french reject EU constitution
As you no doubt know by now, French voters have rejected the EU constitution, with 55% of voters opposed. Several conservative commentators are having a bit of fun with this, while others (including me) are not so sure what this means.
Here’s a round-up of blog-based opinion:
» Citizen Smash thinks the vote was mainly a vote of no-confidence for French president Jacques Chirac. (Also, check out his Memorial Day tribute.)
» Power Line’s John Hinderaker sees some similarities between their electoral map and ours. I think he misses a couple of important things, which I’ll tell you about later.
» Joe Gandelman looks at Chirac’s political future, and has his own excellent round-up of opinion.
» Jeff Jarvis captures some important points about the bloated, 450-page EU constitution (but again, misses an important point abou the vote).
» The incomparable Instapundit has commentary from his readers — and all of them seem to get what this is really about.
» Robin Burk at Winds of Change is also talking about the EU’s future.
For me, this news story has buried within it the real reason behind the “no” vote:
Chirac argued that the constitution would streamline EU decision-making and make the bloc more accessible to its 450 million citizens. But opponents feared it would strip France of its sovereignty and generous social system and trigger an influx of cheap labor.
They feared the treaty would open the EU to unfettered free-market capitalism, trampling on workers rights.
Treaty opponents chanting “We won!” gathered at Paris’ Place de la Bastille, a symbol of rebellion where angry crowds in 1789 stormed the Bastille prison and sparked the French Revolution. Cars blared their horns and “no” campaigners thrust their arms into the air.
“This is a great victory,” said Fabrice Savel, 38, from the working-class suburb of Aubervilliers, distributing posters that read: “No to a free-market Europe.”
Ahmed Meguili, a militant leftist, noted the significance of the Bastille for the “no” camp’s celebrations.
“In 1789, the revolutionaries freed the prisoners and frightened the king,” he said. “This is the same thing. This is yet another divorce between the leaders and the people.”
All 25 EU members must ratify the text for it to take effect as planned by Nov. 1, 2006. Nine already have done so: Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
I want to caution against showing too much schadenfreude, although I am happy about this result too. Most French voters rejected the EU constitution because they wanted France to become MORE socialist and anti-American, not less. A CBS radio report (of all places) this morning said, “French Communists are tickled pink.” Also, voting districts that had a large number of Arab and African immigrants overwhelmingly rejected the constitution, and as has been noted repeatedly here, these neighborhoods also have shown a rise in racial violence and Islamic extremism.
On Wednesday, the Dutch go to the polls, and opposition in the Netherlands is even stronger than in France. The reasons, I think, are the same: pro-socialist, anti-free market, anti-immigration reasons (although the last of these is understandable, given the rise in Islamic extremist killing there as well – hey, notice a common denominator here?).
Jarvis was right about one thing: He wrote, “…it’s about a bad constitution that made up for in bureaucracy what it lacked in vision.” That’s all Europe has had for some time now.
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