Croatia's EU Membership - Started as it will indubitably go on

And so it would appear Croatia will be the 28th member of the European Union, given that the bloc ratifies its application, which I think we can assume is a given.

News reports told of an outright majority but is this really the case? Well, as is often true of referenda, especially those associated with EU membership such as in the case of Ireland back in 2005 and of course in 2009 when the referendum was famously re-held in order to garner the right outcome, there is always another side to the story.

It was reported that while 33% of those voting chose NOT to join the EU, double the amount, 66% of the turn out, voted in favour of EU membership. So where's the grey area?

Well, first of all, it would appear Croatia had more voters than citizens.

According to the latest 2011 Population Census, Croatia has a total population of only 4.29 million, yet according to the Electoral Commission it has 4,504,765 voters over 18 years of age eligible to vote. Now that is a quickly ageing and expanding population!

Also, given that most Croats abstained from the referendum, resulting in record low participation of only 43%, even if all those who turned out voted in favour of EU membership, it would still represent a minority.

Conveniently however the Croatian Government changed the constitution just prior to the EU referendum revoking the rule that invalidated a referendum unless at least 50% turn out was achieved.

At the first-ever referendum held in Croatia in 1991, the turnout was 83.5%, of which 94% voted in favour of independence. So what stopped people running to the polls this time around?

Very often people are dissuaded from polling their opinion when they consider the result a foregone conclusion.

Prior to the vote on EU membership, Croats, like the Irish before them, were subjected to a massive propaganda campaign with the Government spending huge amounts of public money on a Yes campaign while the No campaign was pitifully unfunded. The European Commission also ran its own very expensive Yes campaign, enlisting state enterprises, celebrities, corporations, while State TV aired pro-EU adverts for free, Croatia Post delivered 2 million leaflets as well as the city of Zagreb placing free EU advertising on trams.

In theory the referendum campaign was restricted to a four week period however the hugely financed Yes campaign was already spending tens of thousands on pro EU advertisements on radio and television. In fact one newspaper, the Vecernji List Daily reported on the 10th August that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and EU Integration paid for more than 13,000 radio adverts and 2,300 TV adverts across 80 radio stations and 6 national and 15 local TV stations all in the months of June and July. This wave of propaganda only increased in cost and breadth over the following six months in the run up to the referendum.

The message was EU Prosperity or isolation and poverty. Some reports even suggest that days before the vote, Foreign Minisiter Vesna Pusic threatened Croatia's 1.2 million pensioners that they would lose their pensions if they voted against EU membership. At one polling station in Zagreb, accounting for several retirement homes with 1,100 pensioners, 80% voted in favour of EU membership.

Whether you accept these reports as valid depends upon your desire to believe them or not. This is what makes referenda very tricky subjects unless clear legal permaters are drawn up, regarding turn out, or legality of not voting, and governance of the funding of campaigns.

From my point of view and considering the two cases in Ireland where public opinion was neatly sidestepped when it appeared it would not validate the EU's wishes, I would tend to imagine that dark forces were at work. Especially considering the first time Croatia was questioned on EU membership, a resounding 94% voted against joining the EU. Given the EU's recent track record and the single currency crisis, plus new legislation that demands any new member sign up to the Euro, it is hard to see how the population has suddenly changed its mind, without some very not-so-gentle persuasion. It may not have been a very large turn-out, but it certainly was a mammoth turn-around.

Monday should have been a schism in the modern political history of Britain. It should have been the catalyst for a new chapter in politics and inter-territorial relations. I say it should have been, because it wasn’t.

When the Coalition Government pledged a new form of governance embracing direct democracy and established e-petitions they should have known membership of the European Union would be mooted.

Perhaps in the wake of the Eurozone crisis, with ongoing bail outs and economic reverberations keenly felt in our own markets, people are more disillusioned with the European project than ever before. With Polski Skleps opening on a large number of commercial streets, perhaps there is an increasing perception of unjust competition for jobs with migrants from other EU member states, causing people to demand a rethink.

Yet I do not think this is what really underlies the call for a referendum. People in Britain are by nature far from hostile to their European neighbours, or economically egocentric.

Instead it is simply due to the Government’s track record of failing to heed the vox populai on Europe that the public are clamouring to be heard.

It was back in the 1970s that the UK held its first, and only, referendum on membership to the then European Economic Community. It was a free trade organisation. No Parliament. No common currency. Just a few years later Harold Wilson promised a referendum that never came, and again in ‘83, Labour pledged to withdraw from the EU in the following Parliament, but lost the election.

A decade later European leaders signed the Maastricht Treaty creating the modern day European Union. Denmark and France were the only member states to put it to a vote.

In 2004 Tony Blair promised a referendum on the European Constitution Treaty and all three main political parties promise referendums in their general election manifestos the following year.

France and the Netherlands held referendums and rejected the proposals, causing the European Commission to repackage and rename it the Lisbon treaty after only minor concessionary changes. In Ireland, after the public voted against Lisbon the Commission demanded a second referendum and poured millions into the campaign

The UK signed it without recourse a public vote and the High Court rejected calls for a judicial review into the legality of the ratification.

This week’s debate represented 37 years of defying public opinion and reneging upon promises, allowing power to be passed to a foreign body that today makes 75% of our laws.

Do not buy the argument that it’s because the timing isn’t right. The debate over whether to hold a referendum did not make a given date a condition. It merely called for a promise that has for so long been broken to be enshrined in law so that for the first time the public would be given a say.

The fact that public opinion has been unscrupulously ignored should anger all voters, whether pro-Europe, or Eurosceptic. The argument is not about whether the UK should or shouldn’t be in the EU. The argument is whether you the electorate get to decide.

It is hard to fathom why the Conservative and Labour Parties operated a three line whip. Only one Lib Dem MP voted for the motion and all three Plaid MPs opposed it.

Roger Williams Lib Dem MP for Brecon & Radnor and Glyn Davies Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire both voted that you should be denied a say.Read the full list of MPs who do not sign up for democracy here.

Last time I checked, ‘democracy’ was defined as a form of government in which all people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives, coming from the Greek terms “demos” (people) and “kratos” (power).