(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
If you vote no, you are not European, said President Chirac. If you vote no, you are hitting French influence in the EU, said a unison French yes side. If you vote no, you will hit the French economy – and yourself, the microphone stands said on radio and TV. If you vote no, Europe could end up in a new holocaust, said Margot Wallstöm – who had become vice president of the new European Commission responsible for convincing EU citizens in 25 countries that EU policy is both close and dear.
If you vote no, the EU is in crisis! It made little impression when too many voters were preoccupied with their own crisis – the social crisis of rising unemployment, increasingly insecure jobs, increasing pressure to provide more, work more hours, accept wage cuts.
The EU in nutshell
You have not voted against the constitution – you have voted against Chirac, against the government of Raffarin, against Turkey, against cheap workers from the east, against Muslim girls with headscarves. The error was, say well-paid intellectuals in the media, that the constitution was put to a referendum. Chirac did not realize it could be no. The National Assembly would vote yes.
And then we are at the nutshell – the nutshell of modern Europe – the understanding of democracy in the EU: It is to get a yes. Everything that ends with no is crisis, disaster, anti-European. The only thing that is democratic enough is a yes. Then those who have the sense to say yes, make the decision.
Dead silence when the parliaments decide
The draft EU constitution must be approved in all 25 EU countries, and the contrasts have never been greater. In some countries, the debate over the draft constitution is raging so fiercely that what exists of established power must put all its authority to ensure a yes – in others it is dead quiet. The only difference is that in some countries the voters have to decide – in other countries the parliamentarians. Debate will only take place where voters will have a say.
Never has representative democracy proven more unfit to raise fundamental issues for debate. This is the real crisis for European democracy: that there will be no debate when the parliaments will decide something to do with the EU.
Microphone stand Løchstøer
Hundreds of established pundits and microphone stands of the type Kathrine Løchstøer in NRK can sadly explain to us that the voters do not understand what it is all about. Voters do not understand that it is the constitution they must discuss – not all possible external issues such as unemployment, slaughter and flagging out of jobs, competition from undeclared workers and low-wage workers that break down the standards of working life.
But have voters really not understood what this is all about? They suspect that the EU is about work, income, security. That the EU has an impact on how they live, work and live.
When voters are right
French voters have realized that they are at the mercy of a societal development that can hit them abruptly and brutally, a development they do not have an overview of or the opportunity to influence. They suspect that the EU may have something to do with this. And they curse that what the prime ministers and Brussels politicians want them to do is not their project.
And they are actually right. When was there a broad democratic debate on the construction of the EU?
Where was there a real debate about the principles of the internal market – other than in little Denmark where there was to be a referendum and where the Social Democrats and the Socialist People's Party stood arm in arm on the no side?
Apathy around the EU
With each election to the European Parliament, turnout decreases. The more that is decided in Brussels, the longer the distance will be between those who govern and those who are governed. Prime ministers and lead writers are constantly stating that there is now a crisis between EU citizens and EU politicians. Now the citizens of the EU must be told that remote control is well intended, and why it is for everyone's benefit. This is when the information effort is multiplied, it is when schoolchildren get to compete on who writes most constructively about European understanding, it is when Margot Wallström changes job from being an environmental activist in the EU Commission to becoming vice president with responsibility for the EU being something to appreciate.
Then the voters get involved
Så get Brussels debate. So becomes in fact, many voters engaged. Yes, upset. Then governments and Brussels bureaucrats can have the debate about the EU, about the future of the EU, about the basis for EU development. Then the voters are told that they do not understand a thing. They do not understand that the EU can be hit to death, that Europe is in danger.
Then it is President Chirac with dramatic facts and art breaks telling that he respects every view, but if you vote no, "you are not European". What are you then? Asian?
That is when Margot Wallström chooses the argument that stops any constructive exchange of opinions: If you vote no, Europe can be driven towards a new Holocaust.
Bitterness in Germany
The outbreaks of social resentment over development are as strong in Germany as in France. But in Germany, it does not trigger an EU debate. There will be no debate as to whether there is any connection between developments in working life and the relentless competition that the EU has unleashed in industry after industry for almost twenty years.
But it was in France that radical forces in politics and the trade union movement – with good support in the strong circles around Attac – developed an EU critique that linked the draft constitution directly to the rising unemployment and growing social disparities in French society. It would not have happened there if there had not been a referendum.
A debate on the EU
The debate on the Constitution suddenly became a debate on the EU and EU development. The yes side would limit the debate to a debate on an illegible printed matter of 350 pages. The no-side would debate actual societal problems. It was no wonder that yes-side came on the defensive side.
The core argument of the radical no-side was that behind unemployment, the growing differences and the new insecurity in working life lay the ever freer competition in the borderless internal market. This competition has always been a treaty in the EU – so in that sense, the draft constitution did not mean anything new. The only difference was that now so many had experienced in body – and soul – what happens when the markets become as borderless as they should be in the EU.
It was an EU debate as we know it from 1994 in Norway. A debate on the internal market part of the EU – what for us is the EEA.
