@divegeester said
“A consultative referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was held in the Netherlands on 1 June 2005 to decide whether the government should ratify the proposed Constitution of the European Union.
The result was a "No" vote.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Dutch_European_Constitution_referendum
Quite. I love how you prove yourself wrong, here.
To begin with, it was quite explicitly a
consultative vote. Nobody was ever under the impression that their votes would force the government to do anything. Referenda don't work that way in the Netherlands, unlike in Switzerland or England.
More importantly, though, is that this was
never about "leaving" the EU. It was about approving the
new European Constitution, not about ditching the old one with the bath water.
Nobody in the entire Netherlands voted for a Netherexit that day. Not a single person. Because that was not what this was about. This referendum did not ask "Shall we leave the EU?" - it asked "Do we prefer the new or the old EU?"
Now, I admit that I do not like the way our government handled that whole procedure. Nevertheless, neither I nor any other Dutchman voted to leave the EU that day.