Dutch to vote in Ukraine-EU association referendum today

The Netherlands will hold today the first and only referendum in the EU on the ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. Dutch Foreign Minister Lillianne Ploumen called upon the citizens of her country to vote in support of ratification. “In Holland, we want to support reforms, we want to help them in their struggle against corruption,” Ploumen told an April 4 gathering at a university, as reported by the eurointegration.com.ua news site. “And we also see large possibilities for Dutch business and investment in Ukraine. So it’s good for Ukraine, good for Holland and good for the whole world.”

Opposing the Association Agreement was Dutch Euroskeptic leader Geert Wilders, who argued that Ukraine is among the most corrupt countries in the world. The agreement also paves the way for visa-free travel for Ukrainians, which will lead to more illegal immigration, he argued in an article published on April 4 on the breitbart.com website. “It would be a geopolitical mistake to bring a country, which should be a neutral buffer between Europe and Russia and which should act as a bridge between them, within the camp of either Russia or the EU,” he wrote.

Zenon Zawada: The Netherlands is the last of 28 EU nation-states to consider ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, which has gained the approval of all others. Although it’s not legally binding and only consultative, it will carry enormous weight in being a symbol of the European public’s view of the agreement, setting the tone for Ukraine’s Euro-integration in the coming months. 

Indeed this vote has taken on meaning far beyond Ukraine’s integration into the EU. The conservative politician Wilders openly called upon the Dutch to use “this referendum to voice their dislike of the EU.” With statements like these, it’s apparent that opponents have teamed up with Russian political experts to conflate dissatisfaction with Brussels on a host of issues – particularly the recent flood of migrants – with the issue of Ukraine.

Russian agents have also spent months discrediting Ukrainians as corrupt in the eyes of the Dutch public. A notable smear campaign involved portraying Ukrainian volunteer fighters as thieves for demanding ransom for paintings, though they were merely trying to gain compensation to return artwork stolen from a Dutch museum in 2005.

We expect the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement will remain on track to full ratification whatever the results in today’s vote, which are hard to predict.