Alors Delors
In the run up to the French plebiscite on the proposed European Constitution, former European Commission president, Jacques Delors warned of a 'cataclysm' should the French electorate fail to do their duty, and ratify the constitution. This was only one amongst many apocalyptic contributions from the europhile elite. Such contributions varied from dragging out and dusting down various skeletons from the European closet - to remind us of the barbaric nature of Europe prior to integration, to prophesying impending calamity should the federalist project not be allowed to proceed unchecked by the great unwashed. A prime example of such hysteria is the statement made by Sweden's EU Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, on visiting the Terezin concentration camp in the Czech Republic that "... there are those today who want to scrap the supranational idea. They want the European Union to go back to the old purely inter-governmental way of doing things. I say those people should come to Terezin and see where that road leads." This is a shameless and disgraceful exploitation of one of the more disturbing episodes in European history, a cheap scare tactic to force through an ill thought-out constitution. It is worth noting that this gaffe was removed from the official version of the speech published on the Commission website. Wallstrom claims she was misquoted, but the printed text her staff handed out to reporters contained the section quoted above. In an interview with the newspaper NRC Handelsblad, Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende closed with the remark: "I've been in Auschwitz and Yad Vashem. The images haunt me every day. It is supremely important for us to avoid such things in Europe. We really ought to think about that more." This is yet another example of hysterical scaremongering and is a cynical exploitation of the horrors of the past. Not all politicians stooped to such new lows. Others, such as French President Jacques Chirac, took upon themselves the mantle of arbiters of what is or is not 'European'. In a television interview prior to the plebiscite, Chirac opined... "You can't say, 'I'm a European and I'm voting No". I hate to break this news to you, Monsieur Chirac, but it is possible to be both pro-Europe and against the badly designed and executed legal instrument that you call a constitution. Indeed it is the duty of every "good European" to thoroughly examine, question and possibly even reject any such document put before them. What was notable in the pro-ratification campaigns in both countries was the almost complete absence of any discussion on the text of the constitution itself. Maybe this is because even the architects of this wandering 482 page tome are unable to plumb the depths of its vague and confusing structure and language. Maybe it is because it is not really a constitution, but merely an international treaty, and moreso, a treaty with serious consequences for that significant part of the populace of the European Union that can not consider themselves what is laughably termed as 'the elite'.
Non? Pourquoi?
As with the Dutch referendum, held a few days after the French gave their thumbs down, the reasons behind the French rejection of the constitution are many and varied.
The primary motivation for the rejection of the constitution has been to defend their excellent public services from the onslaught of market liberalisation proposed in the constitution. The French medical system is considered one of the best in the world, and the French have little desire to see that system become like their equivalents in the UK or Ireland, which are, as a result of monetarist policies, a shadow of their former selves. They have no desire to subject their transport infrastructure to the sort of lax standards that resulted in a rash of accidents on the British rail network after privatisation. The principle of providing all citizens with equal access to essential services as medicine, transport and communication is fundamental to the French outlook. One of the reasons why this system works so well is that these social services draw from a broad base of funding and are implemented in a way such that most profitable operations will subsidise less profitable operations, such as the delivery of services in remote areas with a small, widely scattered population.
In order to achieve these noble goals, government regulation is a prerequisite. When such services are opened up to private operation and financing it inevitably means that the more profitable parts of the infrastructure will end up in the hands of private businesses and the parts that fail to make a profit and those that make a net loss are left in the hands of the state, funded by the taxpayer. Because the counterbalancing effect of profitable services funding the less profitable is removed, the burden on the taxpayer increases and the the end result is that the loss-making services are drastically reduced or even shut down irrespective of whether they are needed or not. Public service is not and never can be the modus operandi of private companies, as they exist to make a profit, and to deliver that profit to their shareholders in the form of ever-increasing dividends. The French are correct in their desire to defend their public services, and to draw attention to the alternative reasons for the existence of services other than the profit-making motive.
Next, and almost as important, there is the fear of the 'Polish Plumber', considered a straw man argument by some, but as ever, there is, as the cliché says, no smoke without fire. As I write, a group of Polish workers in Dublin are battling with their company in order to be paid the same as Irish workers on the Dublin Port Tunnel project. In a similar case, a Turkish company, Gamma Construction, has been found to be importing workers, controlling their passports and work permits and giving them no choice to accept accommodation in company 'barracks', accommodation for which they are forced to pay. This company has been paying unskilled construction workers between €2 and €3 per hour, with basic pay for skilled workers being put a somewhere just over €3 an hour. These rates of pay are less than half of the accepted minimum wage for Ireland. Granted, Turkey is not a member of the EU, but the principle remains the same.
Where indigenous workers are being forced out of the labour market by imported workers who are working for a pittance, then the 'Polish Plumber' will become an increasingly potent symbol of all that is wrong with unfettered globalisation and EU expansion, and a clear rejection of the mentality of those who can't wait to usher in a new golden era of globalised misery in order that they can profit from it. Those who urged voters to remember the atrocities committed during Nazi Germany before they voted 'no' might do well to be a little broader in their recollection of history, and recall the past consequences for countries like France, Italy and Germany of allowing unemployment to rise unchecked.
The cause of the 'yes' lobby was not helped by the appearance, not long after the start of the campaign, of the Draft Directive on liberalisation of services, otherwise known as the "Bolkestein Directive" after the name of its author, Frits Bolkestein, a right-wing Dutch politician and former boss of Shell Oil. The draft legislation, which soon became known as "The Frankenstein Directive" hinges around the principle that services sold to other countries would be subject to the rules and norms of their country of origin. In effect, this would mean that companies in France, Ireland or any other Western European nation, could purchase services from lower-cost economies in Eastern Europe, complete with the lower wages and variable standards of their country of origin. This proposal had the effect of (perhaps unwittingly) clarifying the intentions of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution are when it refers to "an internal market where competition is free and undistorted". Of course, in this case, "undistorted" means free from interference by nation states in order to maintain or improve social equality and justice, but it does not mean free from corruption, political clientelism and fraud.
The proposed constitution is not, in fact, a constitution. It lacks the singularity of purpose and clarity of vision traditionally expected from such documents. It does not limit itself to enshrining rights and responsibilities of the citizen and the government, but instead goes on to rigidly define the economic principles under which the Union is expected to operate. In addition to being a long, wandering and impenetrable document weighed down with a plethora of additional annexes and protocols and lacking, relatively speaking, the brevity and clarity of established constitutional instruments, it also falls far short of the mark when compared with many European constitutions and even with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many rights that are the cornerstone of these documents, and that have been enjoyed by Europeans to a greater or lesser extent, are simply washed away by the neo-conservative nature of the proposed constitution.
The proposed unlimited time period to which the constitution applies. Add to this the fact that, once ratified, it can only be altered by a unanimous decision of all member states. This is a major cause for concern, not only because it is fundamentally undemocratic in the requirement for unanimity, but it is also removes the power to change the constitution from the place it really belongs... in the hands of the people of Europe. If anything has the potential to ferment the future fracturing of Europe it is this unabashed departure from the principle of representative democracy.
The disproportionate nature of the emphasis on security and the development of Europe as a military power. To date, the people of Europe have failed to cower in fear when bombarded with the doom-laden prophesies of fear-mongering politicians. Even those who have been subjected to terrorist action appear to be inoculated against the constant babbling of those who use fear as a means of shoring up political control. However, unlike other fiscal areas addressed in the constitution, military spending is exempted from the proposed regime of austerity and indeed will see a significant increase should the proposal go ahead.
Europe at the crossroads
Much of the political commentary in the wake of the two plebiscites makes the claim that the populace of the two countries in question is out of touch with the 'real world' and specifically, the 'real world' of competition from China and India. The 'Freeman' column in the Irish Independent of Thursday, June 2nd claims in its headline that "You can't vote away the modern world". It may not be possible to vote away the modern world, but when the modern world does not reflect the needs and aspirations of the people who live in it, it is the duty of those people to try to change it and not just to accept it as a given just because a gaggle of business, economics and political commentators declare it to be the one true way. Such cheerleaders for the globalisation cause cite the longer working hours, lower remuneration and poorer working conditions of these countries as something that poses a significant threat to the economic powerhouse of Europe. I will not disagree that these countries pose a threat, but should Europe be responding to this threat by subjecting our workers to the sort of slave-labour conditions commonplace in the so-called 'special economic zones' in China or do we want to adopt the less than ideal working conditions that apply to workers in India? We may lag behind these two countries in terms of productivity and the cost of the workforce, but we are streets ahead in terms of the quality of our output and that of our workforce. Europe has a choice. In economic and social policy, it can adopt the lowest common denominator, law-of-the-jungle approach of certain nations, and in doing so be ipso facto lead by those countries. Alternatively, it can be a beacon of sanity in a world of profit über alles, championing quality over quantity and espousing a proper reward for labour against the low-wage at all costs mentality of the Thatcherite hordes. In military and foreign policy, Europe could be a model for a different way of doing things instead of being content to ride on the coat-tails of Uncle Sam. Europe is at the crossroads. Before it, one of the roads leads to unfettered market liberalisation and all of the social ills that attend it. Further down that same road are makings of a tyrannical totalitarian regime, designed to maintain the status quo instituted by the constitution, a status quo in which very few benefit greatly from the labours of the many. Down the other road lies a Europe dedicated to human rights and dignity, to a modus vivendi in which everything is not reduced to being a mere commodity that can be bought or sold, to a Europe where the heros of business are those who champion innovation and excellence instead of the current trend towards cost-cutting, penny-pinching and compromises in quality.
