The law, if you will. We have a valid treaty, the treaty of Nice, which the members agreed to. Some want to depart from that. The onus is on them. The EU has no business in determining its structure as it is a creature of treaties, nothing more. You may see this constitution as an attempt to change that. It has failed to do that.

The others have any right to do as they wish, in effect expelling France, probably the Netherlands, likely some others. That would be the end of the EU.

On the constitutional treaty, riddle me this: What is the Estonian view? The Danish view? The Swedish view?

My point, and I grant that it is a limited one, is that we don’t know. And if those countries stop now, we will never know.

On the other hand, what is it about French voters that privileges their views over the views of some 230 million other EU citizens whose representatives have already voted? Are the French super-class Europeans who matter more?

On the UK position, Tony Blair didn’t get to be Tony Blair without forcing peoples’ hands. That’s one aspect of what he’s just said. Another is the word ’suspension’, which I am sure was very carefully chosen. Any British referendum is about a year away, an eternity in politics. By ’suspending’ consideration now, Blair gains time, takes the initiative just before the UK presidency of the EU, and loses precisely nothing.

But let’s turn the questions in another direction. What’s better? Another IGC? Another two or three years spent getting what we’ve got today? Two or three smaller treaties, each with its own ratification process? (Ask the Poles how well the whole mała konstitucja thing went.)

It seems to me that people who are opposed to the constitution should say how they would fix the Union’s problems, particularly given coming rounds of enlargement.

And if there’s anyone out there who thinks enlargement should stop now (I don’t include you among these ranks, Edward), I’d be keen to hear a principled reason why Slovenes can be EU members and Croats never can; likewise for Greeks versus Bulgarians.

So far, the burden has been on the pro-constitutional treaty side to say why that option is better than the alternative. Now that things are much more up in the air, the anti side ought to spell out what they want.

I would say (and I hope not just on behalf of the Brits, see eg Davids posts, or Frans) that people may not want to be absorbed in a EU where important decisions are made in remote places, with little possibility to reverse course *and* where our leaders either tell us the sun orbits the earth (the ECB and the one size fits all dogma) or that the earth is - in fact - flat (the ratification process will continue, a majority of states are in favour etc etc).

Sorry if I’m hitting you head on here Doug, but I really do feel pretty strongly about this, since I think it is precisely this kind of thing which *weakens* the EU.

It has been observed often enough that the successful “No” camp in France was an unholy alliance between Dirigiste Socialists and Ultra-nationalist Xenophobes who otherwise have little in common politically beyond authoritarian tendencies and their opposition to the present treaty.

In Britain, the unifying theme of opposition is that the treaty could become the means of imposing a scale of unwanted dirigisme under the cloak of EU harmonisation that would undermine the many benefits to economic performance achieved through market liberalisation, some painfully.

Besides that, a majority of Brits have no wish to be absorbed into a European state where important decisions are made in remote places and when there is little opportunity to reserve course after recognisably bad decisions were made - the claims being made about the “impossibility” of renegotiating the present treaty are an excellent example of just this.

Tony Blair has recently said that already about half of UK legislation impacting on business derives from EU primary legislation and there are many here who, with reason, do not regard that as reassuring after they have seen the official statistics showing the higher rates of both unemployment and inflation in the Eurozone compared with Britain, as well as the slower rate of GDP growth.

Data like that speak eloquently, sufficiently so to make many of the claims made about the European project look rather like over-selling. Many here have good cause to recall the terrible consequences that were supposed to befall Britain if we failed to join the Euro. As it is, it is starting to look as though we had a lucky escape. Some have noticed too that the Swiss economy, outside the EU and the Eurozone, is also doing relatively well.

There is perhaps rather more hope for a constitutional treaty that leaves more scope for national decisions within a framework of abolishing trade barriers in Europe and the principles for making Europe-wide decisions when necessary.

It is hugely significant that there is a broad agreement between many EU governments that Commission spending should not exceed 1% of the EU’s combined GDP. It would also facilitate better public relations when the Commission manages to get the European Court of Auditors to approve the Commission’s annual accounts - for a change.

Vive subsidiarity!

Please gentlemen stop this agony. We don?t deserve so much pain because of a devalued treaty that is just the spectre of a failed federal constitution. Please make a brand new treaty, devoid of “grandeur” and full of consensus.

At the end of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith concludes that he loves Big Brother after all.

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/23/

There is none. The results of the votes so far are mutually exclusive. Waiting now means that the time is wasted.

Assessing them in terms of national political culture is probably too obvious to need saying, but there it is. The different countries have different approaches, as you’ve pointed out, and forced harmonization would, I think, be harmful. The only time I could see a problem is if a country has a strong tradition of referendums, but doesn’t hold one on this issue. The converse might also be true.

“German law doesn’t allow a referendum. And if there was one, can we be sure the Germans would vote in favour?”

This is true at the national level. Referendums were rather badly misused from 1933 to 1945, so the framers of the Basic Law decided that an unmixed representative government was the way to go. German assent to the constitutional treaty was taken in a way that is consistent with all of Germany’s postwar political culture. If anything, the constitutional treaty is less controversial than, say, NATO entry in 1955, or the Pershing II decisions in the mid-1980s, neither of which was decided by referendum.

My point here is stare decisis. EU member states have established practices for deciding questions like the constitutional treaty. They should stick with them.

“So the French vote has quite a lot of legitimacy.”

Yes, but only for France.

“but I think this way of arguing is only going to make matters worse. ”

My issue with this quote and the previous one is that we genuinely don’t know what the preferences are in the other countries. Of course the French vote will affect those preferences to some extent, as did ratifications in other places. And so going back to the drawing board without knowing what the appropriate authorities in other places think could just as easily miss the opportunity for consensus.

The French who voted no may be the mainstream of Europe, or they may be outliers. But they are not a priori either. The days when a French decision was by definition directional for the EU (or its predecessors) are over, which is one of the reasons yesterday’s vote went as it did.

Without knowing what Danes, or Poles or Swedes or Cypriots (or their representatives) for example think about the constitutional treaty, the EU is casting about in the dark. Or at the very least, doing without important information.

These are still incomplete thoughts; maybe I’ll put something up this evening.