KYIV – Citizens of the Netherlands rejected their government’s ratification of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement in an advisory, non-binding referendum held on April 6, giving the Russian government a symbolic geopolitical victory in its war against the Ukrainian state.
About 61.1 percent voted against their government ratifying the agreement, compared to 38.1 percent who were in favor. Only 22 out of 390 municipalities voted in support. Voter turnout was 32.2 percent, surpassing the 30 percent threshold for it to gain official recognition.
The referendum was held after both the upper and lower chambers of the Dutch Parliament had already voted to approve the agreement. Its negative result means the Parliament will weigh adjustments before offering its final approval.
“The referendum law is very clear and we will – days, weeks, step by step – review this agreement with Ukraine to satisfy all sides, both on the national and European levels,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on April 6, as reported by RFE/RL.
“First we will wait for the final results, and then we will discuss them in the government, in the Parliament and afterwards in the EU. I want to immediately warn people so that there aren’t any hasty expectations: we don’t want to undermine those who came to vote and respect their choice, for or against. We will reach a very appropriate decision.”
The Association Agreement, which establishes a framework and schedule for Ukraine to integrate with the EU, has already been approved by 26 EU member-states, as well as the European Parliament. The Netherlands is the lone member-state that has yet to ratify it, after which it would also need approval from the EU Council.
The referendum came the same week that the Panama Papers revealed Mr. Poroshenko set up offshore bank accounts with the same Panamanian law firm used by other allegedly corrupt officials identified by the journalistic investigation. Mr. Poroshenko’s offshore operations – though relatively minuscule compared to other suspects – became front-page news in at least one Dutch newspaper.
Another last-minute factor influencing Dutch public opinion was the March 22 terrorist attack in nearby Brussels that killed 32 and injured more than 300, fueling anti-EU sentiments among conservatives dissatisfied with how the migrant crisis has been handled, said Mykhailo Basarab, a Kyiv political consultant.
“The attack influenced a growth in Euroskeptic attitudes in Western Europe,” he said. “The thinking behind the vote was not based on attitudes towards Ukraine, but on Euroskeptic attitudes in the Netherlands.”
In the assessment of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the referendum was an attack on the EU and the spread of the EU values and won’t affect Ukraine’s strategic path towards Europe.
Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin echoed that message, stating that the results won’t affect current Ukraine-EU relations, including the agreement’s free trade area that was launched on January 1.
The main reasons that Dutch voters themselves cited for rejecting the agreement were Ukraine’s high level of corruption (59 percent) and the agreement being a step towards Ukraine’s membership in the EU (34 percent), according to an exit poll conducted by a Dutch firm, as reported by the eurointegration.com.ua news site. Another 31 percent said they don’t support EU values, while 30 percent said the agreement isn’t beneficial for the Dutch economy.
More than 450,000 Dutch citizens approved the referendum in a late September vote. In interviews with the eurointegration.com.ua news site, they acknowledged at the time that they were using the vote as more of a protest against the European Union rather than having any reservations about Ukraine.
The Euroskeptic cause was eventually adopted by the Socialist Party, chaired by Emile Roemer, and the anti-Islamist Party for Freedom, chaired by Geert Wilders.
Such parties – both on extreme ends of the Dutch political spectrum – are suspected by Western state agencies, including the U.S. intelligence community, of having cooperated with Russian political agents.
These agents could have played a role in organizing the Dutch referendum, and were likely involved in providing political talking points and themes to Dutch political players, planting negative stories about Ukraine in the media and engaging in smear campaigns to produce the needed result, as is widely believed by the Ukrainian and Western political establishment.
An example of a smear campaign involved the offer made by a volunteer battalion deputy commander, Borys Humeniuk, to help return numerous Dutch paintings that were discovered in a mansion in the Luhansk region during the fighting, reported eurointegration.com.ua. As it turned out, they were stolen in 2005 and somehow fell into the possession of Volodymyr Polobutko, an Alchevsk businessman who owns the local football team.
Mr. Humeniuk insisted he never demanded a 50 million euro ransom, as claimed by museum representative Arthur Brand. Instead, it was Mr. Brand who offered to pay a 50,000 euro reward during a meeting held in the Dutch Embassy in Kyiv, Mr. Humeniuk claimed. Both the Embassy officials and Mr. Brand were grateful at the time, he said.
But by the time the Russian media outlets got hold of the story, Mr. Humeniuk was a neo-Nazi, backed by ultra-nationalist Oleh Tiahnybok, demanding an exorbitant ransom for the paintings.
“This entire machine of Russian foreign influence is perfect. I believe that it’s much stronger than the U.S.,” said National Deputy Yegor Soboliev in an interview published this week in The Ukrainian Weekly (see page 9).
The Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement there’s no reason to believe Russia was directly involved in the campaigning for the referendum, a position that was backed by Dutch political experts.
“The fact that some of the ‘no’ campaigners are echoing Moscow’s propaganda does not mean they are being supported by Russia,” said Tony van der Togt, a researcher at the Clingendael Institute, as reported by the Moscow Times. “There are enough useful idiots who in all honesty share the same views.”
Yet the Dutch shouldn’t be so naïve, in the view of Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of the Penta Center for Applied Political Research in Kyiv. He said his evidence points to the Russian government being directly involved the referendum, from start to finish.
“Russian money organized the referendum and used manipulative forms of influence on public opinion, such as the famous video of Azov soldiers,” he said, referring to a fake video of masked soldiers threatening to kill Dutch citizens if they didn’t vote in support of the referendum. “I am surprised the Dutch intelligence services didn’t investigate this. Dutch democracy turned out to be vulnerable to dirty political technologies and ill-prepared to counter Russian corruption.”
Yet in interviews conducted by the eurointegration.com.ua website on the day of the vote, Dutch voters said they had already forgotten about these various scandals from the winter. They said they had other concerns on their minds.
“We have enough problems and migrants without Ukraine, and we don’t have to take on more,” said a woman who identified herself as Elizabeth. “And I want Dutch products to be in stores, not Turkish tomatoes, Egyptian potatoes or something Ukrainian.”
The Ukraine-EU Association Agreement remains active despite the vote and can remain in its current temporary active status for quite a while, the eurointegration.com.ua news site reported.
Any significant amendments would require starting the negotiating and ratification process from square one, which the EU leadership wants to avoid, experts said.
“The Dutch government will have to determine how to preserve the agreement while ‘not offending’ the voters at the same time,” said Michiel Servaes, a Dutch MP from the Labor Party.