The link between the Swedish no, or not yet, and that of other countries on the euro, including Britain, should not be overdone. Quite aside from the appalling murder of Anna Lindh if such a horrific event can be put aside the unique amalgam of issues and worries which drove Swedish voters across the political spectrum barely overlap with British or Danish concerns. Swedes see their relationship with the rest of Europe, and the outside world, very differently.
Nevertheless, there are two underlying messages which do come floating across the North Sea to the rest of Europe from the event of the Swedish referendum. The most obvious, although perhaps transient, one is that the eurozone is plainly not a very attractive place to be or club to join just at the moment. Its economic performance is miserable, unemployment much too high, growth miniscule. The euro remains a tricky and volatile currency against the dollar while big banks, say the pro-euro Wall Street Journal, are leaving Frankfurt, not settling there.
Meanwhile the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), billed as the bedrock of the European Monetary Union (EMU), is being treated with contempt by both France and Germany, boding ill for the longer-term stability of the whole system.
Isolation from this unhappy scene can hardly be seen as deprivation. For isolation perhaps read freedom is what Sweden has decisively chosen and all the elaborate economic analysis, heavily backed by the Swedish business establishment, to try to prove the contrary has fallen on deaf ears.
The deeper message is that the institutions of the European Union (EU) seem dismally remote, with the prospect of becoming remoter still as more powers drift to the centre in the name of efficiency and the need to run a union of twenty-five members. This, of course, is not an economic argument at all, and no amount of economic analysis can influence it either way, as the British government has found out with its voluminous but un-influential five tests on possible euro membership. The more the euro is depicted as the gateway to full political union, the less all the reassurances about deciding on the basis of Britains best economic interest are listened to.
The whole purpose of the recent European Convention, chaired by Valery Giscard dEstaing, was to try and counter this perception and, in the words of the Laaken Council of Ministers, to bring the EU closer to the people.
But the outcome, in the form of a full-blooded new Constitution, looks like being the opposite. The new draft Constitution has yet to be agreed between all the member states. That may never happen, but in its present form it clearly builds a still higher tower of central authority from which to look down on the citizenry. If joining the eurozone is a step towards this kind of Europe then the two issues fuse into one unattractive prospect.
Nor has the outlook been helped by the ructions over Iraq and the famous denunciation of the smaller states of Europe by the French president, for daring to question the Franco-German stance against American intentions.
All this has created the odd situation in which it is possible to believe two contradictory things about the Union simultaneously. The first is that, with the new Constitution looming, the union is becoming more centralised, and therefore still more remote from less influential member states. The second, that the union is indeed giving back power to the member states, but only to the big boys, via the heavy weighting of votes in their favour in the Council of Ministers and the decision to put many more decisions through this voting process.
For Sweden therefore, as one of the smaller-to-medium member states, the negatives are overwhelming an uninviting eurozone and a EU run by others.
For the UK it is far more complicated. The UK is itself one of the big boys. If the divide in Europe is going to be between the small countries and the big ones, which side should the British be on? At which heart of Europe should the British seek to be?
The Swedish not yet vote may not answer the euro conundrum, but it does give a steer on this larger European question. If the smaller states want a commissioner each twenty-five in all then they should be supported. If the smaller states want more decentralisation that, too, should be supported. For some it may make sense to be in a fixed currency zone (i.e. the Czech Republic and the Baltic states?). For others such as Sweden and the UK (although for different reasons), staying flexible and free may be best. But that is not really the main issue.
Central efficiency, momentum, Europes destiny, the final settlement these things are not for the Swedes, not for the British, nor I suspect for the majority of the newly acceding member states. The age calls for networks, not power blocs or superpower status, for suppleness and flexibility, not rigidity and hierarchy. A Europe of equals, not elitist civil servants, is more to northern European tastes and makes more sense in the global context. Those of us who share the insight should move confidently in this new European direction, and the Swedish vote should give us extra courage to do so. A better and gentler kind of European unity, less centrist and more friendly to all, would be the result.
There is finally the question of whether referendums are the wisest way of deciding these things. A previous generation regarded this kind of populism as dangerous and unreliable. But once the issue is there, in this age of instant communication and interactivity can they ever again be resisted?
So perhaps the third lesson from Sweden is that referendums are indeed tricky ways of establishing the real public interest, but that if the political elite wants to avoid them then they should avoid pushing forward fundamental changes which make the call for them impossible to resist. The British government too may be about to find this out on the matter of the proposed new European Constitution.
