As expected, the Dutch have dealt a second blow to the European constitution. From the Timesonline (London):
Only three days after French voters rejected the document, an exit poll broadcast by NOS television said that the Dutch, voting in their first-ever national referendum, had voted “nee” by 63 per cent to 37 against the constitution. Early results backed up the poll.
What is not easily grasped by Americans is the governments of Europe are much less directly Democratic than in the U.S. Of the nine countries that ratified the new charter, only Spain did so by popular vote. It is highly unlikely that any popular referendum will now be pro-constitution.
Consider Ann Applebaum's comment on the French vote, from the Washington Post.
On the Sunday evening and Monday morning after the French voters' definitive non to the European constitution, the French president worked the phones. According to his spokesman, he called, among others, the German chancellor, the British prime minister, and sundry European bureaucrats and commissioners, assuring all of them of France's commitment to the construction of Europe and urging all of them to keep the ratification process on track. Everyone should go on, in other words, as if nothing important had happened.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose : In 1992, after the French ha d held what turned out to be an extraordinarily close, nail-biting vote on the treaty that set up the common European currency, the then-president, Francois Mitterand, declared the 51.4 percent oui majority a great victory, and he, too, went on as if nothing had happened. The French are not unique in this respect. Indeed, one of the most remarkable characteristics of the European Union is the ability of its leaders to keep building their institutions and expanding their power, not only ignoring but self-righteously ignoring European voters. In the months before its adoption, when opinion polls showed that most Germans were also opposed to a single European currency, I asked a German politician whether this bothered him. No, he said: The job of a politician is to explain to the people what is good for them, not the other way around.
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