As in Ireland, the Yes side in Sweden is deeply associated with establishment figures, writes Adrian Langan, and that can be adrawback
Sweden will vote on September 14th on whether or not to join the euro and become the 13th member of EMU. The campaign so far has exhibited many of the same characteristics that have influenced Irish referendum campaigns in recent times, and the result on Sunday will have a major impact on referendum campaigns all over Europe in the coming years.
Euro campaigns tend to cause unlikely bedfellows, with this no exception. The Prime Minister, Goran Persson, has lined up with his usual opponents, the Moderate, Liberal and Christian Democrat parties, on the Yes side.
This kind of "cross-party" support is very often a double-edged sword in referendum campaigns in that it can disorientate your supporters. In the last Nice referendum here, this was a problem for both sides in the debate. Fine Gael's leadership had a major job to convince its supporters to support a "Fianna Fáil" referendum while the Green Party in particular found being on the same side as Justin Barrett a very uncomfortable position, to put it mildly.
A key problem for the Yes camp in Sweden is very similar to that which afflicts pro-European campaigns in Ireland.
The Yes side is deeply associated with establishment figures, and the credibility and trustworthiness of the establishment in the public mind is diminishing rapidly. It therefore becomes damaging to rely too much on these figures to sell your message.
No campaigners across Europe have understood this for years and have employed tactics to derive the maximum advantage from this phenomenon.
They tend to portray themselves as from the margins of social and political life, the quintessential "underdog" and the doughty champions of the plain people of Ireland, who cannot be silenced by the establishment. Public sympathy tends to associate with such figures in that the message is "I am one of you" rather than one of "them".
The challenge then for Yes campaigns to be successful is to broaden their support base to appear "fresh" and not to linger in the mind as a group of grey-suited, fiftysomething, male politicians. Across Europe, pro-EU forces are going to have to get beyond the usual suspects campaigning for Europe if they are going to win in the future.
The result itself on Sunday will, of course, be vital to Swedes and their economic and political futures but will also reverberate around Europe.
Clearly, a vote in Britain on the euro would have far more impact for Sweden than vice versa. A positive Swedish result would, however, provide a glimmer of hope for an increasingly beleaguered No 10, which has effectively parked euro membership after much fighting talk earlier in the year.
A Yes from Sweden, if handled well by the pro-euro camp in Britain, might offer an opportunity to get the issue back on the agenda. A negative result, based on a belief in Sweden that its economy is doing better outside the stagnant euro zone, would bolster the anti-euro group in the UK and entrench the "wait-and-see" approach, now firmly associated with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.
The Swedish result will also impact on discussions at the upcoming intergovernmental conference in Rome. If the Swedes say No, the mood of governments will inevitably swing to pessimism about what can be sold to their electorates.
With many more countries planning to hold a referendum on the "Convention" treaty than on any previous treaty, it is unquestionable that governments (especially of referendum countries) will take a more conservative approach to the issues, since they will be afraid of being unable to ultimately ratify the treaty.
A Swedish No to the euro will inevitably raise the question of whether it signals anti-euro feeling solely, or is more broadly about a growing sense of disenchantment with the European project itself.
With our recent "first No, then Yes" on Nice, this should be a major issue of concern to Ireland and the government. The conventional wisdom surrounding the second Nice referendum is that, with a bit of campaigning effort, normal service resumed and the Irish people returned to their "natural" pro-European position.
However, the Eurobarometer polls, measuring public opinion in relation to the EU, suggest that Irish views of integration are not as consistent as they once were. Opinions towards the EU and the process of integration have become more volatile, particularly during a referendum. Supporters of the EU project, if unenthused by a campaign, can stay at home, reducing turnout to a critical point where the No side can win, as we saw in Nice I.
A negative result from Sweden may well suggest that a general Euro-pessimism is growing. Not only that, while all the accession referendum results have so far been positive, the outstanding votes in Latvia and Estonia might well provide another shock to the system as the margins of support in these countries are eroded.
The possible scenario of Sweden voting No to EMU and Estonia and Latvia staying out of the EU would be interpreted as a major blow to the pro-EU forces around Europe. The lesson will have to be that new techniques of campaigning are needed to meet the challenge of a resurgent Eurosceptic lobby.
Alternatively, it could simply be more narrowly interpreted as another example of traditional Baltic scepticism about the European project.
Evidence of Sweden's early anti-European feelings can be traced back to 1961 when the Social Democratic prime minister, Tage Erlander, turned down an opportunity to apply to join the EEC.We will find out next Sunday if the Swedes still agree with him.
Adrian Langan is the former director of the Irish Alliance for Europe