ABSTRACT
Germany’s Social Democratic Party was cool towards the establishment of the Council of Europe in 1949 and the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, fearing that both would act as a distraction from its immediate priority of German reunification. In Britain, meanwhile, four consecutive election defeats between 1979 and 1992 forced a fundamental rethink in the Labour Party about European integration. The referendums on the Maastricht treaty were the third and fourth that Denmark has held on European integration; the others were on European Community membership in 1972 and on the Single European Act in 1986. The issues in the referendum campaign, if not the arguments, were reasonably settled. For the Swedish electorate, economic factors were the most important. Voters questioned both before and after the referendum most often named the economy as their primary motivation. The referendum was something of a success for the Swedish political system—by the standards of previous referendums.
