OFF THE CHARTS:

A journey without maps: If France rejects an EU constitution that is a triumph of horse trading, Europe moves into uncharted territory (Ian Black, May 26, 2005, Guardian Unlimited)

It is all too easy to forget, as Europe braces itself for an unprecedented crisis if France does vote "non" to the EU constitutional treaty this weekend, how much relief and excitement, even delight, there was when the document was approved last June.

Exhausted leaders staggered out of their Brussels summit to quaff champagne and toast their achievement of agreeing a new rule book for an expanded union of 25 member states and 450 million people. It was supposed to define Europe's ambitions for a generation.

Finalising the 448-article text had been a very hard grind. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, had failed the previous December, largely because Jacques Chirac of France was not ready to sign, and it took six more gruelling months for Bertie Ahern, the Irish taoiseach and next holder of the union's rotating presidency, to oversee the horse trading and arm-twisting needed to finesse the deal.

Even before the ink was dry, it was clear from the record low turnout in the European elections that the toughest part - unanimous ratification by all countries - lay ahead. No one would have won any prizes for predicting serious problems with semidetached Britain or sceptical Denmark, where Brussels-bashing is a national hobby.

But it was difficult to imagine then that the biggest hurdles would be posed by stalwart founder members of the club such as France and the Netherlands. (Opinion polls suggest the Dutch are almost certain to say "nee" in their referendum on June 1.)

The idea for the constitution was born in 2001 of a desire to give the EU - then poised to expand from 15 to 25 members - a clear, comprehensible and transparent set of rules, more efficient institutions and a sense of values and its place in the world. Germany, its postwar transformation anchored in Europe, was the driving force. [...]

If France does vote "non" on Sunday, then Europe moves into uncharted territory amid chances that the whole constitutional exercise will come to nothing.

The uncharted waters come if they remain sovereign nation states rather than place themselves under a Franco-Prussian bureaucracy?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 26, 2005 5:34 PM