Journal of European Public Policy

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Getting around no: how governments react to

negative EU referendums

Frank Schimmelfennig

To cite this article: Frank Schimmelfennig (2019) Getting around no: how governments
react to negative EU referendums, Journal of European Public Policy, 26:7, 1056-1074, DOI:
10.1080/13501763.2019.1619191

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JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY
2019, VOL. 26, NO. 7, 1056–1074
https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2019.1619191

Getting around no: how governments react to

negative EU referendums
Frank Schimmelfennig
Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

ABSTRACT
Referendums, and negative referendums in particular, are an important constraint
on European integration and the most direct way in which politicization affects
EU-level decision-making. Yet governments retain considerable room of
maneuver in responding to them. Whereas there is a rich literature on
referendum campaigns, voting behavior, and intergovernmental bargaining
under referendum threats, the (inter)governmental responses to referendum
outcomes have not been studied systematically. This article examines how
governments respond to negative referendums on European integration. It
suggests that the type of integration issue put to the referendum (accession,
withdrawal, or integration), and the concomitant size and intergovernmental
distribution of the costs of failure, structures the post-referendum choices. This
conjecture is explored in a comparative analysis of all 15 negative EU
referendum cases since 1972.

KEYWORDS European Union; referendum; treaty; politicization; negotiation

Introduction
Europe integrates under the shadow of national referendums. Any major new
treaty that the European Union (EU) concludes is likely to face a popular vote.
Since the Single European Act (1986), it has become normal that treaty revi-
sions are ratified by referendum in at least one member state. There are
several new developments, however. The Dutch vote, in 2016, on the associ-
ation treaty with Ukraine was the first referendum on a treaty with a third
country. Moreover, withdrawal referendums have become more frequent
recently: the Swiss immigration initiative of 2014, the Greek bailout referen-
dum of 2015 and, most importantly, the Brexit referendum of 2016.
Finally, there is an increasing chance that the pro-integration side loses the
referendum. According to Mendez and Mendez (2017: 32), the rate of ‘refer-
endum failure’ has accelerated to nearly 40 percent since 2000, and over 60
percent since 2010, as opposed to roughly 20 percent before 2000. Accession

CONTACT Frank Schimmelfennig frank.schimmelfennig@eup.gess.ethz.ch

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2019.1619191.
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1057

referendums in new member states and ‘repeat referendums’ in Ireland aside,

the anti-integration side has won two-thirds (12 out of 18) of the referendums
on European integration since the year 2000.1
EU referendums are the most consequential manifestation of the politiciza-
tion of European integration (Grande and Hutter 2016: 36; Hooghe and Marks
2009: 20–22). They are the most direct venue for voters to influence decisions
on European integration; they usually juxtapose integration-friendly
majorities in government and parliament with more skeptical citizens; they
allow Eurosceptic parties and movements to make their mark and mobilize
people; and they affect the integration plans, positions and bargaining behav-
ior of governments even before they actually take place.
Unsurprisingly, EU referendums have triggered a growing literature (for a
recent overview, see Beach 2018). This literature has asked why governments
call referendums (e.g. Closa 2007; Oppermann 2013), how voters decide and
which effect referendum campaigns have on their vote (e.g. Hobolt 2009), and
how anticipated referendums affect intergovernmental bargaining ahead of
ratification (e.g. Hug and Schulz 2007). Yet it has not systematically examined
either conceptually or empirically how governments respond to referendum
failure.2 This is what this article sets out to do.
I define an ‘EU referendum’ as a referendum in a member state or non-
member state on an EU agreement. In a ‘positive’ EU referendum, the pro-inte-
gration side wins: a non-member state agrees to join the EU or a member
state ratifies an EU treaty. Positive referendums do not challenge the inter-
national agreement or the governments that have negotiated them. This
article therefore deals with negative EU referendums exclusively, in which
voters decline the ratification of an EU treaty, reject EU membership or turn
against a common policy.
The analysis starts from the claim that a negative EU referendum is not the
end of the story but the beginning of a new round of policymaking. Negative
EU referendums force both the government of the referendum country and
the rest of the EU to respond, but referendum failure as such does not deter-
mine the response. Governments faced with a negative referendum outcome
are rarely confined to passive acquiescence, but are able to get around ‘no’
and reduce the impact of the negative vote on their integration plans by dilut-
ing the referendum result, finding substitutes, or revising the terms of inte-
gration. Additionally, they think of ways to avoid future referendums or
restrict their effects.
I argue that the issue the referendum addresses – accession, integration, or
withdrawal – generates typical cost structures, composed of the size and the
distribution of the costs of referendum failure, which constrain the govern-
mental response. Negative accession referendums typically produce foregone
gains, which predominantly affect the state wishing to accede to the EU or
one of its integrated policies. In response, the national government searches
1058 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

for alternative, differentiated forms of integration to recoup some of the gains.

Negative integration referendums also produce foregone gains but affect the
entire EU membership more symmetrically. The EU is therefore willing to rene-
gotiate, while keeping changes to a minimum, to secure integration. By con-
trast, negative withdrawal referendums generate prospective losses, which
redound disproportionately on the withdrawing state, but also harden the
bargaining behavior of the EU. The national government therefore typically
seeks to dilute the referendum outcome.
I explore the argument in a comparative analysis of all 15 negative EU refer-
endums in member and nonmember states between 1972 and 2016. The con-
clusions assess the findings and reflect on the longer-term impact of negative
EU referendums on governmental strategies and European integration.
The contribution of the article is threefold. First, it explores an important
dimension of EU referendum politics that earlier studies have not engaged
in systematically. Second, it proposes a theoretical argument based on the
cost structures associated with different types of referendums, which con-
strain government reactions. Third, whereas it does not provide new evidence
on the individual referendum cases, it brings them together in a comparative
analysis. In sum, the article contributes to a better understanding of the inter-
action of domestic politicization and intergovernmental relations in the EU’s
multi-level system.

The argument: managing the costs of referendum failure

The literature categorizes EU referendums in various ways. One dimension is
the subject of the referendum. The most common distinction is between
membership referendums, treaty (ratification) referendums, and policy or
single-issue referendums (e.g. Beach 2018; Hobolt 2009: 11–13; Mendez and
Mendez 2017: 19). Mendez and Mendez (2017: 19) add third-country referen-
dums on European integration as a fourth category. In addition, the literature
categorizes referendums according to procedural characteristics. For instance,
Hug (2002: 24–25) distinguishes referendums with regard to whether or not
they are required, triggered by the government and binding.
I argue that the reactions of governments to negative EU referendums
depend mainly on the subject of the referendum. In contrast to the existing
literature, I propose a two-by-two deductive typology based on the stake
and the scope of the referendum (Table 1). On the one hand, the referendum
question may refer to either an increase or a decrease of integration (stake);
on the other hand, it may concern the integration of an individual country
or the EU as a whole (scope).
In accession referendums, voters decide whether their country should join
the EU or an integrated EU policy; in withdrawal referendums, they vote on
whether it should leave the EU, or turn against a common policy their
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1059

Table 1. Types of negative EU referendums.

Scope Individual country EU as a whole
(asymmetrical costs) (symmetrical costs)
Stake
Increase in integration Accession referendum Integration referendum
(foregone gains) (asymmetrical foregone gains) (symmetrical foregone gains)
Decrease in integration Withdrawal referendum (Disintegration referendum)
(prospective losses) (asymmetrical losses)

country had previously agreed and adhered to. In integration referendums,

voters decide on international agreements that increase EU-wide integration;
in disintegration referendums, they vote on agreements that decrease inte-
gration for all member states. Because there has never been a disintegration
referendum in the EU, I discard this type of referendum in the remainder of
the paper.
Referendum types matter for government responses because their failure
produces distinct ‘cost structures’ for the states involved. In turn, the variation
in cost structures explains why governments respond differently to negative
accession, withdrawal and integration referendums. The cost structures
result from the size of the costs of referendum failure and their distribution
among the affected states. They ‘set the stage’ for the reactions of govern-
ments and produce the constraints within which both the national govern-
ment experiencing the negative referendum and the other member states
decide on their responses.
Generally, the higher the costs that governments incur from negative refer-
endums, the higher their incentive to defy or work around them. To link the
costs of referendum failure to referendum types, I start from a qualitative dis-
tinction between foregone gains and prospective losses of integration. Fore-
gone gains result from failing to enter or increase, and prospective losses from
exiting or reducing, existing integration. Ceteris paribus, prospective losses
generate higher costs than foregone gains. First, European integration is
characterized by considerable path dependency (Pierson 1996). Integration
not only creates increasing returns from the endogenous transnational inter-
connections and endogenous interdependencies it promotes. It also creates
irredeemable or ‘sunk’ costs, i.e. the investments states, firms, and other
actors make to adapt their institutions and strategies to an integrated
policy. Both increasing returns and sunk costs make exit from integration
more costly than non-entry. Second, foregone gains are more uncertain and
less strongly felt than losses. Politically speaking, actors who realize losses
are more likely to resist and easier to mobilize than actors who experience
foregone gains.3 Accordingly, governments are more likely to acquiesce in
negative referendums that produce costs in the form of foregone gains and
more likely to defy referendums that cause actual losses. Evidently, the size
of the foregone gains and prospective losses matters, too.
1060 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

In addition, governmental responses depend on how symmetrically the

costs are distributed between the referendum state and the (other) EU
member states (cf. Walter et al. 2018). If a negative EU referendum harms
the entire EU strongly and symmetrically, we are likely to see a collective reac-
tion at the EU level and an accommodation of the referendum state by (the
rest of) the EU. By contrast, asymmetrically distributed costs create unequal
bargaining power in negotiating the response – typically favoring the EU
over the referendum country. Whereas the EU will be reluctant to change inte-
gration, the national government will either acquiesce in the negative referen-
dum (if the size of its costs is low) or seek to work around it (if its costs are
high). An important factor contributing to the distribution of costs is the
size or relevance of the referendum country. Ceteris paribus, bigger referen-
dum states increase the symmetry of costs and bargaining power.
The combination of size and distribution produces four categorical cost
structures (asymmetrical or symmetrical foregone gains or prospective
losses), which are typically associated with the issues at stake in EU referen-
dums. Negative accession referendums represent situations of asymmetrical
foregone gains affecting the referendum state predominantly. Negative inte-
gration referendums match situations of symmetrical foregone gains. By con-
trast, negative withdrawal referendums generate prospective losses. Whereas
they affect all parties to the integration agreement, they are typically asymme-
trically distributed in favor of the EU.
As a final building block for the formulation of hypotheses, Table 2 presents
and defines an ordinal scale of government responses in the order of decreas-
ing acquiescence in and increasing defiance of the negative referendum vote.
At the most acquiescent end of the spectrum, governments abandon the inte-
gration agreement either without any replacement (acquiescence) or with a
(less integrationist) substitute.
Alternatively, governments may choose to retain the integration agree-
ment but renegotiate and change it in response to the negative referendum.
Changes may involve a thorough revision of the agreement, be limited to ‘opt-
outs’ from individual provisions for the referendum state (differentiation), or
amount to no more than interpretative declarations to accommodate the

Table 2. Governmental responses to negative EU referendums.

Response Definition
Acquiescence Governments abandon the integration agreement without replacing it
Substitution Governments abandon the integration agreement, but replace it with a weaker
agreement
Revision Governments do not abandon the integration agreement, but revise it substantially
Differentiation Governments do not abandon the integration agreement, but grant opt-outs
Reinterpretation Governments do not abandon the integration agreement, but reinterpret its rules
Dilution Governments water down the implementation of the referendum outcome
Disregard Governments ignore the referendum outcome
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1061

concerns of the referendum state without changing the agreement text (rein-
terpretation). This is the weakest form of change. Finally, at the most defiant
end of the spectrum of responses, governments choose not to change or rein-
terpret the integration agreement. Instead, the national government dilutes
the implementation of the referendum vote or disregards the referendum
outcome altogether.
In the remainder of this section, I discuss the costs structures of and
responses to the referendum types in more detail and formulate hypotheses.
Accession referendums most often take place in the context of enlargement,
when voters in candidate countries for membership are asked to approve
the treaty of accession to the EU. They may also address accession to an EU
integration scheme below membership. For instance, in 1992, Swiss voters
narrowly rejected Switzerland’s participation in the European Economic
Area (EEA). In addition, voters in EU member states may be asked to decide
whether their country should join an integrated EU policy that is already in
place – see the Danish and Swedish euro referendums in 2000 and 2003.
Assuming that accession would have been beneficial for both the acceding
state and the (rest of the) EU, a negative accession referendum produces costs
in the form of foregone gains. Their distribution, however, is asymmetrical. In
comparison with the already integrated member states, the accession country
is always relatively small, and so is the marginal contribution it would make to
the EU or the integrated policy. Because their costs consist in moderate fore-
gone gains, the (other) member states tend to accept negative accession
referendums and not take action. They do not have strong incentives to
accommodate the accession country – regardless of its size – by changing
the existing integration regime; nor do they put pressure on the accession
country to work around the referendum outcome.
The accession country is typically more affected by the failed accession
referendum than the EU as a whole. The national government therefore has
an incentive to recoup its foregone gains at least partially. If possible, it will
therefore seek to substitute the failed agreement with one that is more pala-
table to the voters. Otherwise, it will simply abandon the integration project.
(H1) Negative EU accession referendums are likely to produce the most acquies-
cent responses. Governments abandon the integration agreement or seek a
substitution.

Integration referendums typically concern an EU treaty or treaty revision and

take place in a member state. The regular Danish and Irish referendums on
EU treaties from the 1986 Single European Act to the 2009 Lisbon Treaty
are in this category. So are the referendums on the Constitutional Treaty in
2005.
Whereas both accession and integration referendums reconfirm the status
quo when they fail, the costs of a negative integration referendum are
1062 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

typically higher and distributed more symmetrically. In the case of the acces-
sion referendum, a single country decides whether to join a level of inte-
gration, from which the member states already benefit. If it fails, the
member states remain at their desired level of integration. By contrast, a
failed integration referendum jeopardizes everybody’s desired level of inte-
gration, given the requirement of unanimous treaty ratification. Facing high
externalities, the EU therefore does not acquiesce in the negative referendum,
or settle for a substitute, but tries hard to rescue the integration project.
To do so, the member state governments typically enter into renegotiation
at the European level. On the one hand, given the considerable externalities of
the negative referendum, the government of the referendum state enjoys
greater bargaining power to attain changes than in the accession case. On
the other hand, however, the other governments seek to minimize change,
because the rejected treaty is usually based on a laborious intergovernmental
compromise and may already have been ratified elsewhere. EU governments
therefore prefer to leave the main body of the treaty untouched and accom-
modate the negative-referendum country with additional declarations or
decisions that do not require general ratification.
Whether this is possible depends, first, on the scope of the rejected treaty
contents. For instance, while the rejection of individual policies can be accom-
modated through differentiation, the rejection of general or institutional pro-
visions requires a thorough revision. Second, it depends on the relevance of
the referendum state. Negative referendums in big member states, or
several member states at the same time, are more likely to produce far-reach-
ing revisions. A limited rejection in a small member state lends itself to
reinterpretation.
(H2) Negative EU integration referendums are likely to produce changes in the
integration agreement (revisions, differentiations or reinterpretations). The more
general the scope of the rejection, and the more relevant the referendum
country or countries, the more acquiescent the change.

In withdrawal referendums, the issue at stake is the reduction of the referen-

dum country’s level of integration. The most far-reaching examples are
popular votes on the exit of a member state from the EU, such as the 1975
and 2016 British referendums on EU membership. Withdrawal referendums
can also be votes related to the participation of a member state in a specific
policy (the 2015 Greek referendum on the Eurozone bailout conditions), and
nonmember states may hold withdrawal referendums if they seek to reduce
their association with the EU or exit from specific policies (the 2014 Mass Inte-
gration Initiative in Switzerland).
Negative withdrawal referendums differ from both negative accession and
integration referendums in that they change the status quo and create pro-
spective losses. To be sure, if a majority of the voters were motivated by
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1063

fear or risk of disintegration loss, withdrawal referendums would not succeed.

Yet anti-integration voters may not expect to lose from disintegration or bet
on a better deal after the referendum. Accordingly, national governments
faced with a referendum calling for withdrawal typically seek to renegotiate
the terms of their European integration in order to accommodate Eurosceptic
voters, on the one hand, and rescue the benefits of integration, on the other.
The (other) EU member states have an interest in defying withdrawals,
however. First, they incur losses, too. Second, whereas they cannot stop with-
drawals legally or coercively, they are concerned about ‘cherry picking’ and
the bandwagon effect withdrawals may create. Moreover, as in the case of
accession, the (other) member states generally benefit from the superior bar-
gaining power conferred by asymmetrical interdependence and larger market
size – regardless of the size of the referendum country. They can thus hope to
put effective pressure on the withdrawing state. The remaining member
states are therefore reluctant to accommodate the ‘withdrawers’. If the EU
is unwilling to change the terms of integration for fear of encouraging
cherry-picking behavior, the best available response for the national govern-
ment is to minimize the adverse effects of the negative referendum by dilut-
ing the referendum outcome.
(H3) Negative EU withdrawal referendums are likely to lead to the most defiant
responses. Governments dilute or disregard the referendum outcome.

The hypotheses make distinctive predictions with regard to the governmental

responses in the three different referendum contexts. Because of the variation
in cost structures, I expect responses to negative accession referendums to be
more acquiescent, and responses to negative withdrawal referendums more
defiant, than responses to negative integration referendums.

Analysis
To explore these conjectures empirically, I analyze the full population of valid
negative nation-wide referendums on EU agreements.4 These criteria result in
a population of 15 cases of negative EU referendums in nine countries
between 1972 and 2016 (Table 3). Negative EU referendums took place
three times in Denmark, twice in Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and
Norway, and once in France, Greece, Sweden and the UK. The data consist
of six accession, six integration, and three withdrawal cases. Only three nega-
tive EU referendums resulted in pure acquiescence; in 80 percent of the cases,
governments tried to get around ‘no’ in more or less defiant ways.
The brief discussion of the cases focuses on the description of the indepen-
dent and dependent variables – the referendum issues, the cost structures,
and the government responses. It serves the purpose of a general assessment
of the association between issue structures and governmental responses in
1064 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

Table 3. Negative EU referendums.

Issue Pro-EU Govt.
Year State Issue type Procedure vote % EU Pos. Response
1 1994 NO EU membership ACC Government 47.8 Acquiescence
2 2000 DK Euro adoption ACC Required 46.8 5.19 Acquiescence
3 2003 SE Euro adoption ACC Government 42 5.5 Acquiescence
4 1972 NO EU membership ACC Government 46.5 Substitution
5 1992 CH EEA ACC Required 49.7 Substitution
membership
6 2015 DK JHA opt-in ACC Required 46.9 5.82 Substitution
7 2005 FR Constitutional INT Government 46.6 5.71 Revision
treaty
8 2005 NL Constitutional INT Government 38.2 5.12 Revision
treaty
9 2008 IE Lisbon treaty INT Required 46.6 5.87 Revision
10 1992 DK Maastricht INT Required 49.3 6.38 Differentiation
treaty
11 2001 IE Nice treaty INT Required 46.1 5.63 Reinterpretation
12 2016 NL Ukraine INT Non-govt. 38.2 5.32 Reinterpretation
association (non-bind.)
13 2014 CH Movement of WDR Non-govt. 49.7 4.02 Dilution
persons (binding)
14 2016 UK EU membership WDR Government 48.1 3.14 Dilution
15 2015 EL Bail-out terms WDR Government 38.7 2.18 Disregard
Note: Referendum information based on Beach (2018), Mendez and Mendez (2017), and own research.
‘Issue type’: ACC (accession), INT (integration), and WDR (withdrawal). ‘Government EU position’ is
the seat-weighted average of EU positions of the parties in government from the Chapel Hill expert
surveys (Bakker et al. 2015; Ray 1999) closest to the referendum date (data only available for
member states).

failed EU referendums. Space constraints do not allow me to provide a

detailed analysis of the negotiation and decision-making processes that pro-
duced the governmental response in each case. For case studies on many of
the cases discussed here, see Mendez and Mendez (2017).

Responses to negative accession referendums

The accession cases are fully in line with H1. Governments responded to all
negative EU referendums on accession decisions with national acquiescence
or substitution (three cases each).
After losing the referendum on Norway’s accession to the European Com-
munity (EC) in September 1972, the Norwegian government declared that it
would not bring the ratification bill before Parliament. Instead, Norway
signed a free trade agreement with the EC in May 1973. After another nega-
tive accession referendum in 1994, Norway could fall back on membership in
the EEA, which had come into effect at the beginning of the same year and
provides Norway with far-reaching access to the EU market. After the negative
Swiss referendum on the EEA in 1992, the government began to negotiate a
series of substitute bilateral agreements – devoid of the EEA’s supranational
procedures – in 1994.
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1065

The Danish and the Swedish governments put accession to the Eurozone
to referendums in 2000 and 2003, respectively, acquiesced in the negative
results, and remained non-euro area member states. Finally, the 2015 referen-
dum on replacing the Danish opt-out from supranational integration in Justice
and Home Affairs prevented Denmark from remaining a full member of
Europol, because the EU had decided to ‘communitarize’ police and judicial
cooperation in the Treaty of Lisbon. To maintain operational cooperation
and access to Europol data, the EU and Denmark concluded a substitute
agreement in April 2017.
The need for and availability of intermediate agreements appears to be the
most plausible explanation for the difference between acquiescence and sub-
stitution in the governmental responses. In 1972, Norway sought a substi-
tution because the country would have fallen behind comparable non-
member states (such as Sweden or Switzerland) without a free-trade agree-
ment. In 1994, however, it could revert to the EEA, which accorded Norway
access to the internal market. At the same time, EEA and EU membership
are so close that intermediate agreements are hard to conceive. By contrast,
Switzerland would have suffered from considerable economic disadvantages
had it not been able to substitute some of the market access provisions of the
EEA through bilateral agreements after the 1992 referendum. Similarly,
Denmark would have lost the benefits of cooperation within Europol, and
fallen back on a lower status than many EU non-member states, had it not
concluded a substitute agreement.
In the Danish and Swedish Eurozone accession cases, it is again difficult to
think of possible intermediate agreements short of Eurozone membership.
Under the exchange-rate mechanism ERM II, Denmark had already agreed a
fixed exchange rate with the euro in 1998. As a result, Danish monetary
policy was strongly tied de facto to the euro. By contrast, Sweden has
remained outside the ERM II, precisely in order to avoid meeting the criteria
for adopting the euro and being obliged to join the Eurozone.
In line with the cost structure of asymmetrical foregone gains in negative
accession referendums, the EU has generally remained passive after referen-
dum failures. It has neither taken the initiative to revise the accession agree-
ments, let alone the integration agreements to which they relate, nor has it
exerted pressure on national governments to dilute the referendum
outcome. By contrast, the national governments supportive of accession
have generally opted for substitution agreements (if available) at a lower
level of integration to recoup a part of the foregone gains of accession.

Responses to negative integration referendums

As expected (H2), the responses to the six negative integration referendums
occupy the medium range between acquiescence and defiance. Three
1066 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

referendums produced a revision, two a reinterpretation, and one a differen-

tiation of the integration agreement.
In reaction to the Danish rejection of the Treaty of Maastricht in June 1992,
the other member states refused to renegotiate the treaty or stop the ratifica-
tion process – leaving it to Denmark to find a solution (Laursen 1994: 70–71).
The Danish opposition parties proposed a ‘national compromise’ to the gov-
ernment, consisting in four policy-specific opt-outs from Maastricht (on mon-
etary union, Justice and Home Affairs, common defence, and Union
citizenship). The Danish opt-outs were accepted at the Edinburgh European
Council in December 1992. Because the Danish demands were policy-
specific, they could be met by differentiation rather than a revision of the
main body of the treaty.
One year after the Irish referendum on the Treaty of Nice in June 2001, the
Irish government and the European Council issued two declarations at the
Seville European Council that had no legal status and did not change or
amend the treaty. Rather, they interpreted the treaty in a way that
reaffirmed and explained the prevailing legal situation in order to alleviate
concerns of Irish voters about Irish military neutrality. The Irish declaration
reiterated treaty provisions that the Common Foreign and Security Policy
(CFSP) should not ‘prejudice the specific character of the security and
defence policy’ of member states, did not envisage a European Army, and
that decisions on common defence needed to be taken by unanimity.5 The
declaration of the European Council confirmed the Irish interpretation.
The Danish and Irish responses of 1992 and 2002 were similar in that they
focused on specific policies. Yet the depth of policy integration differed
strongly. Because monetary union implied a massive transfer of national auth-
ority, a simple reinterpretation would not have been sufficient. Because the
CFSP provisions did not entail any effective restriction of national sovereignty,
legal differentiation was not necessary.
The referendums on the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Nether-
lands in 2005 caused a much bigger problem. Not only was the treaty rejected
in more than one country; the negative referendums took place in two found-
ing and core member states and in one of the biggest members. Moreover,
the Constitutional Treaty was not primarily designed to add new or deepen
existing policies; its main thrust was institutional simplification and unifica-
tion, accompanied by strong supranational symbols. For these reasons,
nothing short of revision was feasible. The member state governments
embarked on a ‘period of reflection’ and entrusted a ‘group of wise men’ to
come up with a solution. Two years later, the governments convened a
new intergovernmental conference, which drafted the Treaty of Lisbon,
signed in December 2007.
What might look like a substitution of the original integration agreement
was, however, simply a repackaging. Whereas the Treaty of Lisbon toned
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1067

down the supranational and constitutional rhetoric and symbols of the Con-
stitutional Treaty, it adopted its substantive provisions almost entirely. The
repackaging was supposed to depoliticize the reform, reduce the demand
for holding referendums, and placate voters that had objected to the state-
like ambitions of the Constitutional Treaty (Devuyst 2012). The response is
thus best characterized as a revision of the Constitutional Treaty.
Still, a majority of Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June 2008. In
many ways, the intergovernmental response was similar to the response to
the Nice Treaty referendum. The member states agreed on a ‘set of arrange-
ments, which are fully compatible with the Treaty, in order to provide reassur-
ance and to respond to the concerns of the Irish people’.6 They explained that
‘nothing in the Treaty’ affected the constitutional provisions of Ireland on
issues such as abortion and military neutrality, or limited the unanimity
requirements in the areas of taxation or common defence. In contrast to
2002, however, the European Council took a legally binding ‘decision’ that
would be appended to the next European treaty. These ‘Guarantees’ still
amounted to no more than an interpretation of the Lisbon Treaty. In addition,
however, the EU agreed to maintain the principle of ‘one state, one Commis-
sioner’, which the Treaty would otherwise have abolished. The presumed loss
of Irish influence if it lost ‘its’ Commissioner had been an important point in
the ‘no’ campaign. The response therefore qualifies as a (minor) revision.
The difference to the response to the Nice Treaty referendum can be attribu-
ted to the broader set of issues, including institutional rules, on the agenda of
the ‘no’ campaign.
Finally, after the negative Dutch referendum on the association treaty with
Ukraine in 2016, the government entered into negotiations with the other
member states about a legally binding reassurance on the issues featuring
in the ‘no’ campaign. In December 2016, the member states agreed on an
addendum to the association treaty, which clarified that association did not
entail future membership, security guarantees, free movement of persons,
or an increase in financial aid. The addendum did not change the treaty
and did not involve the EU as a legal entity or Ukraine. The outcome is there-
fore best understood as a reinterpretation of the association treaty, which was
ratified by the Netherlands in June 2017.
The responses to the six negative integration referendums are generally
in line with the assumed cost structure and the expectations of H2. Because
the failed referendums prevented all member states from attaining their
preferred level of integration, the costs of failure were higher for the EU
and more symmetrically distributed than in the accession referendums.
This cost structure generated a collective interest in working around the
negative referendums to rescue the agreements. This collective interest
manifested itself in the EU’s willingness to change the agreements in the
most limited way possible to accommodate its detractors. The extent of
1068 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

change depended on both the scale of the demands and the relevance of
the demandeurs.
At the low end, the combination of small scale and low relevance in the
Ireland 2001 and the Dutch 2016 cases resulted in a mere interpretative
change of the agreements. At the high end, the large scale and high relevance
of the French and Dutch ‘no’ to the Constitutional Treaty prompted a major
revision of the integration project, which was also designed to reduce the
risk of future referendums. In between these extremes, the Danish referen-
dum on Maastricht could be accommodated by differentiation: even
though the scale of the integration project was large, the Danish ‘national
compromise’ was focused on specific policies. By contrast, the Irish referen-
dum on Lisbon called for a (minor) revision because it involved one general
institutional issue, the reduction of the Commission.

Responses to negative withdrawal referendums

With just three cases since 2014, one of which was not concluded at the time
of writing, withdrawal referendums are the smallest and newest class of nega-
tive EU referendums. Comparative inferences are therefore harder to make
and fraught with higher uncertainty than for the other two referendum
types. All cases, however, provide evidence for dilution and disregard, corre-
sponding to H3.
In February 2014, Swiss voters adopted a popular initiative, termed ‘Mass
Immigration Initiative’, against the recommendation of the Swiss government.
The initiative obliged the government to refrain from signing any further
agreements expanding the free movement of persons and to negotiate, in
the course of three years, restrictions to the EU-Swiss free-movement
regime. These restrictions were to include immigration quota and the
labour-market discrimination of foreigners. Full implementation would thus
have amounted to the reduction of Swiss integration into the single market.
The EU, however, refused any renegotiation of the relevant bilateral agree-
ment. When Switzerland did not extend the free movement regime to Croatia,
the most recent EU member state, the EU canceled Switzerland’s association
to the EU’s research policies and put negotiations on several additional sec-
toral agreements on hold. In December 2016, the Swiss government resigned
itself to an extremely ‘light’ implementation of the initiative. It refrained from
immigration quota, ratified the agreement with Croatia, and gave Swiss job
seekers an informal head start only.7 The reaction of the Swiss government
is a clear case of diluting the implementation of a negative referendum to pre-
serve the integration agreement.
In July 2015, the Greek government called on the citizens to reject the third
bailout program proposed by its international creditors: the European Com-
mission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1069

Just as the Swiss initiative of 2014, the Greek referendum was not nominally
about the termination of membership (in the Eurozone or the EU’s free move-
ment regime). Both referendums qualify as withdrawal referendums, however,
because voters unilaterally rejected a European policy to which previous
national governments had signed up. It was also widely discussed and antici-
pated that an implementation of a negative vote might endanger the ‘bilat-
eral way’ in the Swiss case or trigger ‘Grexit’.8
Because most members of the Greek government had no intent of leaving
the Eurozone, it apparently called the referendum to buy time, strengthen its
negotiation position, or force the opposition to take a stance (Triga and Man-
avopoulos 2017). In spite of campaigning for a ‘no’, it may even have counted
on a popular ‘yes’ to justify an agreement with the creditors (Varoufakis 2017:
443, 458). At any rate, the government resumed the negotiations as soon as
the voters had cast their verdict and accepted a slightly modified program
based on the same austerity-based conditionality. The response is therefore
best classified as disregard resulting from a highly asymmetrical bargaining
situation. Whereas the EU could afford to take a tough stance for austerity
and against debt forgiveness, the costs for the Greek government of rejecting
the bailout program would have been prohibitive.
After the June 2016 British vote to leave the EU, the new prime minister
Theresa May came out in favor of a ‘hard Brexit’ in her withdrawal letter of
March 2017. May excluded membership in the internal market and the
customs union (May 2017). This position gave clear priority to the goals of
restoring sovereignty and limiting immigration that had dominated the
Leave campaign and provided the strongest motivation for Leave voters
(Clarke et al. 2017).
Successive changes in the British negotiating position indicate progressive
dilution driven by the high and asymmetrical costs of withdrawal. First, the EU
has taken a hard and unified bargaining position against the UK in order to
preserve the integrity of its single market, prevent UK ‘cherry-picking’ and dis-
courage future exits. Second, whereas the costs of Brexit are estimated to be
significant for both sides, the UK’s economic exposure to Brexit is almost five
times higher than the EU’s (Chen et al. 2018). In response, the UK government
has given up its initial opposition against the priority of withdrawal nego-
tiations and the obligation to pay into the EU budget after leaving. It has
accepted a transition period, in which the UK would become a rule-taker
without decision-making rights, and the ‘backstop’ for Northern Ireland,
which could force the UK to remain in a customs union with the EU for an
unspecified time (Schimmelfennig 2018). It remains to be seen whether nego-
tiations on the future EU-UK relationship move further in the direction of a
‘soft Brexit’.
In sum, the analysis of all 15 negative EU referendums corroborates the
conjectures between referendum issue and government responses. Failed
1070 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

accession referendums have produced the most acquiescent responses: gov-

ernments have shelved accession or substituted it with agreements at a lower
level of integration. By contrast, governments have reacted most defiantly to
the negative withdrawal referendums. In the two concluded cases, govern-
ments have significantly diluted or disregarded the negative referendum
vote to preserve the integration agreements with the EU; in the Brexit case,
the UK has successively softened its position on the way to the 2018 Withdra-
wal Agreement. In between these extremes, negative integration referen-
dums display a response pattern characterized by the collective will to
preserve the integration agreement (rather than abandoning it, as in the
accession cases) and to make accommodating changes to obtain the
support of the referendum state (rather than refusing change, as in the with-
drawal cases).
The variation in responses plausibly follows the variation in cost structures
associated with different referendum issues. The more adverse the cost struc-
ture of failed referendums, the more defiant the governments’ response.
Negative accession referendums typically generate low costs for the EU –
and few incentives to change the integration agreement in favor of the refer-
endum country. By contrast, negative integration referendums prevent the EU
from attaining the desired level of integration and therefore increase the
incentive to make concessions to the referendum country – proportionate
to the scale of the opposition and the relevance of the country. Finally, nega-
tive withdrawal referendums produce actual losses instead of foregone gains.
These high costs are asymmetrically distributed in favor of the EU, however,
allowing the EU to exercise effective pressure towards dilution.

Alternative explanations
I briefly consider three alternative explanations of governmental responses
and integration outcomes. First, responses and outcomes may have been con-
ditioned by procedural characteristics of the referendums. Arguably, required,
government-triggered and binding referendums exert a stronger acquies-
cence pull on governments than voluntary, non-governmental and advisory
referendums. Second, a higher margin of the no-vote is likely to constrain gov-
ernmental defiance. Third, more pro-EU governments might be more willing
to defy the negative referendum outcome.
None of these alternative explanations fits the response patterns, however
(see Online Appendix). There is no discernible relationship between the pro-
cedural characteristics of the referendum and the governmental responses
(Table A1). The same is true for the closeness of the vote (Figure A1).
Finally, government Euroscepticism is generally not systematically associated
with the type of response or outcome. The only significant finding goes
against the alternative explanation: the most Eurosceptic governments have
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1071

been more defiant than more pro-European governments (Figure A2). The
reason seems to be that Eurosceptic governments (or governments in Euro-
sceptic countries) are more likely to call or be faced with withdrawal referen-
dums – and then backtrack because of adverse cost structures.

Conclusions
This contribution addresses an understudied question of referendum politics
in European integration theoretically and empirically: how governments
respond to referendum failure. It argues that these responses are systemati-
cally constrained by the size and distribution of the costs that referendum
failure produces for governments and that these costs vary with the issue
at stake in the referendum. The lower the costs are, the more likely govern-
ments acquiesce in the vote and abandon the rejected integration agreement.
Conversely, higher and more widespread costs of failure create incentives to
defend the integration agreement.
This contribution provides an exploratory analysis of these conjectures. It
examines the fit of all available cases of negative EU referendums with the
expected responses and finds that the association of referendum issues and
governmental responses holds. However, the overall number of negative EU
referendums is limited; the category of withdrawal referendums is recent
and has few cases; and firmer conclusions would require more in-depth
case studies. With these caveats in mind, the article still offers important con-
clusions for the effects of politicization on European integration.
First, EU referendums have indeed become an important venue for the
politicization of and domestic constraints on European integration, as stipu-
lated by postfunctionalist integration theory (Hooghe and Marks 2009). More-
over, negative referendums have had an increasingly strong and detrimental
impact on European integration agreements. Yet the negative vote as such
does not determine how governments respond. In most cases, governments
aim and succeed at getting around ‘no’ and limiting the referendum impact
on their integration agreements. How they react and what they agree on
does not appear to be conditioned either by the procedural characteristics
of the referendum, the closeness of the referendum vote or how Eurosceptic
governments are. Rather, the integration issue at hand and the concomitant
size and intergovernmental distribution of the costs of referendum failure
constrain governmental responses and integration outcomes most. The
(inter)governmental negotiations and decisions that follow negative referen-
dums, and the conditions of asymmetrical interdependence that structure
them, shift the political action and the explanatory focus from domestic poli-
tics to intergovernmental relations.
Second, the long-term impact of negative referendums varies by issue
type. Negative accession referendums are the ones that have produced the
1072 F. SCHIMMELFENNIG

most direct and unaltered impact on European integration. It is safe to say

counterfactually that, without accession referendums, Norway and Switzer-
land would have joined the EU, Denmark and Sweden would be using the
euro, and Denmark would participate in supranational judicial and police
cooperation. By contrast, negative integration and withdrawal referendums
have rarely had a lasting impact. Rejected EU treaties have generally
entered into force – albeit with delay, repackaging (the Constitutional
Treaty) or declaratory assurances to voters (Nice, Lisbon and Ukraine associ-
ation). The Danish opt-outs are the only major long-term consequences of a
negative integration referendum. The pro-withdrawal referendums have
seen national dilution. In the Greek and Swiss cases, they ended up reaffirm-
ing the status quo ante. In the Brexit case, the British government’s position
has also softened over time.
Finally, governments have learned to avoid and restrict the use of EU refer-
endums. They repackaged the contents of the failed Constitutional Treaty in a
technical treaty amendment devoid of constitutional symbols and language.
In the treaties on the European Stability Mechanism and the Fiscal Compact
during the euro crisis, they replaced the principle of unanimous ratification
by lower ratification thresholds for the first time. Whatever reform plans
member state governments propose, framing and packaging them in a
legal form that minimizes the referendum risk has become an important con-
sideration. That the Dutch government has even moved to abolish a referen-
dum that had become a nuisance, is a new level of defiance. Referendums
have become an inevitable element of the politics of European integration
– but so have governmental strategies of working around them.

Notes
1. Count based on Beach (2018) plus four Swiss initiatives.
2. A partial exception is Rose’s list of governmental responses to EU referendums
(Rose 2019). Walter (2017) offers thoughts on the strategies available to govern-
ments in response to democratic choices that create negative externalities
abroad.
3. This reasoning is in line with the idea of loss aversion in prospect theory (Kahne-
man and Tversky 1979). For its applicability to political science, see Levy (2003).
4. For instance, the Hungarian referendum on refugees in 2016 did not reach the
necessary quorum for validity. The Swiss 2001 initiative on initiating accession
negotiations with the EU was not about an existing or negotiated agreement.
It is not clear to what extent subnational EU referendums follow the same
logic as national EU referendums and the subsequent intergovernmental nego-
tiations – and there has only been a single case so far. I therefore exclude Green-
land’s withdrawal referendum of 1982 because Greenland was not a (member)
state and did not negotiate the subsequent Greenland Treaty with the EU.
5. National Declaration by Ireland at the Seville European Council (21 June 2002),
available at https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/2005/6/17/a442cb15-
0528-4560-9d12-0b46fb5c75d4/publishable_en.pdf.
 JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 1073

6. Brussels European Council, 18/19 June 2009, Presidency Conclusions, available

at http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_DOC-09-2_en.htm.
7. In areas of high unemployment, the new legal provisions oblige employers to
first advertise vacant jobs to job centres and interview unemployed Swiss job
seekers; it does not require any justification for not hiring them or for preferring
non-Swiss applicants.
8. Whether or not voters believed that a negative vote would lead to Grexit, had a
strong effect on their vote choice (Walter et al. 2018).

Acknowledgments
For comments on previous versions, I thank Christine Reh, Stefanie Walter, Natasha
Wunsch and participants in the EUP colloquium at ETH Zürich, the Paris conference
of the ECPR Standing Group on the EU, and the research seminar of the Department
of Political Science, Stockholm University. The paper has further strongly benefited
from comments by the editors and the reviewers.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Frank Schimmelfennig is Professor of European Politics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland,
Center for Comparative and International Studies.

ORCID
Frank Schimmelfennig http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1638-1819

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