THE EUROPEAN Union has suffered a series of setbacks throwing the future of its constitutional integration into serious doubt.
In a stunning blow to their political establishment, French voters on Sunday, May 29, resoundingly rejected the proposed European Union constitution. Dutch voters followed the French lead last Wednesday in a similar referendum.
Now Britain has halted preparations for its own referendum, suspending legislation to that effect. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told Parliament on Monday that the French and Dutch actions had thrown the future of the 25-nation bloc into doubt.
For the treaty underpinning the constitution to come into force, all EU member-countries must ratify it. The French and Dutch votes thus put the constitution on the political equivalent of life support. Nevertheless, that does not rule out the possibility of future amendments and new referenda. But ominously, there now looms the possibility that opponents of the treaty in other countries will now feel emboldened to reject it in their own referenda.
In the meantime, the EU will continue to operate as it has, on the basis of a patchwork quilt of treaties. Its leaders can point to the fact that support for integration remains strong in much of Europe, while French objections owed as much to domestic politics as to resistance to the European project.
The aphorism that all politics is local was well played out in France. Several polls before the referendum indicated that the French were determined to strike a blow at their Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, who had spent weeks asking voters to support the EU constitution.
That may be cold comfort, however. For Europe's leaders will know that at the heart of the French vote lay popular resistance to an integrationist movement driven in no small part by bureaucratic elites and political bargaining. They will thus have to go back to the drawing board to revise their political strategy for integration.
France was one of the founding members of the integration movement which eventually became the European Union. All 25 member-countries were expected to ratify the constitution by November 1, 2006 either by referenda or parliamentary vote. France was the first to vote 'No', followed by the Dutch.
The British have taken the position that European leaders must now come together to determine the way forward. An EU summit is scheduled for June 16. The result of those deliberations will have profound implications not only for Europe but for the rest of the world both in terms of trade and foreign relations.
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