pace Christian, who is obviously the man on the spot, I'm still not
convinced that rejection of the constitution by France & the Netherlands is
a body-blow for the EU. There was no real consensus beforehand that a
full-blown constitution was totally necessary, and there was widespread
indifference to the monstrosity Giscard - or rather his minions - came up
with. There were alternatives - a straightforward series of treaties
tidying-up loose ends from 1956, and sorting out new rules for accession and
voting in an expanded community would probably have been better, and are
what will happen now.

 Referendums on a given topic are almost always actually polls on the
popularity of the government of the day; I'm not
 convinced that referendums even on "big" issues are ever justifiable - we
outsource the reading of treaties to
 politicians, who outsource it to civil servants. We pay the dogs, why
should we bark ourselves?
 I note that the German constitution expressly forbids referendums, but they
have a particular recent history, I suppose.

 Another reason for the Dutch "No" vote might be offered by this : -


"This year's Eurovision Song Contest - the 50th - featured songs from 39
countries, including long-time participant the Netherlands. However, the
Dutch song failed to win enough votes to go through from the semi-final to
the big night on Saturday 21 May. Some Dutch people are citing this as a
reason to vote 'No' to the EU constitution, for while such things happen in
a competition of any kind, they see this particular failure as a sign that
Europe is stacked against them and dominated by former communist nations. "

(From
http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/dutchaffairs/ned050527?view=Standar
d&version=1)

 France did very badly in the Song Contest, too. No country has a monopoly
on idiots, all countries have too many, they all have the vote. You can read
too much into some votes, I'm just saying.




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