The referendum battle continues its course. Le Monde notes the importance of the fact that whilst the ‘no’ vote seems to be consolidating its lead in France (see this FT graph), with only one week to go one fifth of the votes still declare themselves to be ‘undecided’.
Meantime the normally sobre EU Observer, lets it hair down for once to suggest that the Dutch No Looks Irrerversible, especially after a row surrounding the Eurovision song contest.
“Less than two weeks before the Dutch referendum on the EU Constitution, pollsters see a rejection of the treaty as irreversible, with a row over the Eurovision song contest apparently boosting the “no” camp. Over the weekend, three new polls indicated a huge leap forward made by the “no” campaign in the run-up to the referendum on 1 June. A poll by Interview/NSS for public television predicted that no less than 63 percent would oppose the constitution, while 37 percent of the Dutch would endorse the text.
On top of this, further media rows put the “yes” camp on the defensive over the weekend – with one row focusing on the unusual topic of the Eurovision song contest. Following the elimination of the Dutch contender Glennis Grace in the semi-final of the contest, Dutch popular media showed their dissatisfaction by blaming the lost race on “Eastern European” countries favoring each other. The Netherlands? largest newspaper, De Telegraaf, on Saturday (21 May) ran its main front-page story quoting some of the “thousands” of angry reactions by readers. The headline of the story quotes one reaction, saying that the Netherlands should “never participate again in this Eastern European fake show”.