Europe, Headlines

POLITICS: EU Future Uncertain After French ‘Non’

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, May 30 2005 (IPS) - The future of the European Union seemed unclear Monday as Europe woke up to the news that France had voted overwhelmingly against the bloc’s new constitution, and forecasts suggested the Netherlands will do the same later this week.

Some 55 percent of French people voted against the European Union’s (EU) constitutional treaty Sunday (May 29), plunging the bloc into an unprecedented crisis.

It was the first time a large founder member of the bloc has directly opposed the current constitutional process.

The EU constitution was finalised last year after long negotiations among EU governments. The treaty aims to streamline EU institutions following the admission of 10 new members last year.

So far nine countries – Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain – have formally endorsed the constitution. Member states can ratify the document through a referendum or by parliamentary vote.

However, as all 25 EU member states have to approve the constitution before it can become law, the French rejection of the document means that it is technically dead.

The French vote was also considered to be important as France has been one of the founding fathers of both the EU and the constitution.

The French “non” also means that the constitution has failed to bring the EU closer to the people, which was one of the fundamental aims of the document.

Both France and the EU are now faced with the tough political challenge of how to respond to the French vote, and how to proceed with the constitutional process.

While EU officials tried to put on a brave face on the French result Monday, expressing their resolve to push on with the negotiations, some analysts say the future of the European constitution is over.

Some European officials say they want to take the French vote as a challenge for forging a new European compromise.

“The tenor of the debate in France, and the result of the referendum reinforces our conviction that the relevant national and European politicians must do more to explain the true scale of what is at stake, and the nature of the answers that only Europe can offer,” the leaders of the European parliament, the European Commission and the presidency of the bloc said in a statement Sunday.

“Europe has already known difficult moments and it has every time emerged from them strengthened, better than before, ready to face its challenges and its responsibilities. Today Europe continues, and its institutions function fully. We are aware of the difficulties, but we have confidence that once again we will find the means to move the European Union forward,” it added.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana insisted that the bloc’s international role must not suffer, and warned Europeans against entering “a zone of paralysis psychologically”.

Some members of the European Parliament (MEPs), the EU’s only democratically-elected institution, also insist that the bloc must push ahead with the ratification process of the treaty.

“The EU is composed of 450 million citizens and its future cannot be decided by voters in one EU member state. We must now persevere to ensure that all 25 member states speak their mind. This will allow a breathing space in which France can reflect on its decision,” Graham Watson, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) said Monday.

Some experts say an alternative to the treaty must be found.

“The EU has today woken up with a hangover. Our project of a strong political union of Europe today is more difficult to realise,” Green MEPs Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit said in a statement Monday.

Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow at the London-based Centre for European Reform (CER) says that while the constitution may be dead the EU can recover from the ‘knock-out blow’.

“The question is how the EU gets up from it. It’s obviously very serious when a family member votes against the treaty, and this has never happened before,” he told IPS Monday.

“The irony is that most people criticise the EU for not being democratic, transparent or efficient enough; however the treaty would have actually made the EU all of these things,” he added.

But ultimately Keohane says the EU’s problems run much deeper than that.

“The problem is that the EU has been a leap-led project and there has been little engagement with its citizens. Europe’s political leaders need to think again on how it explains the EU benefit to its citizens,” he said.

The next big test for the European constitution will come Wednesday (Jun. 1) when the Dutch will also vote in a referendum.

European leaders will debate the French and the Dutch vote, and the future of the European constitution during a heads of state summit in June.