Europe needs to reassess its approach to how it conducts business, Cora Van Nieuwenhuizen, a Dutch politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) said.
Ms. Van Nieuwenhuizen was responding to a question from The Hindu on the Britain’s forthcoming referendum on EU membership and the April 6 Dutch referendum on an association agreement between the EU and Ukraine, which was rejected by 64 per cent of those who voted.
The voter turnout however was low at 32 per cent, just scraping through the 30% threshold required for the referendum results to be valid.
While the referendum is not binding on the coalition government led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, it presents a challenge on the way forward; 27 of the 28 EU member states have already ratified the agreement and The Netherlands currently holds the rotating European Council presidency.
Ms. Van Nieuwenhuizen, who is in Mr. Rutte’s party, said that the majority of those who did not vote in the referendum were in favour of the agreement, and had made a strategic error in not coming out to vote thinking the referendum would not pass the threshold in any case. The ‘No’ votes, according to Ms.Van Nieuwenhuizen, were not to be read as votes against Ukraine but as votes against something in the EU or, for some, a vote against the current government.
“You can never know, because it’s not in the paper, why people voted ‘No’ … and we’ll have discussions on that in the national Parliament in the future,” she said.
“ I think it is good now that Europe takes a step back and like the previous commissioner [José Manuel Barroso, former European Commission president] said, Europe has become big in small things and small in big things, and we have to turn that the other way around. So forget about all the nitty-gritty and leave more of that to the member states and only do things at the European level if there is real added value in doing it,” Ms. Van Nieuwenhuizen said.
