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COMMENTARY
June 1, 2005
Meaningless non
The French must have been kidding if they thought they could get rid of the proposed new European Constitution by voting against it. Jacques Chirac was already assuring his fellow heads of state and government, before the referendum, that a “non” vote would be only a minor setback. And as the results were announced, he would not admit that his government had done more than “taken note” of them.Jean Claude Juncker, the unelected President of the E.U., politely suggested countries that got the answer wrong would have to vote again until they got it right. He saw no reason why other European states, which had not even called referenda, should not continue ratifying his Constitution. Despite his own plunge in political popularity, after his failed campaign to intimidate his countrymen into voting “oui”, President Chirac did not resign. He immediately chose a scapegoat: his prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. He was merely standing there, as prime ministers do under the French system. Domenique de Villepin, the irritating former foreign minister who thinks he is a poet, will now stand there instead. From him we may expect another round of theatrical anti-Americanism, to help the French government recover in the polls. Likewise, the Dutch will have another thing coming, when they, too, vote against the proposed European Constitution today. They will get precisely what they vote against, perhaps after a little re-packaging. The European Union itself never was a political expression of the people, anywhere in Europe. From the beginning it was imposed, from above -- as something “too important for politics”. The whole point of the proposed Constitution is to remove existing obstacles to the wheelings of the vast European bureaucracy, “to make things run smoother” as one advocate after another impatiently explained to the French electorate. Real democracy is an obstacle to any bureaucracy; can be guaranteed to put spanners in the machinery of control. The French should know that. In fact, they don’t care. Detailed polling elicited the reasons for their rejection. They did not reject Euro-bureaucracy, per se. What vexed them was the thought that dictats from Brussels could rescind the generous provisions of the French welfare state. They might have to share their trappings with poorer new E.U. member countries to the east. A post-modern electorate knows better than to expect government to reduce taxes or shrink: this simply does not happen. Paying in is not an option; therefore the people concern themselves with what they can get back. Rhetorical comparisons that have been made between the American, and the proposed European Constitution, are ludicrous. There were seven articles in the former; there are 448 in the latter. The first was written by men whose lives had been put on the line in the creation of their Union; who were mostly practising politicians, sensitive to what the people could bear. The second, by men and women who do not even risk their limousines and drivers. It is a complex, technical document, like the wiring specifications for an aircraft carrier. Its preamble does not even acknowledge God. But again, that is not why it is rejected. It is rejected because it threatens a change to the status quo. Yet the people are not entirely stupid to reject it for the reasons they have: they always know a little more than the pollsters could tell you. They do not want to lose what they have under existing arrangements. By contrast, most business interests see some merit in making more of the regulatory regime pan-European, and were therefore much better disposed to the “reform”. They want a bigger home market; they want the protection of a more powerful central authority against the vagaries of French labour unions. And they will get it, in due course. Meanwhile they expressed themselves through a mild decline in the trading price of the Euro. The truth is that big business and big government are built into each other; and that bigger is always better for both sides. A real, bottom-up, instead of top-down democracy, would make business as much as government answerable to each local power. As Adam Smith demonstrated more than two centuries ago, the interests of large businesses are hardly libertarian. More than an economy is at issue, however. The aspiration to “streamline” a society from above -- which means in practice micro-managing the myriad human lives from a great height -- is alive and well far beyond Europe. The Americans get a taste of it in the power of their courts to re-interpret their Constitution, and overrule Congress. We have had a good taste of it here, recently, as our ruling Liberal Party selectively ignored votes of confidence in the House of Commons. Or as we have “gay marriage” imposed on us, over the objections of a large majority of the population. Voting will not change anything. You have to take to the streets the way they did in Kiev. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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