in countries where they scarcely exist, it at all. Second, referendums about Europe appear to contribute over the longer term to increased popular support for the integration process. Third, the referendum option offers governments a way to determine the agenda of treaty negotiations.
In other words, research suggests there is plenty of evidence that direct democracy not only makes sense in principle but also offers added-value in practise. The challenge at European level is therefore to optimise the use of referendums by giving them a genuinely transnational dimension. It is certainly not very democratic that a No in one or even a few member states should block a decision affecting all member states. The answer, then, is that EU affairs should in future be subject to a transnational referendum. A modus operandi for transnational referendums could be established during the ratification process for whatever EU treaty comes next. The first step would be to establish the principle of holding all national referendums on the same day, followed by the reform of today’s unanimity rules as they have become an instrument for holding back the further development of democracy. Within this system it would of course be possible to have votes on both smaller issues like smoking bans in public places or GMO regulations and larger ones like EU enlargements and constitutional amendments. This autumn we got a first idea what Europe’s electoral agenda could look like in the future. Not less than seven European Citizen Initiatives have been launched, proposing issues like one single seat for the European Parliament, a common European Media Law and much more citizen friendly democratic infrastructure for the EU. Let the citizens decide, within a clearly defined set of rules. Europe needs not more, but better referendums!