Brussels, 12/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Saturday 9 January, the President of the European Commission stressed that it is important that the Dutch vote in favour of the association agreement with Ukraine in the referendum to be held on the subject on 6 April.
In an interview with the Dutch daily newspaper NRC published on 9 January, Juncker explained that the Dutch should understand that the issue “goes beyond Dutch interests”. He expressed his hopes that they would not vote no for reasons unrelated to the treaty. “Let us not turn the referendum into a referendum on Europe”, Juncker warned. In a referendum in 2005, the Dutch people opposed the European Constitutional Treaty. According to the President of the Commission, if the Dutch vote against the agreement, “this will pave the way for a major continental crisis” and it will be Russia that will benefit from this the most.
According to an opinion poll published on 9 January, three quarters of the Dutch people who responded to the survey said that they were opposed to this agreement. The government, on the other hand, is in favour, and both houses of the Parliament have already given their agreement for its ratification. The Dutch Foreign Minister, Bert Koenders, told a group of journalists, including EUROPE, that he would campaign to defend the government's position. The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, announced on 11 January that he would campaign for the “yes” vote. Koenders and Rutte both stressed that the agreement was not just in the interests of the Ukrainians, but also of the EU and the Netherlands. This is not the first step towards Ukrainian accession to the EU, Rutte added.
This referendum is the first to be held following a law which entered into force on 1 July 2015, allowing a referendum to be held if more than 300,000 signatures are gathered. Nearly 428,000 signatures were collected for this referendum on the association agreement. Its result will be consultative. Koenders said that at the moment, the government was unable to say whether or not it would go along with the opinion of the Dutch voters, in order to avoid creating a precedent. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)