What does “Volksabstimmung” mean in German?

A German-learner news bulletin reports that Icelanders voted against new EU membership talks in a Volksabstimmung — a referendum. Break the word down and the politics explains itself: Volk (the people) plus Abstimmung (a vote/ballot). Where English imported “referendum” wholesale from Latin, German just described the mechanism directly: a vote that belongs to the people, not to parliament.

The Volks- prefix is one of German’s most productive political building blocks: Volksvertreter (people’s representative, i.e. an elected MP), Volkswirtschaft (the national economy, “people’s economy”), even Volkswagen (“people’s car”). Recognizing “Volk” as the root makes a surprising amount of German political and economic vocabulary transparent rather than intimidating.