The Netherlands voted against European Union’s Association Agreement with Ukraine at a referendum on April 6.
Some 61.1 percent of those who voted in the poll rejected the deal with Ukraine, while 38.1 percent supported it, according to figures from the Ipsos international polling firm. The turnout was 32.2 percent – slightly over the 30 percent turnout requirement for the referendum to be deemed valid.
Although it was a non-binding referendum, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on April 6 that the ratification of the deal “can’t simply go ahead” with so many Dutch people opposing it.
Rutte’s government earlier signed the Association Agreement with Ukraine, along with the other 27 EU governments. But in July 2015 a new Dutch law, the Advisory Referendums Act, was passed. The law forces the Dutch government to hold a referendum to reconsider its decisions if more than 300,000 people sign a petition requesting that it do so.
The Geen Stijl satirical website last fall launched a petition for a referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, and soon garnered more than 427,000 signatures in favor.
Following the referendum, the Dutch government will announce on April 8 whether it will back out of the deal with Ukraine, according to Ukrainian Ambassador-At-Large Dmytro Kuleba, who is now in the Netherlands.
However, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on April 7 that the Dutch ‘no’ vote wasn’t an obstacle to Ukraine on its way to Europe.
“Ukraine will still continue to implement the Association Agreement,” Poroshenko said in a statement.
The result of the referendum was on a knife-edge at the close of polling on April 6, with the first exit polls on April 6 showing a turnout of 29 percent, just one percent less than the minimum turnout required to validate the vote. But a revised result of the exit poll, released a short time after, pushed the estimated turnout up to 32 percent.
According to Kuleba, the negative result of the referendum said more about Dutch ‘no’ voters’ attitudes to the EU than to Ukraine.
“They made Ukraine a hostage of their protest against the EU,” Kuleba said. “All they had against us was conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda.”
Jan Roos, the head of GeenPeil social initiative and the organizer of the referendum, was delighted by the results of the referendum.
“Yes, now it will be hard to say ‘no’ to Ukraine, Mister (Mark) Rutte! But the time has come for you to listen to the voice of your people,” Roos told Dutch news website Nu.nl.
Meanwhile, some Ukrainians saw the Dutch rejection as an act of betrayal. Many activists, artists, and lawmakers had spent weeks in the Netherlands promoting Ukraine prior to the referendum.
Some said Poroshenko’s name appearing in the Panama Papers document leak earlier this week may have influenced the result. According to leaked documents, the Ukrainian president in 2014 set up a secret offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. The story hit the headlines in European newspapers three days ahead of the Dutch vote.
According to a poll conducted by Ipsos on April 4, the main reason given by Dutch voters for opposing the EU-Ukraine treaty was “I don’t trust them, there is too much corruption in the country.”
In Ukraine, the backlash from the referendum is now hitting President Poroshenko.
“The result of the referendum is a sentence not on the Ukrainian people, but personally on President Poroshenko,” Mustafa Nayyem, a Ukrainian lawmaker with the pro-presidential Bloc of Petro Poroshenko parliament faction, said on April 6, referring to the offshore scandal.
Nayyem also said that if Ukrainians can learn a lesson from the referendum, and continue to fight for a better future, “the Dutch people who said ‘no’ to Ukraine will come to regret their decision.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected]
