Apres “non”…. parlez dites “oui,” dammit!
The official campaign for the French referendum on the EU constitution has ended. According to the LA Times’ Sebastian Rotella, Jacques Chirac ended things on a subtle note: In an attempt to avert a resounding French rejection of a proposed European constitution, President Jacques Chirac told voters Thursday that they have a “historic responsibility” to ...
The official campaign for the French referendum on the EU constitution has ended. According to the LA Times' Sebastian Rotella, Jacques Chirac ended things on a subtle note:
The official campaign for the French referendum on the EU constitution has ended. According to the LA Times’ Sebastian Rotella, Jacques Chirac ended things on a subtle note:
In an attempt to avert a resounding French rejection of a proposed European constitution, President Jacques Chirac told voters Thursday that they have a “historic responsibility” to approve the proposal. Chirac’s prime-time speech marked the official end of the campaign ahead of Sunday’s referendum and reflected the measure’s high stakes and darkening prospects. Opinion polls predict that French voters will turn down the bid to speed the continent’s political integration by strengthening institutions such as the European Union’s presidency…. Chirac urged voters not to hurt both France and Europe by using the referendum to express generalized displeasure. “The rejection of the treaty will be seen by Europeans as a no to Europe,” Chirac warned. “It will open a period of division, of doubt, of uncertainty…. What a responsibility before history if France, a founding country of Europe, caused the risk of breaking the union of our continent.”
Hmmm… this line of argument sounds familiar… oh, yes, Romano Prodi tried it a month ago. I’ll repeat what I said then:
The European project has managed to generate a common market, a common Court of Justice, the euro, Schengenland, an increasingly assertive European parliament, and even the faint stirrings of a common foreign and defense policy — all using the current set of legal and political arrangements. None of these will disappear if the French say non.
Also, if Chirac needs to borrow lines of argumentation from Prodi, then it doesn’t look good for “the future of Chirac, a 72-year-old political veteran who reportedly intends to run for a third term in 2007.” As for the referendum, six weeks ago I suggested that, “even if the referendum fails, the French can simply schedule another referendum.” According to the EUobserver’s Elitsa Vucheva, that’s pretty much what the current EU president would like to see:
If the French and the Dutch reject the EU Constitution on Sunday and Wednesday, they should re-run the referendums, the current president of the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said. “If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again”, Mr Juncker said in an interview with Belgian daily Le Soir.
French speakers can read the Le Soir interview by clicking here. My French is tres rusty, but I’m pretty sure he implies elsewhere in the interview that without the constitution Europe will revisit the horrors of the the Balkan wars of the last decade. POST-NON UPDATE: Click here for my (brief) post-non thoughts.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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