referendum

Look from outside. Just try to imagine any other historical moment of humanity in which a bunch of nations, or whatever other human aggregation you can think of, has come together without the external enemy. Or without a dictator or personal leader consolidating his grip on power. Look from outside, I said, look from history to Europe, and realize once more that this continent is writing history. Or it was writing history.

Electorates are always moronic, one could claim. In democracy, the claim as been made as well that people gets the government -or the rules- than they deserve. Let’s make the stretch to Europe today, and the French and the Dutch people rejecting the projected constitution of Europe. Weren’t europeans extremely idiotic the past few weeks? Did europeans actually reject a well-earned place in history... rejecting a step in the building of a larger and better space for their descendents? Certainly, the rejection of the projected european constitution signals a stop in the business of building Europe, at least in the business as usual scenario. The question is what will be now the business of building europa?

For the ones of us interested in european politics, the term “salami strategy” is well known. Nobody buys a big salami, but everybody like few slices at a time. And before we get to know, we all are consumers of the same big salami. Unaware consumers, that is. So politics in Brussels has been, for years without end, and ongoing selling of slices, little pieces of legislation that were not even voted, but just passed to the people in sneaky ways. The fun of all this is that it worked out. The European voter has been hardly consulted about the way that Europe evolves. And nevertheless, Europe has evolved substantially in the last decades, with people more or less happy about it. This happiness of sorts is what might have inclined the politicians in Brussels to change their strategy. No more slices, they thought. And we found ourselves trying to read a constitution of hundred pages. And we wake up past thursday to realize that not only the french, but also the dutch public rejected, once more, to buy the big salami.

There are many analyzes done about what went wrong this time. One could talk about bad electoral campaigns; lack of readable explanations of what the constitution was about, provincialisms, globalization, fear of loosing national identity and more. Probably each analyze grasps a piece of reality. But ultimately it does not matter very much what went wrong. Because one thing that for sure the now rejected constitution would have brought, was the opening of many of the sealed rooms in which European policy is agreed. The constitution could have meant the end of the ongoing slicing of pieces of European legislation. No more sneaky discussions, since the citizens of Europe could have know which minister cut which piece of which salami, or European law. Not now, without our rejected constitution.

The lesson that we citizens of Europe have given to our politicians is that we are not yet ready to approve what they are doing. The sad part is that we are neither ready to change the way European policy is made. So the business of building Europe will go on as usual, cutting slices in closed rooms. It is clear to me that a long time will pass until another politician in Brussels will want to open his (or her) dealings to public consult. So we are back at the normal ways in which politics are done, unknowingly to the citizens.

A pity.