Why 'non' and 'nee' to the EU Constitution? Reconsidering the Shock of the Dutch and French Referenda

Grosskopf, Anke. (2007) Why 'non' and 'nee' to the EU Constitution? Reconsidering the Shock of the Dutch and French Referenda. In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The resounding rejection of the Draft Constitution in both the French and the Dutch referenda dealt a severe blow to the European Union from which it has yet to recover. Yet much of the post-"non" and "nee" debate appears to be motivated by intrinsic political agendas rather than by deeper understanding of why the peoples of these two European Union founding members rejected the Draft Treaty. Since the failed referenda, several single-country analyses of either France or the Netherlands have been conducted that suggest a combination of soft opposition (which is an expression mostly of dissatisfaction with national governments), Euro-skepticism (which fundamentally questions the specific form of the EU), and hard opposition (which is based on nationalism and/or xenophobia). Based upon a systematic in-depth multi-variate logit analysis of why the majority of French and Dutch citizens rejected the Constitutional Treaty, this paper argues that in France, both second-order effects, as well as nationalism played a role, while most opposition was motivated by "true" negatives attitudes toward the Constitution. In the Netherlands, neither second-order effects nor nationalistic "hard" opposition played a role. Instead, Dutch attitudes derive almost exclusively from negative "true" attitudes about the Constitution. Xenophobic "hard" opposition played a role in neither country. To overcome opposition to the Constitution, the findings of this analysis point to the usefulness of changing "true" attitudes by either educating people better about the complex document, or by simplifying the Constitution drastically.

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