STOCKHOLM, 16 September 2003 — Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson faced yesterday the daunting task of healing deep divisions in his country after Swedes rejected the euro in a referendum seen as a slap in the face of Europe.
The Swedish vote was a crushing blow to Persson, an ardent euro supporter who had put his full weight behind the “yes” campaign, and a snub to the European Union which the Scandinavian country joined eight years ago.
Sweden, the first country to vote on the euro since the single currency went into circulation in 12 of the EU’s 15 member states in January 2002, rejected the euro by a 14 percent margin, with 56.1 percent of Swedes voting in favor and 41.8 percent against.
The referendum campaign had been characterized by bitter rhetoric from both sides, with fierce opposition to the euro within the left-wing of Persson’s own Social Democratic Party, which accused him of betraying the party’s grassroots base by teaming up with big business to promote the single currency.
But the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, said in a statement that it was up to Persson to tackle the aftermath of the euro debacle in his country.
“We are confident that the Swedish government will choose the way forward to keep the euro project alive in Sweden,” the Commission said.
Sweden’s influential daily Dagens Nyheter said the referendum outcome was a rejection of what Swedes view as Stockholm’s elitism, headlining its front page “A slap in the face of power” alongside a picture of a grim-faced Persson.
“The ‘no’ camp has won a crushing victory, and it’s a sock in the jaw to the political and economic elite in Sweden,” editorialist Henrik Brors wrote.
He noted that 80 percent of members of parliament had supported Swedish entry in the eurozone, reflecting a gaping chasm between the views of elected officials and the people they represent.
The referendum also came amid shock over the death of Sweden’s Foreign Minister Anna Lindh just four days earlier, after she was brutally stabbed at a department store in Stockholm by an unknown assailant.
Sweden’s business and financial community voiced disappointment and resignation at the referendum.
“We’ll need to find other ways of offsetting the inconveniences linked to the results of the vote,” acknowledged Micheal Treschow, chairman of the telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson, a Swedish industrial icon. He said rejection of the euro would hurt the country’s competitiveness.
Earlier, Ericsson spokesman Peter Olofsson had said: “It’s not good news.” Olofsson said that although the vote was bad for both the group in particular and economic and financial circles in general, he was resigned to see what would become of it.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. Ericsson’s chief executive Carl-Henric Svanberg, who backed the ‘yes’ campaign, had threatened in late August that the company could move its headquarters out of Sweden in case the euro was rejected.
Meanwhile, the Swedish “no” vote also dampened hopes of convincing other EU members still outside the euro zone - notably fiercely euro-skeptic Britain - to accept the currency.
Sunday’s vote leaves Sweden, as well as Britain and Denmark, outside the European single currency, and damages the chances of Britain’s pro-euro camp. Danish voters rejected the currency before it went into general circulation.
