It's 0.5% of the population of the EU. Remember as well that while you keep talking about the EU; the Dutch government are the ones who are choosing not to act on the result of the non-binding referendum. They could, in principle, derail this.
They could, and probably want to given their PM said ratification "cannot go ahead" after the result. I haven't seen anything in the news (other than the express) saying exactly what the outcome is, so assume it's being worked out by the EU behind closed doors. Ah, democracy.
Funny how Juncker also said before the vote "I do not believe that the Dutch people will say no because it would open the door to a big continental crisis.”
Let's see about that.
Where are you getting that figure from? The Euroskeptic blocks in the EU are ECR (Tory), EFDD (UKIP) and EFN (French Front National) who together have 149 MEPs: just under 20% of the total.
Took it from the FT, so may not be fully accurate. Although the BBC seems to
agree.
I'm really not sure how you expect this to work. The EU required changes to be made because it hadn't been updated for the new membership. Should it carry on being dysfunctional because people in one or two member states rejected the treaty? How does that make sense? How is rejecting rules that introduce greater democratic accountability being more democratic? There were renegotiations and after those renegotiations the changed treaty was accepted.
The point is this; even if the result is clearly against them, they just wait a while or "tweak" the deal around the edges and go again. The core objective of more countries and more power (despite the widespread and growing criticism) continues to be played out.
And passed at the second referendum. Why do you think that should be ignored? Why do you think that you're a better judge of whether the changes made met the objections of the people of Denmark and Ireland than the people who actually voted on them?
As above. Also, you realise the time between the 1st referendum (which gave the wrong answer) and the 2nd was something like 6 months? And in that time negotiated behind closed doors, as usual. Can you imagine being asked now to "re-vote" for another general election in the UK, just because someone didn't want the Tories in power?
Why do you expect Germany, France, etc. to be bound by a vote in Greece. This is not how democracy works.
I guess that's the key point. The further away power is from you, and the larger supposed democracy you live in the less likely you are able to make a change. The people of Greece needed (and wanted, on the whole) to be allowed to default, to be able to adjust their monetary policy, devalue their currency and start again. But nope, the bigger goal got in the way and the Euro had to be preserved.
The EU's decisions are made either by its democratically elected parliament, by appointees of the democratically elected parliaments of its member states or by the national governments democratically elected by each member state. The EU is undemocratic exactly to the degree that it is accountable to member states rather than directly elected MEPs. You apparently think that the actions of each member state should overrule the democratically expressed will of everyone else, how does that make it more democratic?
Not really. The Commission "initiates" most EU law and the European Parliament is pretty weak, hence why a lot of people don't see the point in voting for that and we get such low turnouts.
)
