Parliamentary approval + consultative referendum, June 1, 2005

The Netherlands have rejected the EU constitution, with 61.6 percent of the Dutch voting against the text and 38.4 in favour, official results show. Turnout lied at 62.8 percent.

Reacting to the result, Dutch prime minister Jan-Peter Balkenende said his government "respected this outcome completely" although he was "very disappointed" with the result.

The Dutch will not vote again on the European Union's constitution after rejecting it by a large majority earlier this month, a minister has said. Atzo Nicolai, Dutch European affairs minister, said a second referendum will not take place following the June 1 No vote.

The Netherlands never held a nation-wide referendum. The constitution didn’t provide for referendums. But the Dutch European Referendum Campaign pushed the demand for a referendum on the EU Constitution. This group consists of members of the very active non-parliamentary initiatives, the Referendum Platform and Amsterdams Initiatief. This group succeeded to implement participatory democracy on all political levels in the Netherlands.

This will be the first referendum ever in this country.

Deputies Farah Karami, Nieso Dubbelboer and Boris van der Ham took the initiative of a draft law on 22 May 2003. The Council of State gave a positive opinion in July 2003. This bill was revised on the 27th of May 2004.

On 25 January, the Senate voted in favour of the holding of a consultative referendum (47 votes in favour, 27 against).

The Home Affairs Committee of the Tweede Kamer has created a commission to supervise the referendum.

Beforehand, the government has declared to respect the result of the non-binding referendum if the level of participation is above 30%.

Read more facts on the ratification.