After the Bureaucrats in Brussels defined jelly as consisting of fruit preserves, they were informed that the French make a jelly out of carrots. Instead of back tracking to change their original mistake, they officially redefined carrots as fruit. This is the body that would govern Europe had the new constitution been ratified.
After the crushing defeat of that Constitution in the French referendum (55% non to 45% oui, according to final count) the constitutional process in Europe is now like a chicken with its head cut off: too stupid to lay down and die.
Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, said: "The outcome of the referendum is a setback for the process of ratifying the constitution, but not its end."
Many Eurocrats are urging Chirac to do something, perhaps announce a second referendum. But a government this badly discredited scarcely has the strength to do such a thing, and it would only further convince French voters, even many who voted yes, that the instincts of their national establishment are profoundly undemocratic.
One of the few things that the proposed constitution is clear about is that every member state must ratify it before it comes into effect. Nine, I believe, have already done so, but France was the first to submit it to the voters in a binding election. Moreover, the Dutch are set to vote tomorrow, and they too are expected to vote no. Britain has scheduled a referendum, but two no votes in three days, effectively killing the ratification process, will leave Tony Blair little choice but to cancel it. The same will be true of the Czech Republic and Poland. The chicken is dead.
Why is the European Constitutional process collapsing? To begin with, the document itself is a mess. Consider by way of contrast the Constitution of the United States. It consists of seven articles and can be printed on one page (though granted, its a big honkin page). The European Constitution contains 448 articles and is two or three hundred pages long, depending on how it is printed.
But the bigger problem is illustrated by the fact that voters in France and Britain are opposed to it for the opposite reasons. The French thought it would expose them to "anglo-saxon values," which is French for having to work in order to get paid. The British think it would take away much of the competitive advantage that the British economy has over its European rivals. "But so what," says Mark Steyn.
Britain's naysayers don't have to reject the constitution for the same reason as France's commies, fascists, racists, eco-nutters, anachronistic unionists, featherbedded farmers, middle-aged "students", Trot professors and welfare queens, bless 'em all. If they want to go down the Eurinal of history clinging to their unaffordable welfare state, their 30-hour work weeks, 10-month work years and seven-year work decades, that's up to them. If Britain doesn't, that should be up to Britain.
That is the rub. Neither people want to give up national independence to a body of unelected pinheads who think that carrots are fruit.
Worse still, there is a bad idea at the bottom of the whole European project. The French began it hoping that a United States of Europe would be able to compete on equal footing with the United States of America, and of course that France would dominate the former. Steyn explains what is wrong with this Gallic reasoning.
I mentioned to a theatre chum the other day that the EU reminded me of Garth Drabinsky's Livent company. They were the big theatre producers in the Nineties: they revived Show Boat and produced Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime and Sweet Smell of Success in Toronto and on Broadway and brought most of them to the West End. And they were all critically admired, yet didn't seem to make any money. But Livent took the view that somehow if you produced a big enough range of flops they would add up to one smash hit.
They're gone now. But their spirit lives on in the EU, critically admired (at least by the Guardian and Le Monde) but not making any money, and clinging to the theory that if you merge enough weak economies they add up to one global superpower. The big story of the past three decades is that the more it's mired itself in the creation of a centralised pseudo-state, the more "Europe" has fallen behind America in every important long-term indicator, from economic growth to demographics. "Europe" is an indulgence the real Europe can't afford. The followers recognise that, even if the leaders don't.
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