WORLD VIEW/Paul Gillespie: Divided public opinion, electoral turnout, varying levels of knowledge, indifference, media coverage and campaign surprises - these are the stuff of referendum campaigns, as Irish voters and politicians know full well from the two votes on the Nice Treaty.
They are now set to engage voters in 10 candidate states to join the European Union following last night's agreement at the Copenhagen summit. Most of them will vote in the coming year, according to their particular constitutional arrangements. It is by no means a foregone conclusion that all will vote to join the EU. Electorates cannot be taken for granted and there could be surprising, even drastic, changes in public opinion, depending on how the campaigns are conducted.
At a seminar on the subject last week in Brussels it was fascinating to hear researchers from these states grappling with the self-same issues as engaged us here in the last two years. One could not escape the thought that the common experience of political argument and mobilisation involved will increase their mutual awareness of each other and of the EU. Ireland's example cropped up continuously in the discussion.
The picture emerging from the research is by no means uniform. A Eurobarometer survey of opinion in the candidate states shows substantial variation in support for joining the EU, ranging from 32 per cent in Estonia to a high 67 per cent in Hungary. Nowhere is there a clear No majority, but it could be very close.
Overall just 52 per cent support membership in the 10 states. Malta, Slovenia, Estonia and Latvia are the least convinced of its merits; opinion in the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Poland and Slovakia is in the middle range of enthusiasm; Hungary stands out as the most enthusiastic, along with Romania and Bulgaria, which are to join in 2007, and Turkey, on which a decision on when to begin negotiating will be made in 2004 (for details see http://europa.eu.int/comm/publicopinion/).
Those administering the Eurobarometer surveys in Brussels stress that these findings must be interpreted country by country. The researchers' reports confirmed this. It is one thing to rely on surveys ahead of the exact terms of accession being agreed, quite another to use them to predict referendum results.
Levels of awareness of the EU are relatively high, but detailed knowledge is much less apparent. There is quite a difference between the higher proportions of their electorates which believe the country will benefit from EU membership and the smaller numbers expecting to benefit personally.
That contrast will emerge during the campaigns, reinforcing existing differences between urban dwellers, those with higher education and 16-30 year olds, who support the EU, and rural dwellers, the less well-educated and older people, who are more sceptical. The EU is seen as an elite project; but it now has to engage mass public opinion in each of these states.
There is acute awareness that criticisms voiced of the offer in the concluding stages of the accession negotiations will resonate politically during the campaigns, as populist parties exploit disappointing outcomes on direct agricultural payments and restricted labour migration, for example.
There is much concern about potential levels of turnout, given that poll respondents invariably overstate their willingness to vote by up to 25 per cent. Mobilisation and media coverage will be critical; but already the Polish parliament has decided that should turnout be less than 50 per cent the referendum result would not be binding and the decision to join could be taken by a two-thirds parliamentary vote.
A common argument by those opposed to the EU is that it is "very like a disguised Soviet Union - a form of federal bureaucratic socialism", as Uno Silberg, chairman of the "No to the EU" campaign in Estonia, puts it. This fear of swapping sovereignty regained from Soviet domination for subordination to Brussels grows as the actual conditions of membership become better known.
A prominent Polish television journalist asked what could be said to Polish voters after an unsatisfactory agreement. The advice from a former senior EU official was that the issue would change into one of whether Poland wants to be in with the first wave; it would have a full seat at the table in the next EU budget negotiations in 2006.
There will be some orchestration of the referendum voting through next year. Hungary is expected to vote first, in April, setting up a momentum which could be carried on by Lithuania and Slovakia.
Careful attention is being paid to the symbolism of voting days. Hungary switched from March 15th, anniversary of the unsuccessful 1848 revolution against Hapsburg rule, to April. Latvia's former prime minister, Andres Berzins, wants his country and Lithuania to hold the vote on August 23rd, the 64th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. It divided up parts of central Europe between Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union and conceded the Baltic states and eastern Poland to the USSR.
An uneasy tension between grand history, geopolitics and the destiny of Europe on the one hand, and the grubby details of compliance with the EU's legislative achievements and negotiating terms on the other, runs through this whole process.
The distinguished political scientist, Prof Jean Blondel, appealed for both dimensions to be taken fully into account by researchers, citizens and political leaders. The EU is so distinctive in the broad span of European history as a voluntary unifying process, compared to dynastic and imperial models of the past. This enlargement associates central and eastern Europe directly with unification of the continent. These referendums mark this break with the mould of history by endorsing them politically. He felt the uneasiness of so many in western Europe about welcoming them in as new partners reflected a political failure to respond to such historic events.
Another political scientist, from Berlin, argued that nonetheless the rational choice issues and interests must also be taken fully into account. He recalled those in Eastern Germany who dreamed of justice and freedom, but woke up in North-Rhine Westphalia.