The European Union Constitution and France

Voting has started in French overseas departments for the referendum to approve or reject the European Union's constitutional treaty. The polls in France have been bouncing around 50-50 for weeks now. It is anybody's guess what the result will be.

However, what is fairly clear is that there has been a great deal of needless alarmism about the consequences of a "non" victory. Many people are hinting that a "non" vote in France means that France will be pulling out of the EU. Nonsense! If France votes no, the result will be a lot of handwringing and harrumphing followed by a renegotiation of the constitution probably with more handouts for the French (look for increased agricultural subsidies especially). In the meantime, the EU will continue to muddle along with the Treaty of Nice.

Since this blog is all about the windbaggery I would be remiss if I didn't tell everyone how I think the French should vote. I think they vote "Oui." The EU has been a good thing for France on a variety of levels (subsidies for uncompetitive French farmers, access to markets for French products, access to products from the rest of Europe, oh, and peace). If you acknowledge that the EU has been a net positive for France, then "oui" versus "non" is a question of the institutional relationships established in the constitution and the kind of "good government" questions that come up in a more mundane debate. The legislative procedures remain complicated and give many avenues for minority interests (including individual member state governments) to protect their interests against the tyranny of the majority. The document is ridiculously long. The European constitutional drafters seem never to have read the American or German constitutions, or if they did they didn't get that don't need 300 plus pages of detail built into your constitution.

That said, the new constitution does set up institutional rules (especially voting rules in the Council of Ministers - the body representing the member state governments) that can accommodate new members without requiring renegotiation of the entire document every time a new country joins. For that reason alone this document is a huge improvement over the early treaties.

Any Europeans out there? Europhiles? Europhobes? Tell us what you think.