European DiaryThe tiny village of East Stoke in Dorset went to the polls last week to begin a campaign aimed at shaping Britain's future role in Europe.
Alarmed at British prime minister Gordon Brown's plan to ratify the European Union reform treaty in parliament, 72 of East Stoke's 333 residents turned out to cast a ballot in favour of holding a nationwide referendum on the new treaty. A further eight residents voted against holding a poll to ratify the proposed new treaty, which will change how the EU takes decisions and sets new policy priorities for the union.
The village referendum was organised by John Barnes, a supporter of the UK Independence Party. He exploited a provision in the 1972 Local Government Act, which forces a council to hold a vote on a topic if 10 people in the area call for it.
"We have to send a strong message to the government that we want our say on the future of our country," said Barnes, whose party and a related group - the Campaign Alliance for Referendums in Parishes - plan to hold votes across Britain.
The campaigners are angry that Brown has reneged on a pledge made by former prime minister Tony Blair in 2004 to hold a referendum on the EU constitution. Blair put plans for a poll on ice a few months later when French and Dutch voters rejected the constitution.
Brown argues that the treaty is very different to the EU constitution. Shorn of its constitutional trappings and presented as a treaty that amends existing EU treaties rather than as a single entity, he believes parliament is the right place to ratify it.
Most political analysts believe the government simply fears losing a referendum that could plunge the entire EU, and particularly Britain's relationship with Europe, into a profound and deep crisis.
"It would be a low turnout and probably a no vote," says Hugo Brady, analyst with the London-based think tank Centre for European Reform. "And if Brown held a referendum on the treaty and loses, it would be a serious blow to his credibility and sour a potentially very productive relationship with Sarkozy and Merkel."
But buoyed by a eurosceptic media, the referendum campaigners in Britain won't go away easily. Last week the Liberal Democrats followed the Tories in demanding a referendum. The trade union movement also favours holding a nationwide vote and even some Labour MPs have bucked the party line. For example, former minister for Europe Keith Vaz recently wrote to the Sun arguing that the British debate on Europe could be won "once and for all" by holding a referendum.
London, Brussels and Berlin do not share his confidence. Fear of referendums stalks the corridors of the EU executive in Brussels, where bureaucrats admit there is no "Plan B" if the public reject the reform treaty. If this were to happen, most Brussels watchers believe the EU would split into different camps with some states moving towards closer political integration and others staying outside such a core group.
Aware of this danger, German chancellor Angela Merkel did everything possible to avoid the need for ballots in states such as Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark when negotiating the reform treaty. Her officials carefully crafted opt-outs for Britain in the field of judicial and police co-operation and on the charter of fundamental rights. They boosted the scrutiny powers of national parliaments over EU legislation in a sop to the Dutch and addressed nine specific points that the Danish justice ministry had found would require the EU constitution to be put to a national ballot. These points were based on the transfer of national sovereignty to the EU in areas as diverse as European space policy and responding to disease pandemics.
So far the plan has worked well. Brown has resisted the political pressure for a referendum in Britain and last week Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende followed suit by rejecting the need to hold a new referendum in the Netherlands.
Balkenende faces continued opposition from some MPs in his coalition partner, the Labour Party, but the odds are the Dutch will not now get a vote on the treaty.
In Denmark the government will begin consultations on whether a referendum is needed in October when EU leaders gather in Lisbon to conclude a political agreement on the text of the treaty. Despite a tradition of holding referendums on EU treaties, analysts believe Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen will try to avoid holding a national poll. A fast-approaching general election in Denmark could complicate the decision but observers are betting that parliament will ratify the treaty.
That leaves the Irish in the privileged position of being the only Europeans able to cast their ballot on the new treaty. The Government will hope for a better turnout than the one achieved in East Stoke last week. Low turnouts generally favour the No campaigners and with so much political capital expended across Europe in avoiding referendums, EU leaders wouldn't thank Ireland for throwing a spanner in the works.