Five years ago today, I had a chicken korma for dinner. I know this not because of quality of the curry (it was, as I recall, not bad) but because about half way through the meal I got a text message from a friend. This announced that the French had just voted “non” to the EU constitution. I had been working on the possibility of a British referendum on the constitution. This suddenly seemed rather irrelevant.
That French “non” arguably started a period of political drift in Europe that, in spite the protracted passage of the Lisbon Treaty, has never really ended. If you start talking about major reforms to the EU, it’s not long before someone says “but that will mean referendums!” And everyone knows that referendums mean trouble – not only because of the French experience but also because of the Dutch “nee” to the constitution that followed a few days later, and Ireland’s vote against Lisbon in 2008.
With the EU struggling to save the Euro – and almost every pundit in existence talking about the power-shift away from Europe – it’s tempting to look back and ask if things might be better if the French had said “oui” in May 2005. There’s an alternative universe in which the constitution came into force in 2006 or 2007, the new EU structures were tried and tested before the financial crisis struck and, as a result, European leaders still treat the Union as a stirring political project.
But, before you shed a tear for this EU that never was, it’s worth recognizing that there’s another alternative EU universe out there in which a French “oui” led to an even worse crisis than we have today. I explain how this could have happened in a short essay to mark the anniversary of the French vote:
A French Oui and Dutch Ja would not have marked the end of debates about the constitution. Instead, they would have signaled the start of a vicious referendum campaign in Britain that could have altered EU politics permanently.
Other countries also still had to vote on the constitution. The outcome looked very dicey in Denmark and the Czech Republic. But the political calculus was clear. If some smaller member states voted No while Britain said Yes, the constitution would get through in the end. If Britain voted No, a much more radical solution might be necessary.
Having spent much of 2004 and early 2005 chewing over polling data on British attitudes to the constitution, I am pretty sure it was on course to be rejected. The pro-constitution lobby included some awfully nice people – but they were just too nice to win. Some expected then Prime Minister Tony Blair to revitalise the campaign, but his grip on the country was waning.
If the then prime minister could not inspire the British to embrace the constitution, some politicians in France and Germany thought they could terrify them into doing so. By spring 2005, there was muttering about an “exit strategy” or, rather more credibly, a “Norwegian option” (leaving the EU but remaining in the European Economic Area) for Britain. This would have got a lot louder before a referendum.
Had Britain ended up teetering on the edge of a No vote in the spring or summer of 2006 – the likely poll dates – it would have been treated rather as Greece has been this year. It is easy to imagine a lot of talk about how German (or French, or Dutch) voters could not be expected to allow one trouble-making country to thwart their political dreams.
There would have been other strident voices in the mix. The Bush administration, yet to plunge into the grim torpor of its final years, might well have intervened vocally on behalf of its British allies. Warnings from Washington about Britain’s essential role in EU-US relations would have been counter-productive, reopening the wounds of Iraq and pushing France and Germany to form a united front as defenders of the constitution.
If Britain eventually rejected the constitution, it is unlikely that Tony Blair could have stayed in office, leaving Gordon Brown to take the reins of an exhausted Labour Party. Brown might have had to call an early election – with the Tories the guaranteed winners.
It would have been a sour victory. With Britain’s European status in doubt, the pound would have plummeted while City bankers looked for nice places to live near Frankfurt.
I can hear a few Euro-federalists muttering (if there are a few left) that what I’m describing here is not a crisis for Europe, just a crisis for Britain. And there definitely was and is a camp of people in Brussels who feel that the EU can only achieve its potential by sidelining the Brits – and lots of Brits would be happy to be sidelined. But the sort of fight I’m imaging here would have had unpredictable side-effects.
If, for example, France and Germany had shoved Britain out of the EU, a lot of other reasonably pro-British governments (I’m thinking of Denmark, Poland, etc.) would have been left deeply unhappy. I can imagine headlines about France imposing a “Diplomatic Terror” on the rest of the Union, with Jacques Chirac as a latter-day Robespierre. Cooperation on issues like the Balkans and Iran would have suffered.
It might not have been that nasty. Charles Grant of the Center for European Reform published a widely-read paper in March 2005 looking at ways to navigate out of the crisis that would follow a British “no”. Perhaps a “soft landing” could have been devised. But, given the sort of diplomatic hysteria we’ve witnessed over the Euro crisis, I wonder if the voices of reason would have triumphed over Britain.
On balance, I think that the French voters may have saved the EU from some very unpleasant blood-letting with that “non” back in 2005. I certainly wasn’t betting that the future would be bright for British EU analysts like me. The day after that vote, and that korma, I moved to the United States.
