Well well well, it looks like the new "EU constitution" has hit a bump
it's not going to be able to recover from. I must say, personally I
think this is a really big shame. Here was a chance to clarify what the
EU stood for, remove a whole pile of bureaucracy and get everything
working smoothly.

Well, that's not going to happen. The stupid thing is that the French
vote wasn't even on the issues of the constitution itself but on
whether people liked the government and their opinion on the expansion.
Here in Holland the issues are different but the effect may well be the
same. Here people complain about:

* The old Guilder exchange rate to the Euro was too low, as seemed
to be indicated by a badly worded report from the central bank. It
actually said relative to the Deutch Mark, but was a good average
overall but people will grab anything to complain about.
* That people don't like the government. The current government has
like a 26% approval rating.
* Fear about Turkey and immigration, things which the constitution
actually improved but nothing like FUD to throw a spammer in the works.

The government is for, almost all the opposition is for, but that is
used as an argument for voting against. The government spent 34 million
euro on the 'yes' campain but none on the 'no', so obviously they have
something to hide, right.

As was pointed out this morning, the difference in views between what
the French population apparently want and what the EU is supposed to
stand for are so diametrically opposed that renegotitation or tweaking
of the treaty is not a plausable solution. Huge amounts of time,
effort, money and negotiation went into this version and that didn't
work, so I think that there's no chance next time will come up with
anything better.

Actually, reminds me of the constitutional convention in Australia with
respect to becoming a republic. what was a concensus between people
elected to make the decision, didn't match what people expected. The EU
constitution was agreed unanimously between all 25 governments in the
EU, but the populations disagree with their respective governments.

Just a quick comment about one argument, that we and every other
country would lose veto power over most issues. There seems to be a
concern that unless you have a veto power you're screwed. I have to say
that giving everyone a veto power over everything screws you just as
much. Say you want to enforce labelling of GM food, but some small
country decides that they think it's a waste of ink and vetos it. The
effect of removing vetos is that people consider compromise and work
for a better outcome.

A number of EU ministers have said that if the constitution doesn't
make it, they'll try to introduce as many of the changes as they can
that don't require a treaty to agree. My fear is that instead of the
clear concise methods in the constitution we'll get some warped version
which is a compromise of the current sitting people rather than the
commenly agreed compromise in the constitution.

Ofcourse, they were stupid to call it a "constitution" anyway. That
word brings up all sorts of associations which, depending on who you
are, could be either positive or negative. In my opinion these changes
were too important to be put in a document with such a loaded title. It
should have been called "Treaty of " which would have
made it a much easier sell, except ofcourse, people wanted the loaded
meaning, to create a unified voice.

Anyway, this has become much too long a rant. We're voting here on
Wednesday and it doesn't look good. Looks like we'll be stuck with
secret meetings of the European Council for some time yet.

Have a nice day,
--

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