Number of referendums held in each European country’s history

21 comments
  1. Important to say that 4 of the 6 referendums in Germany were during the nazi years and all but democratic.

    The other two were in the Weimar Republic. The current German constitution knows no referendums on the federal level but they happen on the state level from time to time.

  2. We can’t change the constitution in Ireland without a referendum, hence the high number. I’m in my 20’s and I think I’ve voted in about 7 or 8 of them

  3. For the Netherlands the last one was to keep Ukraine out of the EU.

    Thanks to Russian sockmuppet Thierry Baudet, who’s currently also in our government as one of the opposition party’s

  4. The EU accession referendum was the first voting I was able to participate in just after turning 18 years old. I was happy I could vote in such a historic moment and since then I’ve never evaded any elections or referendum.

  5. According to the Constitutional Act of Denmark, a referendum with a binding result may or must be held, in connection with:

    1. bills which at least 60 MPs wish to bring before the public
    2. transfer of sovereignty
    3. certain international treaties
    4. changing the voting age
    5. amending the Constitutional Act

  6. Actually there is no constitutional basis for a federal referendum in Belgium. But when our King was trying to be Hitlers little friend during the war, politicians weren’t so sure if they should take him back after the war. So not wanting to make a controversial decision, they held a referendum. Wallonia didn’t want the facist back and Flanders did. But the majority said go get him back, so we almost had a civil war, the King eventually abdicated and we never held a referendum again.

  7. Ok… we might need to have a definition of what a referendum means?

    Because I know in the UK it is really nothing but a windsock of public opinion.

  8. For Estonia:

    – 1923 – 71.9% supported restoring voluntary religious education in public schools
    – 1932 – 50.8% rejected a new constitution proposed by the parliament that would have turned Estonia from a parliamentary republic to a presidential republic
    – 1933 (June) – 67.3% rejected another new constitution proposed by the parliament that would have turned Estonia into a presidential republic
    – 1933 (October) – 72.7% supported a new constitution proposed by the right-wing populist [Vaps Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaps_Movement) which turned Estonia into a presidential republic
    – 1936 – 76.1% supported convening a National Assembly to compose a new constitution after Prime Minister Konstantin Päts had organized a self-coup and banned the Vaps Movement that had itself threatened to take power by force if they had lost the 1934 presidential elections
    – 1991 – 78.4% of all residents of Estonia (including Soviet colonists) supported the restoration of the independence of the Republic of Estonia
    – 1992:
    – 91.9% supported the new constitution which restored the parliamentary republic
    – 53.5% rejected extending suffrage to people applying for citizenship of Estonia, i.e. for the Soviet colonists who had illegally come to Estonia during the Soviet occupation
    – 2003 – 66.8% supported acceding to the EU and amending the constitution accordingly

  9. In Norway we held a referendum to ban the sale of strong alcoholic beverages in 1919. It passed. In 1926 we also held a referendum to reopen sale of alcohol. It also passed. Hmmm

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