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Sweden barely rejects euro { September 14 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/international/europe/14CND-SWED.html?hphttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/international/europe/14CND-SWED.html?hp
September 14, 2003
Sweden Rejects Euro by Narrow Margin, According to Exit Poll
By ALAN COWELL
STOCKHOLM, Sept. 14 — After a passionate campaign made uncertain to the last moment by the assassination of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, Swedes voted narrowly in a referendum today to reject the European single currency, according to an exit poll conducted by Swedish Television.
If the poll is confirmed, the decision will provide a major defeat for Prime Minister Goran Persson and will be felt across Europe, undermining efforts to bolster the 15-nation European Union before its planned expansion with 10 new members next year. Apart from Sweden, Denmark and Britain are currently outside the 12-country euro-zone stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean.
With ballots tallied from more than 1,700 of the 5,976 voting districts one hour after the polls closed, provisional results showed the anti-euro campaign ahead by a margin of about 61 percent to 37 percent, but many of those districts were in the far north of Sweden where resistance to adopting the single currency is at its strongest. Traditionally in Swedish votes the gap narrows dramatically the more districts are counted.
Analysts have always calculated that a "no" vote in Sweden will strengthen anti-euro sentiment in Denmark and Britain, delaying efforts in those two countries to hold referendums of their own. Denmark rejected adoption of the euro in a referendum three years ago. Britain has yet to decide when to hold a vote. The Swedish government has said that it will not hold another vote on adopting the euro for 10 years.
The initial result as reflected in the exit poll among 10,000 people offered a narrower margin than polls had suggested and seemed to have been influenced significantly by the killing of Ms. Lindh, a politician from the dominant Social Democrats. Ms Lindh was a fervent campaigner in favor of adopting the euro in place of the Swedish krona. She died of stab wounds after an unidentified assailant attacked her as she shopped in central Stockholm last Wednesday.
The killing stunned Sweden, rekindling memories of the 1986 slaying of Prime Minister Olof Palme, whose killer has not been definitively identified. The police said today they had not arrested a suspect in the killing of Ms. Lindh.
Before her death, opinion surveys had shown the "no" campaign firmly ahead by 10 to 15 percentage points. But the death of the widely respected politician seemed to have provoked a sympathy vote, narrowing the gap. Against that, more than one million Swedes in this land of nine million were reported to have sent in postal ballots before the killing. About seven million people were eligible to vote and early indications suggested a high turnout.
"There's a bigger fear for the new than we expected," said Ulrika Messing, a government minister, as initial results came in.
Mr. Persson, the prime minister, had called for broad participation in the ballot to demonstrate Sweden's determination to resist violence and strengthen its democracy. The vote took place on a bright, late-summer day when the sunshine drew many people to sidewalk cafes in the capital and lakeside resorts across the land.
Almost like pilgrims, scores of people gathered outside the NK supermarket where Ms. Lindh was killed. What began there as a few single roses laid by sympathizers last Thursday had grown to a four-foot high, wreath-like shrine of flowers, candles and messages. Three days after she died, people still lined up to sign a condolence book.
"I was very sad when I heard about this and thought we must do something to show our support," said Ulrica Sjöbladh, 36, a nurse who said she had voted in favor of adopting the euro before signing the condolence book. She favored the euro, she said, because "we must all have the same opportunities and the Swedish politicians can't decide for us. We should be inside Europe."
Hanna Lindgren, a 26-year-old office worker in a pharmaceutical company, said that since Sweden had already joined the European Union in an earlier referendum in 1994, "we should be in Europe all the way. I'm a little bit worried that we'll lose a little independence, but it'll be good for jobs and for our welfare state."
Sweden is one of the most cosseted nations with the world's highest tax revenues accounting for 52 percent of the economy. In the campaign before today's vote, the "yes" campaign had been sponsored by the political and business establishment and backed by most newspapers and intellectuals who argued that euro membership would increase trade and employment.
But the insurgent "no" campaigners insisted that Sweden would not benefit as a euro member from being forced to adopt eurozone interest rates, 0.75 percentage points lower than the current Swedish rates, and needed economic independence to maintain its modest growth at a time when the major continental economies are in the doldrums.
"It is better for us to stand aside," said Bo-Goran Karlsson, a 57-year-old social worker who said he had voted against adopting the euro. "We can trade with Europe but we don't want to be too close." Many analysts had cast the ballot as, effectively, a display of how Swedes felt about the European Union itself some nine years after voting 52.6 percent to 46.8 percent to join it. "There's no symbiosis between us and Europe," Mr. Karlsson said.
Divisions over the euro have been so profound that five members of Mr. Persson's government spoke out against it, dividing the Social Democrats who have led Sweden for most of the past 70 years.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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