Dutch
reject EU-Ukraine deal
Turnout
projected to be just over the threshold needed to send deal back to
parliament.
By CYNTHIA KROET
4/6/16, 9:13 PM CET Updated 4/7/16, 8:18 AM CET
The Dutch government
suffered an embarrassing defeat Wednesday as voters overwhelmingly
rejected an EU deal with Ukraine, with 61.1 percent voting No,
according to public broadcaster NOS.
The vote was seen as
a test of public opinion towards the EU and comes less than three
months before British citizens decide whether to leave the EU
altogether.
Turnout was 32.2
percent, according to NOS, above the 30 percent threshold needed to
send the issue back to parliament. Earlier projections had put
turnout at just under the 30 percent threshold.
Euroskeptic
MEP Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right United Kingdom Independence
Party, tweeted his support for the result, saying that he had spoken
to the organizers of the petition that led to the Dutch referendum
and invited them to the U.K. to discuss Brexit.
“If
the Dutch people vote No today, it will be an incentive for the
British voters to say no,” Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders
said.
Although the result
of the referendum is non-binding, Dutch law says that a No vote,
combined with a turnout of more than 30 percent, would mean the deal
having to be discussed again by parliament.
“We will have to
wait and see but it is clear that the No voters won convincingly. The
question is whether or not the required turnout will be met,” Prime
Minister Mark Rutte said in a televised reaction.
“My view is that
if the turnout is more than 30 percent, with such a victory for the
No camp, ratification cannot go ahead without discussion.”
The deal —
officially an “association agreement” — which aims at improving
trade between the EU and Ukraine, provisionally came into force on
January 1, but needs to be ratified by all 28 EU members. The Dutch
parliament has already backed the deal.
Wilders, leader of
the Freedom Party, was quick to take to Twitter after polling
finished, saying the result was “great” and hoping that the
turnout passed the 30 percent mark.
Emile Roemer, leader
of the Socialist Party, said: “I am happy with the result. People
wanted to tell the government that Ukraine is too corrupt to sign an
agreement with. They also wanted to show that Europe is only there
for the elite and multinationals.”
Alexander Pechtold,
leader of the liberal D66 party, which supported the deal, said: “I
had hoped that the Yes and No vote would have been more tied.”
European Commission
President Jean-Claude Juncker had warned that a Dutch No vote could
lead to a “continental crisis.”
“I want the Dutch
to understand that the importance of this question goes beyond the
Netherlands,” the newspaper NRC quoted Juncker as saying in
January.
“I don’t believe
the Dutch will say no, because it would open the door to a big
continental crisis,” he said. “Russia would pluck the fruits of
an easy victory.
It was the first
referendum to take place under a Dutch law that obliges the
government to call a public vote on any petition that gets the
support of 300,000 people. In this case, GeenPeil, an initiative set
up by a far-right, Euroskeptic website called GeenStijl, collected
more than 400,000 signatures in six weeks last fall.
The vote is an
embarrassment for the government as it holds the rotating presidency
of the EU’s Council of Ministers, and it brings back painful
memories of another EU referendum.
In 2005, the
center-right government of Jan Peter Balkenende backed a Yes campaign
for plans to give the EU greater powers through a European
Constitution, with disastrous results.
More than 60 percent
voted No to the constitution, three days after the French also
rejected the idea. The level of opposition and the turnout — 62
percent — exceeded all projections.
This story was
updated to include new figures.
Authors:
Cynthia Kroet
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário