The constitution that never was still haunts Europe 20 years on – The Economist – 05.06.25
- Michael Julien
- Jun 9
- 4 min read
Europe is famed for its zippy German cars, French high-speed trains and sleek Italian motorboats. But for decades the contraption most often favoured to describe the workings of the European Union was the humble bicycle. Federalists painted the EU as an inherently unstable machine whose only chance to avoid a crash was to keep moving forward. The self-serving analogy justified furious pedalling by those who dreamed of “ever-closer union” lest the whole thing keel over.
By the early 2000s the argument that more integration was always better had made its way. What had once been a modest pact between six countries to regulate coal and steel production had morphed into a political union of 25 (later up to 28), with a shared currency, no internal borders and the rights for citizens from Lisbon to Lapland to settle down where they saw fit. Who could tell where a few more decades of such freewheeling towards continental convergence would lead?
In an anniversary precisely nobody in Brussels is marking, the theory of more-integration-or-bust got a nasty puncture 20 years ago this month. A “constitutional treaty” dreamt up as the next big step in EU integration was voted down by French voters on May 29th 2005, by a 55-45% margin. On June 1st Dutch voters rejected it by an even wider one. Those convinced the EU had only one gear—en avant, toute!—fretted that the defeat might result in gradual disintegration; war pitting Europeans against their fellow Europeans would be only a matter of time. That was always hyperbole; it also proved to be entirely wrong. After 2005 the EU shelved its grandiose plans for a more technocratic life—and has never been more popular with citizens as a result. Bitter as it seemed at the time, defeat at the polls set the union on a better track.
These days the idea of a constitution is remembered as a curio of European history. The EU and its forebears had, since its inception in 1957, been ruled by intergovernmental treaties, in legal terms a souped-up regional version of the UN. By the early 2000s a new text was undoubtedly needed to streamline the club’s workings after a period of rapid expansion. Enlargement with ten new countries in 2004, most of them in central Europe, threatened to gum up the machine’s gears if not revised (a lot of business that had required EU national governments to agree unanimously was to be replaced by qualified-majority votes). But the second purpose, just as important to some, was to endow the EU with the regalia of a nation state—hence the constitution bit.
The document had been crafted by a “convention” chaired by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, haughty even by the standards of former French presidents. The parallels with the birth of America were intentional. The preamble of the Euro-constitution invoked the “will of the citizens” as a justification for these new arrangements between them (never mind that the citizens knew little about this supposed will of theirs). Symbols meant to foster citizenly love for the EU oozed from the text. It already had a directly elected parliament; now the union was to have its own official flag, anthem, foreign minister and even a dedicated holiday.
For all the symbolism it contained, the constitution was no federalist power-grab. Despite being denounced as a “blueprint for tyranny” by Britain’s Daily Mail, a fount of Euro-outrage, the text disappointed those who wanted the EU to have its own taxation powers, for example. (The Economist felt the text was confusing and recommended filing it in the nearest rubbish bin.) The French non and Dutch nee were not enough to send the machine entirely off course.
By 2009 much of the 450 pages of the constitution—brevity was not one of Giscard’s strong points—had been recycled into the Lisbon treaty, which shoehorned most of its provisions into a whopper amendment of two EU treaties already in force. The union did deepen somewhat as a result, for example giving its parliament a bit more power. But anything that smacked of symbolism was left on the cutting-room floor. The post of foreign minister was replaced with the odd-sounding “High Representative/Vice-President” for foreign affairs.
Worse, the failed constitutional gambit allowed a new brand of Euroscepticism to take root. The urban and upper classes had backed the EU in the French and Dutch referendums. Rural and working-class types had not. Populists decried the adoption of most of the constitution’s clauses by the back door; Marine Le Pen in France dubbed it “the worst betrayal since the second world war”. Brussels has never shaken off the idea that it is a project of the elites. We the People are not keen on this sort of thing.
Voters in Ireland and Denmark had previously rejected EU treaties—before being made to vote again. Having two of its six founding members reject the constitution was a different matter. The votes “brought the process of European integration to an abrupt and durable halt”, says Jean-Claude Piris, who served for decades as the EU’s top lawyer and helped draft the treaties. It made the prospect of future treaties too daunting to even contemplate. The EU retreated into intergovernmental technocracy, where it remains to this day.
This is dispiriting to some. It need not be. Yes, the EU is still a distant beast to citizens. Over a third of Europeans admit they have little idea how it actually works. But that has not stopped the union from being effective: 74% of Europeans think it serves their own country well, a record high. The EU has even integrated more, on necessary occasions, such as when governments in 2020 agreed to jointly issued bonds to fund a post-pandemic recovery stimulus. A union of states, with independent institutions on hand to push common interests forward in areas where Europe needs to act as one, turns out to be a fine idea. It had never needed to be more than that. ■
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