Doug Lorimer
By a 55% majority, French voters rejected the draft constitution for the 25-country European Union in a national referendum held on May 29. The decisive "No" vote occurred despite the "Yes" campaign having the support of all of France's mainstream parties, from President Jacques Chirac's centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) to the centre-left Greens.
The "No" vote in France could doom the 448-article constitution because it must be ratified by all 25 member-countries of the European Union for it to take effect.
"This is a critical moment in Europe's history", said Jean-Luc Dehaene, a former Belgian prime minister and one of the architects of the constitution, in a telephone interview with the May 30 New York Times. "It is clear that the French 'no' brings Europe to a kind of standstill" and a "period of complete uncertainty".
The NYT reported that it was France's farmers, unemployed, public-sector and blue-collar workers, as well as young people in general, who had voted "no" in the referendum, "largely over concerns about the economy".
"According to the Ipsos polling agency, 70% of farmers voted no, despite the fact that France is the largest recipient of European Union farm subsidies.
"Public and blue-collar workers and the unemployed, all low-pay groups vulnerable in a country with more than 10% unemployment, voted no by 60% to 79% ...
"Most surprisingly, 55% of people ages 18 to 25 rejected the treaty, underscoring what appeared to be a lack of trust in the future of Europe and the leadership of France."
The constitution was intended to replace the 1993 Maastricht treaty, which had brought the European Union into being. The constitution was ostensibly aimed at "streamlining" the EU's administrative apparatus. However, it also included clauses that would have codified as legally binding upon all of the EU's member-countries the reactionary neoliberal "free market" agenda being pursued by the capitalist rulers of these countries, such as the privatisation of public assets, reduction of welfare services and increased labour market competition to drive down workers' wages and boost corporate profits.
These clauses made it clear to a majority of French workers and farmers that the further level of European multinational "integration" sought by their rulers would benefit only the corporations and banks.
Indeed, the whole EU project is aimed at increasing the European capitalists' exploitation of the working people of Europe, in order to better compete with the US capitalists for domination of the world market.
In this competitive struggle, US corporations enjoy significant advantages — protected access to a much bigger national market and the support of a much more powerful government, which also has a much greater capacity to use the military to protect and promote US corporate interests around the world.
To counter this, the European capitalists have created a common market, a common economic policy, a common currency zone and a multinational central bank, and are striving to create a European-controlled integrated military force, capable of waging war in the Third World independently of the US-dominated NATO alliance.
The European Parliament and an EU constitution that enshrines some limited commitments to human rights are simply a democratic facade for this European imperialist project.
In an article published in the July 14, 2004 Junge Welt (which will be reprinted in the next issue of Links magazine), German socialist Winfried Wolf noted that European capitalist integration has been sought for more than half a century by the political representatives of the big German corporations.
Wolf cited the following statement in a September 1943 draft memorandum of Nazi Germany's foreign office: "Europe has become too small for feuding and restrictive sovereignties. The goal is a European customs union and a free European market, a strong regulation of currency exchanges and eventually a European currency union."
After the defeat in 1945 of the German capitalists' attempt to forcibly "integrate" Europe, they pursued this goal through diplomatic means, relying particularly on an alliance with the French capitalist rulers. This is why the failure of the French rulers on May 29 to deliver a popular mandate for the next step in the integration of capitalist Europe has led to media speculation that the entire project is imperilled.
Wolf pointed out that the political superstructure of capitalist European integration built up over the past 60 years rests on a very shaky economic foundation — "there are very few 'European' corporations and, apart from the arms and airline industry, no significant German-French corporations ...
"Among the 200 biggest corporations in the world, 76 are American, 40 are Japanese and 68 are situated in the European Union ... But these are not 'European' corporations: 22 of these are German, 17 are French, 11 are British, 6 are Dutch, 6 Italian, 3 Spanish, with one each from Sweden and Luxemburg ...
"Without a European Union that has genuine European corporations or is dominated by corporations based in a leading nation-state, the EU will always suffer from nation-state rivalries and, in times of crisis, could easily break up."
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
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