The French electorate has a habit of shaking Europe’s political establishment. Thirteen years ago uncertainty about the outcome of a French referendum on the Maastricht treaty helped unleash a wave of speculation that forced the devaluation of the British pound, the Italian lira and the Spanish peseta. Ultimately, the “yes” camp won a narrow victory, giving the treaty -- and Europe’s single-currency project -- enough legitimacy to survive, even if few believed so at the time.
The latest exercise in French popular democracy has sent similar shock waves. The vote against the proposed European Union constitution was a decisive 55 percent -- a virtual landslide, considering that most of the country’s political and cultural establishment had campaigned for the charter’s approval. The French referendum, combined with an even stronger rejection by Dutch voters a few days later, effectively consigns the constitution to the waste bin.
The EU can survive well enough without that complex and contentious document. Indeed, it would be better to address the governance problems of a union of 25 countries by focusing on limited reforms of voting procedures rather than a grand political project. The broader impact of the referendum will be harder to resolve, however. French voters didn’t just reject the constitution. Many voted to rebuke an arrogant and out-of-touch President Jacques Chirac, who called the referendum and then told citizens that the only responsible vote was a “yes.” Others were protesting liberal capitalism, which they believed the constitution enshrined, as a threat to French jobs. Still others, frustrated by France’s reduced influence in Europe, sought to draw the line against enlarging the EU further to take in Turkey.
EU leaders need to respond to those messages not by pandering to fear, as Chirac did in vowing to resist Anglo-Saxon capitalism, but by inspiring hope with a positive vision of an open and dynamic Europe. As with Maastricht, they have a ready-made agenda at hand: the Lisbon program of labor market deregulation and other reforms. Agreed upon five years ago but never really implemented, the Lisbon program would help free EU economies to generate growth and jobs. What is needed now is the leadership to sell that vision -- and the conviction that the union’s new members represent an opportunity, not a threat. Such a response would work wonders for Europe’s economy. That’s a message voters should understand.
