A furor is raging in Europe as I write this, after the French people voted to not ratify the EU constitution (the full text of the treaty can be found here). This is being hailed as a historic moment in the history of the European Union, and it is perhaps so. John Simpson has argued here that the no-vote marks the end of the idea of a United States of Europe, and he is probably correct in his assesment. Having lived in Sweden and been a Europhile once myself, I recognize that the idea of a USE has always been present more in the imagination of suave globetrotting European professionals and politicians than in the minds of ordinary Europeans. At the same time, let us remember that "ordinary" Europeans over the past two decades have been exposed at a dramatically accelerating rate to European exchange programs, and much more importantly, the youthful frolicking that is standard in any European city during the summer; young people and families literally flock by the millions across their nation's borders into neighboring nations, and often thousands of miles further. After all, wih the elimination of border controls, travel has become significantly easier(stockholm-paris takes about 18 hours) a few friends of mine and i took a trip to new orleans a while ago, and it took us about that long to drive back. not to mention, the europeans have that amazing eurail pass that is a heck of a lot cheaper for europeans to get than it is for americans visiting europe. Emigration between Europeans is also up by a significant number, with an ever increasing number of younger Europans and professionals taking advantage of the flexible and fluid labor market. I suppose I have just made the case for a stronger, more inter-connected relationship between the European countries. So, why then did the French vote against the EU constitution? Let me outline what I think are a few reasons that contributed significantly to this momentous decision, and comment on their implications.
1) Protest against top-down control. The French people, along with most other EU member country populations, are fed up with being told what to do by the "visionaries" and the politicians (sometimes, these two groups coincide, other times the politicans listen to the visionaries and are influenced by them, and the visionaries are professors, think-tank fellows etc.). They took this opportunity to remind the political elite (extremely entrenched in France, more so than perhaps any other member country, including Britain) that it is still the French people who are in charge of the republic, not the president and the prime minister. Ultimately, the French constitution allows an expression of the popular will, the general will in more Rousseauan terms, to determine the fate of the nation. It has been clear from the very beginning that the process that led to the drafting of the Constitution was anything but popularly influenced; it was led by an ex-president of France, the deliberations did not include any popular feedback of significance. In short, it was a package being sold to the people with the usual air of condescension combined with that ubiquitous sense in European politics where the politicians and experts go to great lengths to show that they are being extremely patient with their populace, and then pat them on the back once they do what they are told. They even give their populations a chance to right a wrong, to vote yes the second time because the first time, well, people were just misinformed (more on this later). In any event, the French people made it clear to their leaders that they won't be treated as mere pawns in a Great Game France aims to play in a Grand European context. I think this is a wonderful expression of the democratic will, with the French people declaring "the buck stops here" to their leadership in a reminder to all of us that liberal democracy actually means something at the end of the day, that the people can withstand the pressures of their leadership, experts, millions of euros being dumped into "information" campaigns, and still express their will.
2) Protest against the end of welfare as we know it. Having just extoled the virtues of democracy, now let me bash them for quite a while. It is clear that the vote was at least in part driven by an increasing anger among many French over the gradual but relentless demise of the cradle-to-grave state social structure that has dominated the postwar era in France and most of Western Europe. As recently as 1982, the first Socialist government in postwar France was busy nationalizing property and fulfilling the principles of the democratic socialist party program. This was quite a contrast to the Thatcherite regime simultaneously in existence across the Channel; the paradox still exists, but in a very diluted form. Although the British have gone much further toward dismantling the traditional welfare state, the French, after a brief Socialist flirtation with the 35-hour work week, have now begun down the same path as their Atlantic neighbor. Unemployment benefits are being cut, and other structural reorganizations are also being undertaken, all undermining the welfare state as most French citizens have known it for a very long time. It has been clear to most sensible people that the paternalistic state had to go quite some time ago, but the path of reform in France has been met by resistance at every step of the way; there are those notorious strikes that can bring the entire country to a halt within hours (most notably in the leadup to the World Cup in 2002), forcing governments to cave in to powerful trade unions. The protest vote, our concern here, is hardly new in recent French political history. Only a couple of years ago, the world was shocked by the 25% that Jean-Marie LePen, a far right-winger with hints of sympathy for the Nazis, received in the presidential election. That people would be so reckless with their vote so as to support a Fascist simply to register their protest with the dismantling of the welfare state only serves to validate the idea that the welfare state is the tenuous compromise that is holding together a society otherwise full of people who are willing to go to any lengths to get what they want from other people. It is a vile form of political action, that which essentially says to others "if you don't give us what we feel entitled to, we will elect someone who will, even if that individual happens to be a fascist who condones the Nazis for at least some of what they did." The culture of entitlement and dependence is deeply corrosive to the moral fabric of any free society, and it is unclear what implications it will continue to have for the future of French politics (not that the problem is restricted to France). If the French can defy the EU constitution because they are unhappy with benefit cuts, talk of raising the retirement age slightly, etc., I am not sure what else they are willing to do. It worries me, however, a great deal, and it will be quite interesting to follow how reform proceeds in France over the next couple of years, and how the French government deals with the kind of raw public resitance that appears any time some special interest, some pork entitlement, is in danger and its beenficiaries, the farmers or the truck drivers or whomevere else, rush to its defense prepared to slay all that comes in their way.
3) The Moslems (excuse my deliberate derogatory diction). The Muslim problem is perhaps Europe's single-most worrisome problem right now and for the foreseeable future. France is home to millions of immigrants from predominantly Islamic countries, many of them former French colonies. The integration or assimilation of these immigrants into French society has become an extremely powerful political issue. I will not delve into this issue at length here (it deserves a post all by itself, to be written in the next couple of days), but suffice it to say that many Frenchmen are quite fearful of what is happening to their culture and society as a result of a new generation of Muslims who are proud of their religious identity, and when faced with a choice between "french" culture and "islamic" culture, they choose to remain committed to their faith. There is an ideal of republican citizenship in Frnace, ever since Rousseau and his acolytes in the early days of the Revolution, and that ideal has no place for religion in public life. In fact, it is not too happy about religion in private life either, albeit wiling to tolerate it. Given that many French people are already feeling invaded and are questioning how their society will be radically reshaped by this new huge group of "others" who don't share some of their most fundamental cultural precepts, it is not surprising that they are uneasy about becoming ever more closely involved with a European Union that is poised to include Turkey, a Muslim-majority state, into its ranks at some undetermined, but not terribly distant, point in the future. The question of Turkish membership is something else that I don't want to get into here (maybe another post about that too is in the works), but it seems reasonable to conclude that there is at least a good chance that Turkey may become some sort of member at some time in the next 10-15 years. Given the entry of the Turks, bringing along the EU's largest population and with that voting powers reflecting that size, is giving many Europeans a great deal of worry. Turkey in the Union would not only change the nominally Christian-only membership of the current Union, but it would also give Muslims all over Europe a powerful voice, a permanent ally in the very midst of the Councils of Europe. It would in some ways be an ironic reversal of roles from centuries ago when European nations looked out for Christians living in Ottoman lands (more on this in the Turkey post). In short, the EU constitution has a significane that reaches beyond the actual text of the document, marking a closer union that is also preparing itself to broaden even further, creating the very real possibility that Turkey would become the champion of the Muslims of Europe as part of a European constitutional order. Many French probably decided that non was the way to go given this potential reality.
4) The Constitution. Notice that I place this last, because honestly I think that it is the least important of the reasons that the French voted against the EU constitution. Why? Well, because all the other reasons I have given were simply more important, and were attached to the Constitution in the popular imagination, thus dooming it to defeat. That said, the Constitution itself deserves a heap of criticism, and on its merits alone I can't blame the French for voting it down. It is hundreds of pages long, terribly vague in its formulations, and essentially manages to say nothing while also creating all sorts of room for more involvement in the individual affairs of each member country from the organs of the Union in Brussels. The two key features, a restructuring of the voting system and the creation of a foreign ministry, would probably have passed muster, had they been presented to the people without all the paraphernalia and symbolism that is inherent in a Constitution. The people of France saw the Constitution as a potential threat to their sovereignty and national identity simply because they felt that they were signing on to soemthing with a milliion different inflatlabe clauses that could be used for any conceivable purpose if the Union would wish it to be so at an undetermined point in the future. Whether they were correct in this assesment is an interesting question, but in some ways irrelevant. Perception is what matters in politics, and to the credit of the French people it is noteworthy that the purpose of the European Constitution, unlike say the American one, is not to set out limits on government power and to empower the people. On the contrary, its intent was to define greater powers for the powers-that-be in Brussels, and to make it easier to exercise that power even in the face of opposition from significant numbers of member countries. One indication that the drafters of the Constitution hardly trusted the people is the striking contrast between the ratification process after the American Constitutional Convention and the European one more than two centuries later. Keeping in mind that we are supposed to have progressed toward ever more freedom and democracy, it is fascinating that while the American constitutinal drafters were fearful tha the State Assemblies would reject the document and rather decided to go straight to the people by asking them to elect a new Constitutional Convention in each state, in the European debate there was never any fear that the parliamentarians would pose any real opposition. Rather, it was clear from the very first day that the biggest challenge would be to convince the people of the usefulness of this founding documnent. A lack of trust pervades the relationship between the Union's leadership and the populace of the Union's nations, and this was certainly a contributory factor to what happened in Sunday's vote.
So I have analyzed what I believe to be the four main causes for why the No-vote took place, and I will return with more on the two things that I have not yet fleshed out.
