Non Polish Plumbers

How could anyone be against a constitution with 448 glorious articles that contain a jumble of pieties, giving canonical status to sentiments such as "the physical and moral integrity of sportsmen and sportswomen." It establishes, among many other rights, a right to "social and housing assistance" sufficient for a "decent existence" as well as the right of children to "express their views fully."

Yet, on May 28, the country that has been the driving force behind European integration since 1957 rejected this marvelous document. Yes, the French people said a loud non to a constitution authored by former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and poli-elitists from the other Old Europe countries. The opposition included a broad coalition of "sovereignist" right-wingers who refused to relinquish French authority to an unelected elite class and disgruntled leftists who feared the competition of Eastern Europeans who are happy to work harder for lower wages. In France the socialist cry was Non to the Polish plumbers!

The people of Old Europe are generally unhappy about their economic decline since the early 1990s — especially in Germany, Italy, Netherlands and France. In continental Europe unemployment has been stuck between 8 and 11 per cent since 1991 and GDP growth has reached 3 per cent only once in those 14 years.

But there is also a visceral unease among the people that the “European project” has gone too far and that political elites have overreached themselves, losing touch with the ordinary people. Their resentment about the loss of national political control to the unaccountable “Eurocrats” of Brussels has finally boiled over.

So, a couple of days before the French vote, Jean-Claude Juncker from Luxembourg, the "president" of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion: "If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again."
How do you say elite in French, or Dutch?

One interesting aspect of the referendum is the extent to which France's electoral map resembles that of the U.S.--a sea of red (ie NO) with a few urban islands of blue, like Paris and Lyon, which would seem to correspond reasonably well to American "liberalism." The remarkable map is available on the 5/29 post at Powerline blog.

The French voters had their own objections but to my mind the EU constitution’s defeat is a triumph for Anglo-Saxon liberal economics and a fatal blow to the European social model. More on that apparent contradiction in the next post.