Brussels, 01/06/2005 (Agence Europe) - Three days after the French 'Non', the Netherlands organised a referendum on 1 June on the European Constitution (the first referendum in the Netherlands in two centuries). The final polls suggested the No vote would get about 60% of the vote, and on television on Tuesday evening, Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende appealed to Dutch voters to vote Yes to get the economy going. He said the future of the Netherlands lay in Europe, but said he understood while he did not share fears by some of the Dutch about their country's loss of influence in the EU25. When the official results are released on Wednesday evening, the Presidents of the three European institutions, Jose Manuel Barroso for the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker for the Council and Josep Borrell for the European Parliament will be issuing a joint statement in Brussels.
On Wednesday, the European Commission held an in-depth debate on the outcome of the referendum in France, which Commission spokesperson Francoise Le Bail described as a debate with the aim of holding an initial exchange of views on the situation following the French 'No' vote. She said this was the first step in the Commission's general reflection process, which would continue until the European Council of 16/17 June. She said Jose Manuel Barroso had briefed his colleagues about his discussions with the President of the Council and the President of the European Parliament on Sunday evening (see Europe No. 8957), following which each Commissioner had expressed his or her feelings. It turned out that all Commissioners felt that Member States had made certain commitments and it was for the Member States to decide what they were going to do. Some Commissioners appear to have suggested that the Commission could not simply carry on with business as usual, but should try to play a more visible pro-active role in helping the EU out of the current crisis.
The suggestion mooted again on Monday by the Austrian Chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel (see Europe No. 8958) to hold a Europe-wide referendum on the Constitution (on the same day in all 25 EU Member States) 'seems like a good idea' explained a spokesperson for the Vice-President of the Commission, Margot Wallstrom, on Wednesday. The spokesperson added that such a referendum might be 'something that in the future could perhaps make people interested and mobilised to care about Europe and to vote on Europe', but added that the constitutional law in some countries (like Germany where the Constitution does not cover the holding of referendums) might make a Europe-wide referendum problematic.
Meanwhile, the President of the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker, continued his consultations in Luxembourg ahead of the June Summit, meeting the Slovakian prime minister Mikulas Dzurinda and then the Portuguese pm Jose Socrates (who met Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels on Wednesday evening).
In Prague, the Czech pm Jiri Paroubek said he would be suggesting to the European Council of 16/17 June that the deadline for ratifying the Constitution be postponed until some time after November 2006. Denmark's referendum had been scheduled for 27 September 2005, but Danish pm Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that in order to go ahead with ratification, one had to know whether the treaty the Danish people were asked to vote on was actually the treaty that would come into force at the end of the ratification process. Rasmussen argued against renegotiating the text (echoing Polish pm Marek Belka's comments in Warsaw on Wednesday), saying it was France's job to find a solution, as Denmark had had to do after it rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The Swedish parliament is planning to decide on the Constitution in December, but pressure is rising for a referendum, with a poll published on Tuesday showing that 65% of Swedes wanted the decision to be taken by referendum.