WorldView Paul GillespieThe German Greens, it seems, are the most concerned about the fate of the European constitution with the French electorate on May 29th. According to German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, the French decision "is very important. It is not an internal political question. The future of Europe depends on this decision".
He is quite right. And he is entitled to sound the alarm as the author of the speech that initiated the political debate on the constitution five years ago in Berlin. So far, however, the failure of his fellow politicians around the EU to act together in securing its ratification exposes the huge gap between the creation of such a transnational political space and their willingness or ability to grow into it.
Thirteen opinion polls have shown a majority against the treaty in France, despite the support it has from major parties. As a result of this political reluctance or tardiness to act, ratification referendums become predominantly internal questions preoccupied with domestic politics, in which the No side can set the early agenda.
Paradoxically, those who most resist transnational politics on the grounds that these are internal decisions also exclude the European issue from their general election campaigns. It is the dog that does not bark in the British party manifestos launched this week (although it is addressed in them), having been parked into next year's referendum there.
As a result the subject does not get the airing it needs and deserves before the British electorate. Promotion of a greater British engagement in Europe is arguably Tony Blair's greatest failure, compared to his periodic rhetoric in its favour. Now that he has lost so much trust, he has compensated by campaigning with Gordon Brown, whose own Euroscepticism remains artfully concealed in the five British conditions for joining the euro. The Conservatives have realised that the issue backfires on them by exposing splits in their ranks. Effectively, therefore, the British political class is happy to let the French electorate do the dirty work.
And in the newly Eurosceptic Netherlands a poll this week reveals, pathetically, that 11 per cent of voters intend to vote in favour of the constitution in their referendum four days after the French one, eight against, while 67 per cent will abstain and 14 don't know. The Dutch political parties there have not yet begun their campaign, while the No camp has already defined the issues as being about government policies, European bureaucracy, Turkey's accession, immigration and euro-induced price rises. Parliament called the referendum, so the government is restricted to an information campaign and it will be up to political parties and NGOs to avail of campaign subsidies from an independent referendum commission.
Debating the constitution in Strasbourg this week with a range of French politicians, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, chairman of the European Greens, said it would allow the creation of a political Europe and a common defence. If the treaty is rejected, he said, Bush will say thank you.
Both of these elements, he said, were rejected in 1954 when the French National Assembly voted against the European Defence Community, in which German units would be integrated into a European army and overseen by a political council. A combination of Gaullist and communist sovereigntism carried that vote, clearing the way for negotiation of the functional European Economic Community launched three years later.
This was the most that was politically possible in the immediate post-war years. It was a sore disappointment to federalists at the time. Functionalists believed a gradual build-up of trust through economic integration and limited pooling of sovereignty would in due course spill over into a more political commitment by elites and electorates alike. Political activists coined the term finalité politique to capture this eventual ambition. Researchers described the relatively indifferent attitude of mass publics towards the project as a "permissive consensus" tolerating it so long as there were effective policies and results.
It has taken 50 years of incremental policy development, institutional consolidation and continental enlargement to reach the point where a scheme with similar ambition faces such an important decision in France. These developments have penetrated the domestic political space of all the member states. Membership matters and makes a real difference. Europeanisation of competences and decision-making has transformed national sovereignties. It has also transformed political identification of mass publics by politicising hitherto taken-for-granted issues and the leeway extended to elites. So much so that researchers now refer to a "constraining dissensus" at work through successive referendums concerning deeper integration. They provide an opportunity for populists, nationalists and those concerned about the effect of European integration on the erosion of democracy, to register their opposition.
Fischer and Cohn-Bendit are avowed federalists; but they do not describe the constitution as a federal document and nor is it. It lacks the fiscal capacity, political hierarchy, and core competences in crucial areas such as health, welfare, education, taxation and defence available to federal systems properly so-called the world over. This is notwithstanding the state-like trappings involved - constitution, foreign minister, president, anthem, parliament - which complement rather than displace national ones.
Although federalist institutions are built into the constitution, the structure as a whole is as much inter-governmental or confederal as federal. It is, in fact, a hybrid, difficult to categorise with existing terminology and political experience - not least because it is a transnational, multilevel polity.
The EU's political character and functions are strongly contested these days, not only between the member states in negotiations on this treaty, but within them between different political currents and, especially where referendums are held, between consensual elites and well-organised opponents of deeper integration.
This is welcome. But if those supporting the constitution fail to fight for it, they will have only themselves to blame if it fails. A failure in France or the Netherlands would be a huge blow to the project of deeper integration for years to come.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie