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

Sat May 28 20:56:53 CEST 2005

you are  plain stoopid

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From: Sympa Owner [mailto:sympa at kilby.copyleft.no] On Behalf Of
ohnoqt at yahoo.com
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 2:48 PM
To: syndicate at anart.no
Subject: RE: [syndicate] French no-vote will lead to the emergence of
populist and nationalist movements

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!

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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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