[syndicate] French no-vote will lead to the emergence of populist and nationalist movements

[.pavu.com]

no

> or vote yes to lePen bs (as you will tommorow with your maso-no)
>
>
> Frederic Madre <fmadre at free.fr> wrote:
>> cool! I vote NO to this liberal bullshit!
>>
>>> From: Sympa Owner [mailto:sympa at kilby.copyleft.no] On Behalf Of 
>>> ohnoqt at yahoo.com
>>> Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 2:32 PM
>>> To: syndicate at anart.no; nettime-fr-raw at anart.no; 
>>> nettime-fr-raw at anart.no.
>>> Cc: compost_23 at yahoogroupes.fr
>>> Subject: [syndicate] French no-vote will lead to the emergence of 
>>> populist and nationalist movements
>>>
>>>
>>> THE COMING FRENCH NO VOTE -  A DISASTER FOR EUROPE ?
>>>
>>> Marcel H. VAN HERPEN
>>>
>>> Director, Cicero Foundation
>>>> The possibility of a French no vote on the occasion of the 
>>>> referendum on the European Constitution can no longer be excluded 
>>>> and in many European capitals a growing nervousness can be 
>>>> observed. Commentators ask themselves what the consequences will be 
>>>> for the Constitution. Will it definitively be dead or can it still 
>>>> be saved by some kind of artificial reanimation?
>>>>  
>>>> Let us examine the different scenarios that may happen after a 
>>>> French no-vote:
>>>>
>>>> 1. The French no vote will remain an isolated event and will not be 
>>>> followed by the parliaments or electorates of the other EU member 
>>>> states (except, probably, Britain). In this case one might expect 
>>>> that the French - after some minor symbolic concessions on a 
>>>> 'social Europe' have been added in a protocol - will be asked to 
>>>> vote again, as the Irish and the Danes did before them.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2. If more EU member states vote against - let us say: four or five 
>>>> - the no-vote will get enough momentum to consider the Constitution 
>>>> definitively dead and buried.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 3. What will happen in this case? The malaise will be great and the 
>>>> possibility that a second effort will be made to revamp the 
>>>> Constitution in a time-consuming Convention must be excluded. 
>>>> Especially France will find itself in a delicate position. Apart 
>>>> from streamlining the institutional framework the Constitution 
>>>> meant an important leap forward in the field of the Common Foreign 
>>>> and Security Policy, an old French policy goal. France would find 
>>>> itself in the same embarassing position as in 1954 when the French 
>>>> Assemblie blocked the European Defence Community, which equally was 
>>>> essentially a French project.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 4. A revamping of the Constitution being excluded, the EU 
>>>> governments may return to a policy of 'piecemeal engineering', a 
>>>> policy of small steps in the European Council which - in the end - 
>>>> even might have the same impact as the new Constitution. This is, 
>>>> of course, not the most beautiful scenario, because it deepens the 
>>>> rift between the political elites and the European populations, and 
>>>> might, therefore, lead to a drawback in the form of the emergence 
>>>> of populist and nationalist movements.
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>> 5.  A French no vote could trigger also another outcome: it could 
>>>> boost a renewed interest of the French and German political elites 
>>>> for a Franco-German 'core' Europe. The German Green Foreign 
>>>> Minister Joschka Fischer has lost his original interest in this 
>>>> idea, but a 'Great Coalition' of SPD and CDU/CSU that soon could 
>>>> replace the existing coalition, could revive this idea that was 
>>>> launched in 1994 by the CDU members Schduble and Lamers.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 6..... There exists therefore a real danger that the still 
>>>> embryonal Political Europe could disintegrate into three blocs:
>>>> - a French-German dominated core-Europe,
>>>> - a transatlantic North-West Europe around Britain,
>>>> - and an Eastern bloc that would organise the the new EU member 
>>>> countries that were part of the former CMEA (Comecon) into a pro-US 
>>>> bloc.
>>>>  
>>>>  
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>> According to one author "Our continent is confronted with two 
>>>> burning problems: the social and the European problem (). The 
>>>> social question is, rightly, the main subject of the public debate 
>>>> (). At the same time the European question, which is not of lesser 
>>>> importance, is simply ignored. Many don't even know about its 
>>>> existence  it is not taken seriously." The author, so it seems, is 
>>>> talking about the coming French referendum, where the debate about 
>>>> the importance of the European project is hijacked by national 
>>>> politics and social questions ('l'Europe sociale', 'l'Europe 
>>>> untra-libirale').
>>>> In fact this quotation comes from the book 'Pan-Europa', published 
>>>> in 1923 by Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the father of the European 
>>>> idea. More than eighty years later his words still have a great 
>>>> actuality, warning the Europeans that their disaffection with the 
>>>> economic policies of their national governments should not 
>>>> jeopardise the extremely important task of building and 
>>>> consolidating a politically viable Europe.Paris, 11 April 2005
>>>
>>>  
>>>
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