The EU's Strategic Response to Referendum Challenges

Article 10 of the Treaty on European Union defines the EU as founded on the principle of representative democracy.. Reforms propose increasing representativeness, for example, electing MEPs by trans-national lists. Although EU treaties make no mention of the direct democracy institution of referendums, 26 of the EU’s 28 member states make provision for holding referendums that may be exclusively within the hands of the national government, such as election laws, or concern EU affairs. In the past two decades there has been a paradigm shift in the type of national referendums held on EU issues. They are no longer ballots to add legitimacy by confirming the country’s EU membership; they challenge the legitimacy of an EU policy made by the EU’s representative processes. Since 2005, a majority of national referendums have rejected a policy endorsed by the EU and usually by the national government too. This paper will identify the strategies that the EU adopts in response to challenge from national referendums. I can use its legal powers to impose unwelcome conditions on a country, e.g. Greece and the UK’s Brexit negotiations. It can anticipate a challenge by making concessions to avoid referendums, as in drafting of the Lisbon Treaty, or make after-the-fact concessions to facilitate approval in a ‘think again’ referendum, as in Ireland. It can avoid the risk of a veto by not drafting any more treaties pr it can circumvent the threat of a veto by coalitions of the willing agreeing a Stability and Growth Pact. While coalitions of the willing allow further integration to occur, they also threaten the uniformity of the Union by dividing member states into insiders and outsiders.