STOCKHOLM, 12 September 2003 — A Swedish euro referendum will go ahead as planned despite the death of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, Prime Minister Goeran Persson said yesterday, quelling speculation that the vote might be canceled.
Swedes are to decide on Sunday whether or not they want to swap their krona for the currency currently used by 12 of the 15 EU countries, and analysts predicted that Lindh’s death could favor the “yes” camp, which has been trailing in opinion polls.
“The parties represented in Parliament have reached an agreement. The referendum will therefore be held as planned,” Persson said just hours after announcing Lindh’s death.
Lindh, a high-profile campaigner backing the adoption of the single currency, died from knife injuries a day after being attacked while taking a break from the campaign trail in a Stockholm department store on Wednesday. Within two hours of the assault, Persson ordered the referendum campaign to be suspended. The ban will stand until the vote opens, Persson said.
Political scientists said canceling a vote because of an attack on a politician would have been unprecedented, and Persson acknowledged that it would have been “a very very big and complicated step to take”.
But at the news conference, Persson also stressed that party leaders had decided not to let the attack interfere with their country’s democratic process. “It is important that we do not succumb to violence,” he said.
Opposition to Swedish euro entry has been on the rise in the final phase of the referendum, a poll published yesterday showed. In the poll, Danske Bank interviewed 1,000 people up to Sept. 9, one day before Lindh was stabbed.
The “no” side has consistently led in the polls since Persson, himself a supporter of the euro, called the referendum on Economic and Monetary Union membership in November.
But the “yes” camp could now receive a late boost as sympathetic voters, stirred by recent events, back Lindh’s enthusiastically pro-euro stance.
“There usually tends to be a lot of support for the sitting government when this kind of grave national event happens,” Arne Modig, a researcher at the Temo polling institute, told AFP. Up to 18 percent of Swedes were believed to still be unsure about the euro, and the attack on Lindh could well tip the balance toward the “yes” among the undecideds, he said.
The view was shared in Swedish financial markets, where the krona rose against the euro amid the view that the “yes” vote’s chances were increasing. “The ‘yes’ side should get increased support from this,” Aake Gustafsson, chief economist at FoereningsSparbanken said.
Olle Djerf, chief economist at Nordea, agreed, but said the late boost would not be enough to ensure Swedish adoption of the single currency. “The ‘no’ side’s lead is too large,” he said.
Next to Persson himself, Lindh had been the highest-profile campaigner for the “yes” side in the euro campaign, struggling to close the opinion poll gap with euro opponents.
Her smiling, bespectacled face was still on campaign posters yesterday plastered on billboards, along motorways and on buses throughout the country, reminding Swedes, wherever they raised their tearful eyes, of their loss.
Lindh had crisscrossed Sweden on the campaign trail, made regular media appearances, and was scheduled to participate in several more television debates in the run-up to the vote. “It’s a race against time now, but I hope and I believe that we will succeed,” she told Dagens Industri daily in an interview published on the morning of the fatal attack.