Europe: Is the dream falling apart?

[CHIMO]

There is understandable gloom and foreboding this weekend over the future of the European project. If France and the Netherlands vote “No” to the new constitution, it will likely start a rejectionist domino effect that will knock on through Denmark, Ireland and Poland. Europe could be flattened for a generation.

Then again, perhaps this could be the moment when Europe finally comes to its senses. The French “non” will be a crisis, certainly, but a crisis is also a turning point. Few will mourn the loss of this less than inspiring document. It could be an opportunity for Europe to regain some of its idealism and purpose; a chance to remind itself that the EU is about more than agricultural support quotas.

If as expected France rejects the new constitution today it will be, first and foremost, a rejection of a complacent and unimaginative political establishment. Referendums are always votes of confidence in the government of the day, no matter what it says on the ballot paper. It will be a vote of no confidence in the French President Jacques Chirac and in his loathed Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

It would be similarly stupid to write off the European Union just because of a duff constitution. Perhaps this is the crisis that gets Europe going again; the wake-up call that forces the people of this unique social formation to look into the void and ask itself whether it really wants to give up this extraordinary project. The truth is that the world still needs Europe, and Europe still needs the world. It is too early for this adventure to end.

http://www.sundayherald.com/50032

Quite a good article. Covers many topics.

[applegrove]

1. I look forward to reading this. There is much trouble in the EU. For

instance because of common monetary policy - the Germans have no power to lower their dollar and help the unemployment problem there. They see to take such things with a grain of salt. And too - all the direct competition with the newly capitalist countries joining in.

It is a huge undertaking. They are very brave to have gone as far as they have.

Thanks for posting.