European Union boss Juncker wrong on Dutch referendum

This video says about itself:

Juncker avoids commenting on Luxembourg tax deals

6 November 2014

After more than 300 companies secured secret deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills, Commission President and former Luxembourg Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, was asked on Wednesday if there wasn’t a conflict of interest since he took over as chief of the EU executive.

Juncker said that such a question deserved a long answer, but that in any case, the Commission was perfectly in its right to investigate, and that he would not interfere in the work of the Commissioner in charge of competition, Margrethe Vestager.

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), companies such PepsiCo Inc, AIG Inc and Deutsche Bank AG, appear to have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes.

In October, the European Commission opened an inquiry over whether EU law has been broken by the tax deals in Luxembourg.

Today, there is an interview with European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker, in Dutch daily De Volkskrant.

Dutch NOS TV writes about this interview (translated):

European Constitution

As an example Juncker mentioned the referendum on the European Constitution in 2005, with more than 61 percent of the Dutch voting against. He says that [Dutch established political parties] VVD, PvdA and CDA did not dare to campaign for the constitution. The Dutch government according to him also “did not lift a finger.”

Juncker is wrong on this (like he was wrong in the Luxembourg financial scandal and in the Luxembourg secret police scandal).

The Dutch government, the Big Business organisations, and the established political parties did campaign for Giscard d’Estaing’s draft EU constitution. They did so demagocically.

The pro-‘free market’ VVD party had a political commercial on TV. It said that if the Dutch voters would dare to vote against the draft constitution, then the horrors of the second world war would come back. The trains to death camps like Auschwitz would start rolling again. A historical film recording of these death trains illustrated the VVD propaganda voiceover.

This video shows part of the VVD Auschwitz commercial in their European Union constitution referendum campaign. The person who uploaded the video to YouTube commented sarcastically: ‘Vote Yes or DIE!!’

My guess is that this demagogy was so over the top that it backfired, and persuaded quite some floating voters to vote against the draft constitution. However, that of course had not been the VVD’s intention.