May 30, 2005

VIEW FROM EUROPE: IT WASN'T JUST A VOTE ON CHIRAC

Transatlantic Intelligencer argues that the vote against the EU constitution by France was not merely an expression of anger at Chirac. It was also a repudiation of the utopian ideas of the Constitution's founding father, Joseph Fischer.
"...But if last night’s “no” vote is to be understood as a personal defeat for any high profile European politician, it is not so much, despite his conspicuous engagement in the campaign for the "yes", Jacques Chirac as that politician who originally coined the oxymoron “constitutional treaty” and thereby set his European partners down the path of trying to create a juridical monstrosity that would correspond to this novel and incoherent expression. Some five years, one “constitutional convention”, and tens of millions of euros of European taxpayer money later – the money being spent, among other things, in a massive campaign of propaganda aimed at convincing these same taxpayers that the monster was being created to respond to their own ambitions - it is the half-baked “federalist” ideas of one Dr. Joseph Fischer that yesterday took a major hit..."

See the rest here.