EU:European Commission president José Manuel Barroso has urged EU member states to think carefully about whether to hold referendums on EU treaties.
The new Dutch government, putting the finishing touches to its coalition agreement, looks likely to avoid a second referendum on the EU constitution, according to leaks in the Dutch media, after Dutch voters rejected it in 2005.
Talking to Dutch journalists ahead of a meeting tomorrow with Dutch members of parliament, Mr Barroso said referendums made the process of approving European treaties more complicated and less predictable.
"I would ask ... each member state that wants to organise a referendum on the successor to the stranded European constitution whether that is the direction that country really wants to go," Mr Barroso was quoted as saying by Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad yesterday.
In 2005, French and Dutch voters rejected the European constitution, freezing reforms of the EU's decision-making procedures and institutions.
German chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the EU presidency in the current six months, wants to resuscitate the treaty, which would introduce a simpler voting system, a longer-term president of the union and a foreign minister in the enlarged 27-nation bloc.
Eighteen countries have ratified the 2004 treaty, two have voted No and seven have held back from putting it to a public or a parliamentary vote, citing uncertainty over its fate. All 27 states must approve a treaty for it to take effect.
The new Dutch government would not hold a new referendum on the European constitution but commission an advisory body to investigate whether one was necessary, Dutch newspapers reported.
"As a prime minister I was in favour of a referendum but it makes our life in the EU more complicated," another newspaper, De Volkskrant, reported Mr Barroso, a former prime minister of Portugal, as saying.
"If there had been a referendum on the founding of the European Community or the implementation of the euro, do you think these would have existed?" - (Reuters)