SWEDEN: Under the headline, No, Europe is not waiting for Sweden, the following editorial appeared yesterday in Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden's leading newspapers
The No side is to be congratulated - Sweden chose another route than Estonia and the new EU countries, a route away from Europe. The anti-euro campaigners' strong advantage in opinion poll after opinion poll was not influenced in any significant way by the murder of the Yes side's most prominent name, Anna Lindh. If anything, the recent days' demonstration of insecurity has strengthened the desire to remain outside and the aversion for change.
Svenska Dagbladet respects the electoral outcome, but is concerned about Sweden's future. Though everyone agrees in the importance of a democracy, the country is now split and political parties which are divided will have to handle the consequences of staying outside for many years. The short-term effects are limited. Day-to-day life will continue, European integration will carry on with Sweden playing a less-involved role.
Eventually, the time will come for Sweden to vote again on the euro. Svenska Dagbladet believes that time should come during the lifetime of the next government.
The debate about whether or not to go ahead with the euro referendum is now obsolete; the event has taken place, unfortunately under tragic circumstances which had the propensity to influence the result.
That does not mean that the result was any less legitimate. The democratic process places confidence in the public's capacity to consider even highly emotional factors and weigh them up against more rational considerations.
It is up to the voter to decide what the core issue is when voting day arrives. Before the murder of the foreign affairs minister, the campaigns and debates managed to impart enough information on both sides to allow the public make an informed choice.
Svenska Dagbladet would have preferred the parliament to have made this decision itself. We saw the third stage of economic and monetary union as a logical path following the first two stages, and as an obvious path towards European integration, particularly since Sweden never sought an exception from joining monetary union when it voted to join the EU after the 1994 referendum.
Instead, the European debate in Sweden has been put to the side year after year with the re-assurance that a referendum was coming. The politicians' larger task to bring Sweden into Europe and Europe into Sweden has instead been obscured by narrow questions such as, for example, the referendum campaign's fixation with the central bank.
Europe is not waiting for Sweden. The integration process goes on; in the near term with a discussion over proposals for an EU constitution.
Let us summarise the situation with a few lines from an editorial in this paper from the day Svenska Dagbladet said yes to the European currency (16/2/2000).
"Certainly, joining monetary union won't solve any core economic problems in Sweden - we'll have to look after those ourselves, since they are the result of many years of our own wrongdoings, not any EU decision. But what would we gain by staying outside, when EMU and the European central bank place only marginal restrictions on an export-dependent economy as ours? . . .
"For a peaceful and prosperous future in our part of the world we need something else; an EU without corruption, a continued relationship with the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the legitimisation of democracy in the emerging member-states, economic growth that lays the groundwork for continued improvement in the welfare of our people.
"EMU is not a universal solution but rather one of several tools which will open Europe up for our people."
The work for such freedom continues, despite the No vote.
Translated from the Swedish by Colm O'Callaghan