Brexit contagion: UK vote raises fears of a tsunami of EU membership referendums

The parties have disparate motivations and sit on both sides of the political spectrum, but they share a common sense of discontent about EU austerity and a nationalist bent that often favours Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Some, like France’s National Front (FN) and Netherlands Party for Freedom (PVV) want full ‘in-out’ referendums like Britain, while others, such as the ruling party in Hungary, want to attack Brussels by polling specific issues like the deeply resented mandatory refugee quotas.

As Brussels braces to deal with Brexit – a move that is already stressing Spanish and Italian banks - the government of the remaining 27 EU member states are trying to formulate a programme of reforms that turn the rising tide of anti-EU opinion.

But the waters are rising fast. A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre found that only 38 per cent of France had a favourable view of the EU, marking an astonishing negative shift in attitudes towards Brussels since the 2009 financial crisis that has been mirrored to varying degrees all across Europe.

A poll last month by Ipsos-MORI found that nearly half of voters in eight big European Union countries want to be able to vote on whether to remain members of the bloc, with a third saying they would opt to leave, if given the choice.

Here we look, country by country, at Europe’s most imperiled member states, assessing the strength of the Eurosceptic forces and the ability of establishment parties to constrain them.

NETHERLANDS – a “Nexit”

Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), was the first to call for a referendum on a Dutch exit from the EU, hoping to draw on a recent rise in far right support, violent protests against asylum seekers and a deepening debate on racism.

Although the Netherlands is a founder EU member and currently holds the EU presidency, a June poll showed 54 per cent of people want a referendum on EU membership, while 48 per cent would vote to leave and 45 per cent to remain.

Mr Wilders, who is topping some polls ahead of next March’s parliamentary elections, is a charismatic and popular figure on the Right, but he has strong centrist forces arraigned against him.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch PM has stressed a referendum would “not be in the Dutch interest”, as has Alexander Pechtold, the leader of the D66 liberal democrat party, who decried a "Wilders-referendum where things are only broken, without an alternative. That seems the case now for Britain."

The coalition government and the main two opposition parties are all strongly opposed to any referendum which, to be binding, would require an amendment to the constitution that itself requires a two-thirds vote majority in parliament to be ratified.

A private members’ bill on an EU referendum from Joram van Klaveren – of PVV splinter group, Voor Nederland (VNL) – is expected to go before the Netherlands’ highest court imminently to see if it is legally permissible. It failed last March, but with the current split of parties is unlikely to pass anyway.

Mr Wilders has promised to make a Nexit referendum the main plank of campaigning at the March elections. His party is leading in polls and on current showing would double in size up to 33 seats, enough to make a bid for power in alliance with other parties. 

“Britain is once again leading the fight for democracy in Europe. Article 50 says it will take two years. But if the Dutch and others follow the British example, the EU might collapse less than two years from now,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“The European Union is a failed project [that] robs us of our money, our identity, our democracy, our sovereignty.”

The Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders has promised to look for EU reforms, but ironically any reform of the EU Treaty could open the way to another type of referendum in the Netherlands.

Under a 2015 law, groups able to collect 300,000 signatures can trigger an “advisory” referendum, like the one on an EU-Ukraine treaty in April this year, that the anti-establishment parties easily won.

Thierry Baudet, chairman of Eurosceptic think-tank the Forum for Democracy, partly behind the EU-Ukraine referendum, said he believed that there would be a “Nexit” referendum in the next five years.

Though as Bart Nijman, of GeenPeil – another group behind the April referendum – warned, much will depend on how Britain fares outside the EU: “We first want to see how the Brexit works out (and if it even goes ahead).”

FRANCE – a “Frexit”

Britain’s historic Brexit vote has buoyed sovereigntists and the far-Right in France, where Euroscepticism is riding even higher than in the UK.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National instantly leapt on the referendum across the Channel as justification for a Frexit vote. "Victory for Freedom!” she tweeted minutes after the vote, “As I have been asking for years we must now have the same referendum in France and EU countries.”

Europe will be at the heart of the next presidential election in April 2017 with Ms Le Pen – who polls suggest will reach the second-round run-off – already pledging to become "Madame Frexit" and call a referendum on France's EU membership within six months, if she wins.

That remains a big ‘if’, since France’s mainstream parties are likely to unite against her, but her claims echo a rising groundswell of Euroscepticism in France, where a protracted economic crisis and anger over immigration have led an even more categoric rejection of the EU than in Britain.

A pan-European survey by the Pew Research Center released ahead of the Brexit vote found that 61 per cent of French voters have an “unfavourable” view, compared to 48 per cent in the UK.

A clear majority is opposed to “ever closer union” and wants powers returned to the French parliament, a finding that sits badly with the insistence by President Francois Hollande that “more Europe” is the answer to the EU’s problems.

His foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, on Monday made it clear he intends to push on with “European construction” by calling along with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier  for “ further steps toward a political union in Europe”, inviting “the other European states to join us in this endeavour”.

Meanwhile, candidates to lead the opposition centre-Right, which will hold presidential primaries in November, are almost all calling for a radical EU shake-up to show they are heeding French anti-European sentiment.

Laurent Wauquiez, vice president of the Republicans party run by Nicolas Sarkozy and a presidential hopeful, on Monday called for the EU to scrap the European Commission altogether and re-launch a “confederation” of nation states. “Today we are witnessing the bankruptcy of European federalism,” he told Libération.

However Alain Juppé, who is favourite to become the Republicans candidate has  ruled out a referendum in France alone as “irresponsible”, saying instead that an EU-wide vote should be called once states had agreed to a series of reforms.

Much anti-EU sentiment in France comes from the working-class French electorate who feel the whole EU project has been hijacked by “ultra-liberal” technocrats and want to see it go the other way.

They have vented their fury to the world during a string of nationwide strikes, blockages and scenes of urban unrest, leading Jean-Luc Mélenchon, French firebrand leftist MEP, to predict that France would have voted to leave the EU if asked.

“Brexit teaches a lesson to the whole of Europe - either we change it or we leave it. This is the time for a plan B,” he said. “The current EU is dead, killed by privileges for the cast of Eurocrats, by permanent lies, by the politics of flexibility...Everyone has had enough."

ITALY – an "Italexit"

Britain’s decision to leave the EU has opened up deep fissures within Italy, a month after a survey found that 48 per cent of Italians would opt to leave the bloc if given the opportunity of a British-style referendum.

The government of Matteo Renzi has insisted the prospect of an Italian exit, or “Italexit”, is not on the cards but opposition parties are questioning Italy’s loyalty to the bloc, despite the country being one of the founding members of the European project.

The hardline, Right-wing Northern League has hailed the British vote as a triumph for Euroscepticism and called for the issue to be put to a national vote in Italy.

Matteo Salvini, the party’s leader, lost no time in applauding the British result, sending out a tweet to his 265,000 followers on Friday morning.

"Long live the courage of free citizens!" he wrote on Twitter. "Heart, head and pride defeated lies, threats and blackmail. THANK YOU, UK, now it's our turn."

At the opposite end of the political spectrum, the populist Five Star Movement has called for a referendum not on membership of the EU but on whether Italy should ditch the euro and return to the lire.

The British vote in favour of leaving the 28-nation bloc "sanctions the failure of EU policies based on austerity and the selfishness of member States, which are incapable of being a community," said Beppe Grillo, the stand-up comedian and activist who founded 5SM. "We want Europe to be a community and not a union of banks and lobbies".

Luigi Di Maio, one of the rising stars in the party now that Mr Grillo has taken a step back from day-to-day leadership, reiterated calls for a referendum on the euro which, thanks to Germany intransigence over budget rules, is widely blamed for inflicting austerity on Italy.

“We’ve never placed in discussion Italy’s membership of the EU but we have always called for a referendum on the euro,” he said.

The Five Star Movement said it would gather signatures in order to force a referendum on the single currency so that "the Italian people can decide on monetary sovereignty".

Matteo Renzi, the prime minister, insisted, however, that there is little appetite in Italy for leaving the EU.

“Certainly the Northern League and the Five Star Movement, which has always been against the euro, are celebrating, but we think that the overwhelming majority of Italians want to remain in Europe,” Mr Renzi said on Sunday evening.

“It should be a Europe with a heart and not just made up of rules and regulations. But it is one thing to change Europe; quite another to run away from it. That would be a tragic error.”

AUSTRIA – an “Auxit”

Austria’s far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ) seized the headlines by threatening an “Auxit” or “Öxit” referendum of their own in the wake of Brexit. But the FPÖ aren’t in power — yet — and they don’t actually want to hold a referendum — yet.

As in Germany, the Austrian far-Right have welcomed Brexit as an opportunity to reform the EU from within, stripping the EU to a purely economic, free trade union, an agenda shared with Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), their political cousins on the German far-Right.

But there are two key differences with Germany. Unlike the AfD, the FPÖ is favourite to win power in Austrian elections in 2018, and only missed out on seizing the presidency by 31,000 votes earlier this year.

And unlike in Germany, there is public support for the idea of a referendum in Austria. A recent poll found that 40 per cent of Austrians want an “Auxit” referendum. A majority of 53 per cent said if there was a referendum, they would vote to remain. But it is a slim majority.

What the FPÖ actually said was that it would call for a referendum if it didn’t get its way over the EU.

“If the course is set towards further towards centralization...then we must ask Austrians whether they want to be members,” Norbert Hofer, the party’s narrowly defeated presidential candidate, said.

“We need a Europe of the people, not the EU bureaucrats. The EU has to understand this wake-up call,” Heinz-Christian Strache, the party leader, said.  

“Should the EU maintain its unwillingness to reform and continue to head towards in a political federalism, and allow countries such as Turkey to join, then we want freedom to hold a vote in Austria on continued membership,” he warned.

In other words, an “Auxit” referendum is a threat rather than a goal for the FPÖ, at least for now.

And Mr Strache has named his price. He called for the resignations of Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, and Martin Schulz, president of the European parliament.

He also called for a return of powers from Brussels to national parliaments, an end to the Schengen Agreement on border-free travel, and the right for Austria to control its own immigration policy.

In other words, the most powerful far-Right party in Europe’s wish-list is not that different from that of the British Leave campaign.

GERMANY – a “Dexit”

The rapidly rising far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party welcomed Britain’s vote to leave. One prominent member, Beatrix von Storch, even told German television she “wept with joy”.

“The time is ripe for a new Europe,” Frauke Petry, the party leader, tweeted.

One of the party’s most hardline members, Björn Höcke, has called for Germany to hold its own “Dexit” referendum, saying “I know the German people want to get out of EU slavery”.

But he was quickly slapped down by the party leadership. Alexander Gauland, the deputy leader said any referendum proposal would have to be “carefully considered” and that the party shouldn’t make decisions “in the heat of battle”.

In part, that’s because the AfD leadership knows it would have no chance of winning an exit referendum in a country where the EU remains highly popular.

A recent poll for Stern magazine found that just 17 per cent of Germans would vote to leave in a referendum, while 79 per cent would vote to remain.

But it’s also because the AfD has never been Eurosceptic in the British sense. Apart from Mr Höcke and a handful of hardliners in the AfD, there aren’t really any proper Eurosceptics in mainstream German politics.

The AfD began as an anti-single currency party, and that has broadened into a more general opposition to the EU’s immigration policies and what it sees as excessive bureaucracy.

But the party’s official line has remained that it wants to reform the EU — radically, but from within. It wants a purely economic EU, a free trade area without any political integration.

That has it left it with mixed feelings about Brexit. In public at least, it has greeted the British vote as an endorsement of its policy.

But party leaders know they have lost one of the few allies for their vision of the EU. “I regret Britain’s exit,” Mr Gauland said. “Mrs Merkel has driven the British out of Europe with her open borders.”

The AfD has another problem looming. While polling shows there is no support for Dexit in the wider German public, the one group who do support a referendum are the party’s voters.

Which means the AfD will have to walk a fine line over the issue if it wants to win over new voters to propel it into the political mainstream while avoiding alienating its core supporters.

POLAND – a “Polxit”

The referendum result has caused in alarm in Poland with widespread public concern over the status of the hundreds of thousands of Poles working in the UK.

At the same time, Poland’s nationalist-leaning government is mourning the loss of a key ally which it regarded as vital brake on the federal aspirations of Berlin and Paris.

Given this, the Polish government has rejected calls for Britain’s rapid removal from the EU

“We need a longer reflection,” Witold Waszczykowski, the Polish foreign minister, told Polish state television TVP Info. “This cannot be a hasty action, this cannot consist of forcing Britain out and as fast as possible.”

He added that some of the blame for Britain’s exit lay with an EU that failed to keep one of its biggest members in the fold.

“The blame lies on both sides,” he added. “For sure, the British people have their arguments to exit the EU. But also on the side of the EU, in Brussels, one has to ask why it was not possible to keep such an important state in the EU.”

Reflecting a euro-sceptic stance it shares with the UK, Poland has rejected proposals for closer EU integration, with Mr Waszczykowski calling them “not a good solution” and something voters do not want.

Poland has also sought to exploit the soul searching in the EU triggered by Brexit by proposing the adoption of a new binding EU treaty which effectively ends the Federalist dream and replaces it with an EU where ties are looser and nation states have a greater say.

But despite the criticism of the EU, there is no prospect of Poland leaving the EU – a bloc that has bought it billions of Euros in development funds and access to the prosperous economies of Western Europe for its workers.

Poles now travel around the country on a sparkling new network of roads or in superfast trains, paid for, in part, by EU funds, while the country’s many farmers have profited from farm subsidies.

To many Poles EU membership is also symbolic of the progress their country has made since the painful and economically shabby years of communism when they yearned for the freedoms, benefits and status being part of the Union conferred.   

DENMARK – a “Denxit”

In Denmark, the populist Danish People’s Party has back-pedaled on its calls for a UK-style referendum, stressing that such a vote should only take place once Britain has agreed a new settlement with the European Union.

The Danish People’s Party says Danes should get a vote on the same deal that Britain brokers with the EU if the UK succeeds in negotiating a new relationship somewhere between full membership and the limited European Free Trade Association [EFTA] position of Switzerland and Norway.

It is a move that could put pressure on the EU to strike a tougher deal with the UK to discourage others following.

“We need to know the precise content of the agreement. That’s why it is not possible to have a vote straight away,” Kristian Thulesen Dahl, the party chairman, told the Ritzau news agency. “But I think that’s what we need to be working towards.”

Meanwhile, the party's EU spokesman Kenneth Kristensen Berth, noted in an article in the Politiken newspaper that Britain's vote may not be final.

"It may also be that the EU elite realises that they still want to try to keep the British," he wrote. "Anyone can change their mind and become wiser."

The Danish People’s Party, which has more seats in the Danish parliament than the ruling Liberal Party, was quick to congratulate the UK's Leave campaign on its victory on Friday, with Thulesen Dahl  reiterating his calls for a Danish referendum.

If Denmark did hold a referendum, historical precedent suggests it would go against the EU. Since joining in 1973, Danish voters have voted “no” in three of the country’s EU referendums — to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, to joining the euro in 2000, and to converting its opt-out from EU home affairs and justice rules in December last year.

The Red-Green Alliance, which opposes Denmark’s EU membership from a socialist position, went further, calling for Denmark to call a referendum on EU membership on June 5th 2017, Denmark’s Constitution Day.

“We of course hope that this means that here in Denmark we can begin to look at our EU membership and put it to the vote with the Danish people,” said Pernille Skipper, one of the party's leaders.

But Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has emphatically ruled out any such vote. “We have the relation to the EU that we have. It is built upon the Danish opt-outs. I don’t anticipate a situation in the near future in which we stage a showdown over them,” the PM said

FINLAND – a “Fixit”

A senior politician from the populist Finns party on Monday called for an EU referendum to be put at the core of its next general election campaign.

Meanwhile a petition to parliament demanding a referendum on EU membership has been signed by 17,000 people in less than a week.

“During the next elections [Finnish Parliament elections] we need to have discussion about possible EU referendum,” said Sampo Terho, a veteran MEP who leads the party in the Finnish parliament, told Finland’s Yle radio.

“The next three years will show whether we should continue to dream about renewing the EU, or if there are going to be only two options: deeper integration or leaving the union.”

At the same time, Sebastian Tynkkynen, leader of the party’s youth group, was confident that his petition would force the country’s parliament to consider putting the country’s EU membership to the vote.

“My campaign team is really, really sure that we are going to get it into parliament,” Mr Tynkkynen told the Daily Telegraph. “In one week we have as many as a third of the names we need and we have 25 weeks to go.”

Once the petition is accepted, it will be discussed by parliamentary committees before being put to a vote of MPs.

Since joining government for the first time since winning 17.7 per cent of the vote in the 2015 general election, The Finns party has seen its support nearly halve as the realities of government force it into compromises.

The party’s leader Timo Soini — now Finland’s Foreign Minister — has recently ruled out leaving the euro, but Mr Tynkkynen, the youth leader, said he expected the Finns to harness resentment of Brussels in its 2019 election campaign.

“If my party leaders say that if we go into government after the next election, there will be an EU referendum, then I think the party will rise again and get a really great victory, just as the Conservatives did in the UK.”

The Finns are the only major party flirting with the idea of leaving the European Union.

Juha Sipilä, the country’s Prime Minister responded to the British vote with a call for continuity. “The European project will continue,” he said in a speech in which he described the result as “undeniably a disappointment”.

Petteri Orpo, Finland’s Finance Minister and leader of the National Coalition Party said on Twitter that he was confident Finland and other EU countries could “find a common path to the future” despite the “disappointing” British decision.

SWEDEN - a "Swexit"

The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats renewed calls for a UK-style EU referendum on Monday, but even they conceded that they didn’t expect such a “Swexit” vote to happen any time soon.

“In the short term, I don’t think it’s very likely,” Mattias Karlsson, who leads the party in the Swedish parliament, said of the possibility of forcing through a vote. “But you could have said the same some years back in the UK.”

He pointed out that the mainstream parties of both left and right were still heavily in favour of Sweden’s EU membership, as was the majority of Swedish media.

“With Brexit, I think the tide has turned. We can see that a larger proportion of the Swedish population are increasingly eurosceptic and in favour of leaving the European Union,” he said. “In the end I think it will be very hard for the establishment to refuse these people a vote.”

Sweden’s major parties held a crisis meeting on Monday morning on how to respond to Britain’s vote, as the first poll after the UK referendum result showed that a majority of Swedes still supported EU membership.

“This is no time to demand negotiations or referendums, because then we will just make the whole situation worse,” Mr Lofven said on Monday morning. “There is a consensus between the four [opposition] Alliance parties and the two government parties that this must be handled with stability and continuity.”

However Anna Kinberg Batra, leader of the opposition Moderate Party, took a new tougher line on Monday, calling the UK vote “a wake up call” for Brussels which Sweden should use to force reforms on the EU's handling of immigration, finance and trade.

"The EU has failed to solve major challenges. Discontent against its development is not found only in Britain, but also here at home” she wrote in an article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “The EU’s leaders must recognise that there are serious shortcomings.”

Mr Karlsson argued that the Moderates were “in conflict with their own voters” and would eventually be forced to go into a coalition with his party, giving it the leverage to force through a referendum.

He said the party favoured a "British model" of a renegotiation followed by a referendum, but added that, unlike David Cameron, his party was like to campaign on the Leave side.

“We would have to get a really good deal for us to think it’s worthwhile to stay. It’s hard to put a price tag on sovereignty and freedom.”

The poll, by Sifo, found that 52 percent of respondents wanted Sweden to stay in the EU, compared to 31 percent who wanted to leave. Close to 30 percent of respondents wanted Sweden to hold an EU referendum, compared to 56 percent who wanted no such vote.

HUNGARY – a “Huxit”

Hungary has said it has no intention at the moment of leaving the European Union despite the country’s reputation as one of the most outspoken critics of the European project and speculation that it might follow in Britain’s footsteps.

In the wake of the referendum Budapest has rallied to the EU flag saying it safer its future lies with Brussels but has also hinted that this might change in the future.

“At present, I believe that outside the European Union, Hungary would find it much more difficult to thrive, it would be much more difficult to continue building a civic Hungary,” said Laszlo Kover, speaker of the Hungarian parliament.

He added, however, that if the EU failed to reform and move away from a drive for closer integration there could be a time when the disadvantages of membership outstrip the advantages.

Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who for long has been a thorn in the side of the EU, said he believes in a “strong Europe” but called for the EU’s leaders to build a Union where “strong nation states are not seen as obstacles but as the foundations”.

Despite the support offered to the EU, Budapest has said it will push ahead with a referendum on Brussels’ plans to enforce migrant quotas on each member state – a move designed to give democratic legitimacy to Mr Orban’s refusal to bow to Brussels on the issue.  

The referendum has attracted the ire of Brussels but speaking on Monday Zoltan Kovacs, the Hungarian government spokesman, “it has never been more relevant to ask people what they think.”

Hungary’s mixture of fierce criticism and support for the EU is, in some ways, due to a turbulent post-war past shared by many of the EU’s eastern members.

The country values the security and funding the EU provides along with the feeling that it is now an equal member of the European club of nations after years of being considered second class during the communist period.

At the same time Hungary’s recent struggles for independence has installed a suspicion of trans-national bodies and fostered a deep sense of loyalty to the nation state.