EU -- down but not out

In a seminar on the European Union in Jakarta last month, French Ambassador Renaud Vignal cautioned that a rejection by French voters of the European Constitution Treaty should not be construed as "the end of the world." A rejection, which is precisely what Sunday's referendum in France produced, would probably hold back the process of Europe integration, but it would not unravel the European Union and all the achievements it has made to date, the ambassador argued.

Still, the French rejection almost surely deals a fatal blow to the treaty itself because the consensus by European leaders when they penned their agreement in October last year was that the constitution would be sent back to the drawing board if any one single member failed to ratify it. Given this rule, other ratification processes, including Wednesday's referendum in the Netherlands, are nothing but an academic exercise.

That it should be France, of all the 25 members, which rejected the treaty first, was something that many did not foresee, at least not until late last year. As the largest member and the major founder along with Germany, France's participation in anything Europe had come to be taken for granted. At least, that is what leaders in Paris thought before Sunday.

Obviously, they could not have been more wrong.

Many analysts said the French "no" vote was not so much a rejection of the idea of a more unified Europe through this single constitution as a rejection of the government in Paris for forging ahead with the plan too soon when more mundane bread-and- butter issues still preoccupied the minds of many French people.

Some of them have even, rightly or wrongly, attributed the current high unemployment and soaring inflation in France to the 2002 switch to the euro. On this, many other Europeans, particularly the Germans, have the same sentiments. For wealthier European countries, the switch to the euro has been so painful that they bear resentment toward any plan to step up the European integration process at this stage.

In the wake of the French vote, few people have talked about the treaty and what a single constitution would mean for the European people. That question is simply irrelevant to most people in Europe today, in spite of the vigorous campaign by its supporters.

Sunday's rejection shows that President Jacques Chirac and his government are out of touch with their own people. It is just as well that Paris, along with nine other members, decided on holding popular consultations to find out what the people felt. The other 15 members have ratified, or would seek to ratify the treaty, through parliamentary process, which is a harder way to gauge public sentiment.

Obviously, Euro-skeptics and other detractors would try to make the most out of this victory. President Chirac meanwhile would have to prepare for the political fallout from this defeat. And as usual, the doomsayers would exaggerate the impact of the French vote.

But going by what the French ambassador said, the European Union is nowhere near crumbling.

As the European Union has come this far, it is unlikely that Sunday's vote would roll back all the hard work, and all the sacrifices, that their leaders and people have made in the past to bring about a more integrated, more unified and more peaceful Europe. No one was left in doubt, even after the French rejection on Sunday, that closer integration is the way forward for Europe.

It's nevertheless sad to see the Constitution Treaty, the result of years of hard work and painful negotiations, about to be shelved. But if the constitution is to be the principles governing relations for the people in Europe, and between Europe and the rest of the world, then its introduction must have the popular support of the people living within Europe.

The French "no" vote tells us that no matter how good and how desirable a single constitution is for Europe's future, its time has not yet come.