Referendum experience: frequent and unsuccessful

In parallel to constitutional amendments, referendums were held in the accession countries in order to legitimise EU membership. It was mentioned in chapter 5 that the sensitivities surrounding the accession referendums partly accounted for minimal EU amendments in CEE constitutions. This chapter will explore the process of accession referendums in more detail, starting with an inquiry into the general experience with referendums in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

At the outset, it should be pointed out that referendums are frequently held across Central and Eastern Europe, which perhaps gives grounds for characterising the region as one of direct democracy. The frequency of recourse to referendums could partly be ascribed to the totalitarian past and newly regained sovereignty, which has entailed a need to give higher legitimacy to decisions, as well as glorifying the notion of the people as the holders of sovereign power. To put it in numbers, there have been at least forty-three referendums since 1990 in the ten countries explored in this book. Nine of these were held in relation to EU membership in 2003; the others have been held on issues of varying importance, from privatisation to NATO membership: the details are available in Table 7.2. Referendums have been most numerous in Slovenia (altogether nine), Lithuania (altogether eight) and Slovakia (altogether six), since the countries' independence in 1991 and 1993 respectively.