The Swedish Referendum on the Euro

On the 14th of September 2003 a referendum was held in Sweden to decide whether or not the country would adopt the Euro and join countries such as France, Germany and Italy in a Single European Currency. On the day of voting 81.1% of the electorate turned out to vote against the adoption of the Euro. 41.8% of voters were in favour of ditching the krona in favour of joining the Euro, but they were far out numbered by the 56.1% who were against joining.

  Although Sweden need not join the euro immediately, they will effectively have to join at some point in the future. In theory Sweden has no choice but to adopt the Euro as they are bound the to do so once they meet all the economic criteria set out in the Maastricht Treaty, which was signed on entry to the European Community (EC) in 1994. Unlike Denmark and the UK Sweden did not request an exemption from all the conditions of the EU treaty and is therefore obliged to adopt the Euro once all economic criteria are fulfilled.  

Join now!

When the rest of the EU formed the EMU in 1999 it was decided at the time that Sweden should keep the door open to future participation and that the issue should be put to the people. The Riksdag declared that Sweden should preserve its strong economic position and continue working on euro preparations at national level in order to allow a transition to the euro if approved by the people.

Although referenda are advisory rather than binding in Sweden it would be politically unthinkable to put this question to the nation in order to then ignore its response and ...

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