The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve
problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or
control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage
on the way to the organized world of tomorrow.
— Closing words of the Memoirs of Jean Monnet
On June 16th, 8,000 Parisian leftists streamed through the Champs
Elysees in a noisy but civil celebration of their victory in the
May 29 referendum over the forces supporting the European
constitution, a document which would have, in their view, ripped
apart the French patrimonial state and its elaborate social and
health protections, and placed the nation at the mercy of the
“Anglo-Saxon model” of brutish economic competition and global
capitalism. The Republic had once again been saved. It was 1789,
the Paris Commune, the liberation from Nazi rule, and 1968 — all
rolled into one.
Whatever one thinks of the project to build a European
superstate, there is something inspiring about 20 million French
and Dutch voters who, having been told what to do by their most
respected leaders, listening attentively, and even plowing through
the dense, 448 article document they were told they must approve,
then do the exact opposite. The double vote against the European
constitution may be the most significant historical event on the
continent since the fall of the Berlin wall. Or maybe not.
Last week’s festivities in Paris were scheduled to coincide with
meetings in Brussels of the heads of state of the 25 member nations
of the European Union (EU) — meetings that would ostensibly halt
the ratification process in other countries and bury the
constitution. But that is not what happened last week in the
corridors of Europe’s largest office complex, the headquarters of
the EU.
Stunned, perplexed, and “destabilized,” as they were commonly
described in the European press, the leaders spent two days sorting
out the future in meetings with the officialdom of Brussels.
European Commission president Jose Manuel Borroso described himself
as “paralyzed” by the French and Dutch votes, “but there is no
decision to take here. The French are in charge of themselves
alone. We have to move on. But we must examine the reasons for this
malaise.” Others, like Liam Fox, the British Conservative Party’s
shadow foreign secretary, were more blunt: “I know how to recognize
a cadaver when I see one. This constitution is headed for the
morgue. Only the political dinosaurs in France and Germany and the
army of eurocrats whose careers depend on this document are acting
as if nothing has happened.” But even the announcement from 10
Downing Street that the government of Tony Blair would “freeze” its
referendum process pending “clarifications” didn’t dissuade most of
the eurocrats. “The constitution,” said M. Borroso, “is not the
property of the United Kingdom. It is the property of the European
Union. It is not for the UK alone to decide its future.”
In the event, the leaders pumped themselves up, mustered their
courage and, in the face of what they all described as the gravest
crisis in the 50-year history of the EU, called for a “pause for
reflection.” Back in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose rightist
National Front Party had campaigned vigorously against the
constitution on the grounds that it would erode the sovereignty of
the French nation, warned that the EU was about to bypass the
voters it claims to represent. He was right. The “pause” extended
the deadline for ratification by member states by one year to 2007
and permitted those countries which had not yet ratified the
constitution the right to “suspend” ratification processes — a
right, incidentally, that is embodied in the domestic law of all
member states and cannot be “conferred” by the EU or any other
international organization. Quietly, the governments of Denmark,
Luxembourg, and Poland proceeded to cancel referenda variously
scheduled between July and early fall. Polls in each of those
countries show solid majorities opposed to the constitution. The
prospect of rolling rejections of the constitution was avoided, as
was any pretense of consulting the voters.
In Brussels, attention focused on an obscure provision of the
constitution, which provides that in the event that five or fewer
member countries have “difficulties with the ratification process,”
the European Council of the EU (heads of state) will be “seized of
the matter.” Of the thirteen countries that have not ratified the
constitution, only six will submit the matter to the voters. The
others will require parliamentary approval, virtually certain in
all cases. If just three of the six referenda result in Yes votes
(likely in Portugal, Belgium, and Slovakia), the conditions would
be met for the heads of state to decide the future of the European
Union despite the formal requirement that each state must approve
the constitution before it can be implemented.
Would the Council of the EU enact the constitution in whole or
in part against the expressed wishes of a significant number of its
members? Of course it would. After all, why should a project that
will supplant the nation-state system with a new and higher form of
political community, endow its citizens with created rights,
including the rights to housing subsidies, “environmental justice,”
and the security that comes with knowing that ladders in Scotland
are exactly the same length as those in France, and that promises
to extend by example the “Zone of Peace” to the rest of humanity,
why should such lofty purposes be held hostage to the inconvenient
outbursts of childish passions by voters in two countries who
should have known how to behave better?
That is only a slight exaggeration of the extent to which the
architects of what is now called the European “construction” have
consciously rejected consensual democratic practices. When the
current rotational “President” of Europe, Jean-Claude Juncker of
Luxembourg, said before the French referendum that “If it’s a Yes,
we will say ‘on we go,’ and if it’s a No, we will say ‘on we go,”
he was expressing what Brussels bureaucrats take as their modus
operandi: the European project is a bicycle that can never be
allowed to stand still; it must be peddled constantly. That is why
in Brussels today, Eurocrats are gliding from one Eutopian planning
session to the next contriving ways to appoint a permanent European
President and Foreign Minister even if the constitution
establishing those offices never sees the light of day. But
Juncker’s comment cuts through all the arcane debates and the
thickets of former French President Giscard d’Estaing’s unreadable
constitution. The American constitution begins with “We the
People.” The EU constitution begins with “We know better than the
people.”
It is probably impossible for Americans, with their strong
traditions of self-government and citizen participation, to
understand how a narrowly based cabal of intellectuals and friends
could conceive, write, and implement a constitution for 500 million
people without review by judicial bodies and thrust it upon
legislatures and voters. It was clear, however, to Jean Monnet, the
acknowledged Father of Europe, whose words appear at the beginning
of this article. It was clear as well to the little-known French
philosopher of Polish origins, Alexander Kojeve, who was convinced
that the world that emerged from the destruction of World War II
was moving towards a Hegelian moment in which the contradictions of
the nation-state system would resolve themselves through the advent
of the “Universal State.” Among his students were the current
French President Jacques Chirac and a significant number of those
in the French political elite.
The European superstate has suffered a setback and there are
encouraging signs in France and elsewhere that the debate over the
future governance of Europe is broadening beyond the narrow
center-right, center-left parameters where it has largely been
confined. You know something is afoot when in the pages of the
prestigious left-of-center Le Monde appear the writings of
formerly unheard from libertarians complaining about the
centralization and regulation of the French social model and the
dangers they foresee in its European-wide application.
Unfortunately, though, in Brussels they keep peddling that
utopian bicycle.
(Editor’s note: Dr. Liam Fox is a Conservative
member of the British Parliament, representing the constituency of
Woodspring. He was incorrectly identified as a member of the
European Parliament in the original text of this article.)
