« The Death of the Death Tax | Main | The Oldest Tree »
May 31, 2005
Non
Can anyone explain the ramifications of the French rejection of the EU constitution?
Let's begin with the possibility of a re-vote or re-negotiation. A re-vote (as has happened in the past in countries like Ireland) seems unlikely to me, if for no other reason than the margin of Sunday's vote. Renegotiation seems pointless as well. It doesn't seem, at least from this side of the Atlantic, as if there was a particular feature of the constitution around which French popular anger coalesced. So what can one re-negotiate?
I think what the vote does show is growing popular discontent throughout many parts of Europe, and I think Sunday's vote amounted to a confluence of discontent from several sources. First, it has long seemed to me that a real danger in the whole European experiment has been the lack of popular consent for many incremental but key expansions of the EU's power. In that sense, I think the gap between the vision of the elites and sentiments of Jean Q. Publique has been growing for some time. There is an obvious remedy for this: make popular consent a more consistent feature of the process. The problem with this is that the preferences of the voters may be at odds with what is realistic or optimal in terms of the future shape of the EU, at least in terms of the conventional gains that one usually associates with such a union. I am referring here to this vague, escapist French-style Leftism embodied by people like Jose Bove. And, if expansion of the EU is truly put to democratic tests, the entry of Turkey suddenly becomes very dicey.
Second, French politics have become increasingly ossified. Chirac can and will throw just about everyone overboard to appease voters, but he can't resign himself. However unpopular he is, he knows that to resign in the face of such political difficulties (he is unpopular, but is facing no other more substantive obstacle to finishing out his term) would almost in some sense make France a country with two prime ministers.* While I think that 5 years is just too long a term for an executive (until a few years ago it was a 7 year term in France!), you can't have executives resign in "no confidence" situations like this. That is one of the important differences between a president and a prime minister.
The question now is where the European experiment goes. Obviously Europe could just maintain the status quo. But the patchwork of treaties that undergirds the modern EU seems pretty unwieldy in terms of continuing the process of integration. As I mentioned above, renegotiation seems pointless since it isn't obvious what particulars of the treaty need to be renegotiated. Perhaps the solution is a series of measures that essentially consolidate and streamline the earlier collection of treaties, many of which have survived the process of popular consultation. The advantage of this approach is that these treaties generally already have been popularly ratified and hence true consolidation and streamlining of them probably does not require popular consent (can you imagine if even these items failed a re-vote?!?). This process would take a few years, at which point EU officials could re-assess the political climate. After that, I would suggest careful EU evolution that stays abreast of popular consent.
An altogether different question is what this vote says about the French commitment to "Europe". Were the French really committed to the idea of European unity on its noblest merits? Or did they really see Europe simply as a proxy for magnifying French influence in the affairs of the world, and are now turning on an evolving EU in which France no longer plays such a dominant role?
*His choice for a new PM is odd, however. How will an arrogant blue blood like Villepin calm the populist anger surging through France right now?
Posted by dag at May 31, 2005 02:10 PM
Comments
Frankly, the whole idea of the EU has some central "Design flaws." While the concept of federalisation is certainly something that Europe could benefit from, there are serious ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic differences between the various European countries.
We have a more established system for dealing with interstate issues. New Jersey will never really adversely affect Montana because of a policy implemented there, but a policy passed in Brussels that would benefit the French could devastate the Italians (Italy is a good example of a failing economy).
Frankly, I think the French were right to reject the EU constitution, on the grounds that Chirac originally sold it as a mere formality (dotting the i's and crossing the t's) to something that is already established. In recent months, this tome has shown to be an actual constitution, which merits a lot more consideration. Also, Many countries would be much less inclined to take marching orders from Brussels as opposed to their own capitol.
I think that a no vote was pretty much guaranteed from the get-go, but everyone thought that it would come from England, Spain, or Ireland, and not from one of the major economies of the region that is France. Personally, I think that this also points to some really bad leadership on the part of Chirac (no big surprise, really).
Posted by: The Good Rabbi at June 1, 2005 11:16 PM
I have another problem with how this was done from a political standpoint: why was the consitution in some sense used for streamlining a whole bunch of earlier treaties as well as laying out the outline for a federal Europe? This dual purpose certainly added to its length and complexity. It seems to me that the document should have contained only the latter, and the consolidation and streamlining would perhaps best have been done through the European parliament.
Posted by: dag at June 2, 2005 10:50 AM