"Listen to us." That is what voters throughout Europe want: for their governments to listen. If they do not, voters will walk away from those leaders at the polls en masse, or they will force through a referendum on something, much as will happen early next year in the Netherlands. The problem is, when governments do listen, solidarity with other EU nations usually takes a back seat, undermining the very fundaments of the European Union.
When voters in both the Netherlands and France rejected a new EU constitution by referendum in 2005, governments across Europe were aghast. How could these voters come out in such numbers against the European Union, the machine that had so obviously ensured peace and prosperity for more than 50 years?
Extensive research and focus groups involving great numbers of Dutch voters after the referendum showed why. It turned out that many voters simply took it as an opportunity to slap the sitting government on the wrist. They felt that EU expansion - at the time the Union was on its way to adding 10 new member states - was being carried out without their permission.
"Voters operate on the premise that they are the boss, not politicians," says Hans Anker, a successful Dutch pollster who used to work with the famous American voter researcher Stan Greenberg. Anker was asked by the Dutch government to find out what the heck had happened.
Most voters in the referendum didn't vote against the EU constitution itself, Anker found. Rather, they voted as they did because they felt that the European Union's ever-expanding power was a train that kept moving forward - a locomotive commandeered by an elite that never asked them whether they approved of its chosen direction. "Nobody ever asked me anything; now I'll show them." That was the gist.
It appears that the refugee crisis is now driving this sentiment back to the fore, perhaps more than any other topic ever did - including the EU's shock expansion in 2005. Wherever government leaders go against the grain and welcome refugees, as Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel did, massive swings in the polls are seen. In countries such as Switzerland and Poland, political parties that take an explicit stance against refugees have scored landslide electoral wins. In Germany itself, the Alternative for Germany - until quite recently fading in the polls - is now back with a vengeance, picking up additional voters with each passing poll. This is scaring even Merkel into taking a step back. She now supports building refugee centers on Germany's southern borders in an effort to stop the influx, a proposition she vehemently opposed just a couple weeks back. If you'd like to call this a sign of panic, you're welcome to.
History repeats in the Lowlands
Meanwhile the Dutch government - which is also conditionally open to accepting refugees - is again faced with a referendum concerning the European Union. Ten years after the resounding "No"accorded to the EU constitution, a popular movement has succeeded in pushing through a national referendum on the new association treaty between the European Union and Ukraine.
Officially the movement's organizers state that they oppose the possibility of Ukraine becoming an EU member in the far-off future. But when asked, they readily admit that the referendum is really about speaking out against "the EU elite," and against a government they see as pushing through policies that quite a few voters don't want - policies such as providing shelter to refugees. So again, the referendum is about showing who's boss.
The popular mantra heard throughout Europe these days is that "the government doesn't listen to us," whereby people mean to say that "the government doesn't do what we want." That's the exact sentiment felt in the Netherlands in 2005. Political analysts and pollsters claim that the new Dutch referendum will again result in a firm "No." It is expected that some five months later, Great Britain will organize its vaunted Brexit referendum on leaving the European Union. Polls for now show the campaign to leave is in the lead.
The problem for centrist, pro-EU-governments now is the gap between "listening to" and "doing" what the voters want. If they do what large swaths of their electorates demand, it would mean erecting border fences and keeping refugees away. Some EU member states have already moved in this direction, which has only resulted in other EU nations bearing the brunt of the refugee influx, inflaming their own populations. Even Sweden, which has always had an open-door policy, is now slowly shutting that door, and has formally asked the European Commission to start redistributing refugees inside its borders to - yes - other EU nations.
The easy bet for career politicians is to go with the popular flow and do as the voters want. This will effectively grind the EU's decision-making process to a halt, which will mean the end of solidarity between the nations, thereby cutting down one of the main pillars that supports the Union. This will mean a stop to any proper refugee distribution scheme, and a severe worsening of an already perilous situation, especially for the thousands of refugees stuck in tents and sometimes sleeping in the open air for weeks in border zones while winter approaches.
The difficult, long bet is to somehow find a middle ground between just listening - saying "I feel your pain," but not much else - and simply giving in, knowing what will happen next. Perhaps the solution lies in addressing what most voters seem to fear most: that they stand to lose what they've gained.
(AP photo)
