East Europe signs up to EU despite bored voter threat

It was a date with destiny. And they didn't show up.

East Europeans, by failing to turn out for EU membership referendums, have flirted with being dumped from the Union even before consummating their accession - big Yes votes in several countries have nearly been legally scuppered by low turnout.

Decades of communism and pallid pro-EU government campaigns have been blamed. Now it is the turn of the Poles to worry that much the biggest of the 10 countries due to join the EU next May could upset the entire process - if less than half the voters bother to turn up to have their say in a June 7-8 referendum.

"I am not calm about the turnout," Prime Minister Leszek Miller said. "I believe we have to fight for every vote."

As elsewhere, there is little prospect of a Polish No. Yet if turnout is below 50 per cent, a Yes would be invalid. The task of ratifying accession to the European Union should then fall to parliament - but a legal challenge could thwart that "Plan B".

The apathy is widely blamed on pro-EU governments' late and lacklustre campaigns that have failed to spark voters to embrace an opportunity their leaders portray as finally casting aside decades of totalitarianism, poverty and insecurity.

Turnout in Slovakia's ballot on Friday was so slow that the pro-reform government made an appeal on national television for voters to show up on Saturday, the second day of polling.

The referendum scraped through with 52 per cent of Slovaks bothering to turn out, just above a 50 per cent minimum, narrowly saving a vote in which a massive 93 per cent said Yes to the EU. In Hungary in April, just 46 per cent bothered to cast a ballot.

Many say the ruling elites in states that have only enjoyed a short period of democracy since the 1989-90 fall of communism have been complacent and focused on the historic big picture rather than explaining how it may improve people's daily lives.

In rural areas and unemployment blackspots, many Hungarians feel let down by failed promises of a better life after communism and stayed away believing the EU offers little better.

But across the eight ex-communist EU candidates, the No campaigns have lacked coherence, a factor that has also made for low turnouts since the overall result has rarely been in doubt.

Slovak sociologist Miroslav Kusy said many in central and eastern Europe were unused to having democracy at their fingertips, after half a century of fascist or communist rule.

"Until now, we've had it in our genes that things are decided without us," he said.

Pal Csaky, Slovak deputy prime minister for EU integration, blamed indifference and anti-government protest votes.

Opinion polls in Poland show about 74 per cent support for EU entry among those intending to vote and 64 per cent of adults say they plan to vote. Yet there is still real concern that even more switched-off voters will just stay away on the day.

Political analysts say the fact that Poland, like some other states, has a "Plan B" where parliament can ratify EU entry if the referendum fails signals to voters they need not bother.

"Slovaks knew that if less than half turned out and the referendum failed, parliament was going to push it through anyway," said Czech political commentator Milan Slezak.

Priming a bombshell, opponents of EU entry have pressed Poland's Constitutional Tribunal to rule next week on whether parliament really can rescue the vote if the referendum fails.

If it rejects the law, Poland would have no safety net and an invalid vote could trigger a crisis by delaying entry - a huge embarrassment to both Warsaw and the EU, which sees Poland as the centre of its biggest ever expansion project. About half the 75 million people lining up for entry next year are Poles.

Governments have tried many tactics to encourage voting - extending polling hours and tinkering with electoral laws.

The Czech government wanted to hold its referendum on a Sunday and Monday to catch the many voters who escape the cities in summer for country cottage weekends. But parliament ruled the vote must be on the June 13-14 weekend, Saturday and Sunday.

Financial markets have added to the feeling that EU enlargement is a "done deal", pricing in a significant probability of the eight ex-communist states entering the single currency euro zone by 2008, four years after EU expansion.

Following Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia, Czechs, Estonians and Latvians also hold referendums this year. Malta has also already voted Yes. Cyprus has no plan for a referendum.

Despite - or indeed because of - the lack of coherent opposition to joining what many see as a rich Western club, the prospects for massive voter turnout in coming votes seem dim.

Vladimir Krivy, a sociologist at the Slovak Academic Society, said it came down to sheer tedium: "With broad all-party support for EU integration, the unpleasant part in the run-up to the referendum was the prevailing boredom."