Gerardo E. Martínez-Solanas
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Referendum dilemma on the European Reform Treaty - 2007/12/30 19:42
Many people in Europe argue that a referendum on the Reform Treaty in any particular country would not really be about that treaty at all and turn into a general vote about the government involved. Nevertheless, something as important as the Reform Treaty must be sanctioned by the people at large in a democratic society. The problem Europeans are facing is that the Reform Treaty concerns Europe as a whole and not its national parts. Therefore, it is not fair that any national referendum should defeat a continental issue. Either the Reform Treaty referendum is a continental one –where a continental majority will decide– or the national referendums by themselves would only result on marginalizing the country or countries rejecting the Treaty from the European Union.
Europeans are very fond of referenda as one of the tools of participatory democracy. Therefore, some countries are opting for a national referendum on this issue. To be fair, if a majority of voters in any particular country decides against the Treaty, that national decision should not stop the Treaty’s ratification by all the other countries interested in moving forward.
In order to understand the European dilemma on this issue, one must look at the facts. In Central and Eastern Europe most of the 30 new national constitutions were enacted by national referendums. More and/or better democracy does not mean more elections, but a more direct, substantial and differentiated involvement of citizens in political decision-making. That is why the number of national referendums all over the World in the 1990s was more than triple the number of referendums in the 1980s: of the 405 national referendums worldwide between 1990 and 2000, 248 were held in Europe and more than 10% of these concerned questions related to the European integration process. Switzerland is a major exponent of rule by referendum and contrary to Margaret Thatcher’s views on this respect (she quoted Attlee’s "Referenda are the device of despots and dictators"), no tyranny is in sight.
Of course, referendum is not a panacea but an instrument for democratic expression when legislative action does not satisfy the majority of constituents or –even more– when legislative action is subjected to an impasse that must be broken for the good of the country or region involved. The argument that most issues are too complicated for ordinary people and therefore referendums should not be provided for, would mean not only the end of democracy, but also the disintegration of Europe as a consensual unit of their peoples.
However, referendums should never be used to decide major divisive questions that strongly polarize public opinion to the point of creating an aggressive rivalry among sectors or groups of the country’s or region’s population. For example, suppose a country has two main linguistic groups, with one language being spoken by 60 per cent of the population and the other by 40 per cent, and that it is subjected to constant political tensions over the language issue. If a referendum were held to resolve the question of which one should become the country's sole official language, this would solve nothing, because the minority group would be unlikely to accept the majority vote in favor of the other language as a fair way of resolving the dispute.
The same can be argued about referenda on national constitutional issues. A simple majority (50% + 1) is not good enough. National Constitutions must reflect a consensual agreement among the citizens. As the supreme law of the country it is written for the benefit of all citizens and not for a majority in detriment of minorities. That is why they should be passed by a 2/3 or ¾ minimum vote in referendum or by a similar proportion among delegates in a properly elected Constitutional Assembly.
Regarding the background, history and recent developments of the European Union and its quest for a Constitution, I recommend those interested in these issues to visit the informative pages found in our “DOCUMENTS” section. One of our WEB pages on the E.U. issue (HERE) is particularly interesting.
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