Dutch vote against Ukraine-EU deal in referendum

A vast majority of the Dutch voters rejected the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement in a referendum on Wednesday, with the turnout being just above the threshold of 30 percent.

According to a preliminary result presented by Dutch news agency ANP, around 61.5 percent voted against the agreement, while almost 37.7 percent voted in favor of the deal and 0.8 percent voted invalid. Based on 79.9 percent of the votes the turnout will be 32.2 percent. A voter turnout of less than 30 percent would have made the referendum invalid.

The referendum results provide an opinion and are, according to the law, not binding. A majority of "no" voters will force the government to reconsider the agreement, but that does not necessarily mean a final rejection.

The question now is how the Dutch government will deal with the "no", how the other 27 Member States and Ukraine will respond to the outcome and what the Dutch referendum rejection means for the agreement. Some parts of the agreement on political, economic and a broad range of legislation and regulation topics were already provisionally applied since Nov. 1, 2014.

The "no" could, according to opponents of the agreement, also be considered as a no to the current European Union. The Dutch Electoral Council, the central electoral committee, will present the official result on April 12 in The Hague.

Source: XINHUA