dissolve the people

"Wouldn't it be easier to dissolve the people and elect another in their place?"
Bertolt Brecht

"There will be no other expressions of popular prejudice to distract or to get in the way.”
An EU negotiator on the advantages of conducting negotiations in secret

In summer 2005, the proposed European Constitution was decisively rejected by the voters of France and Holland. In theory this should spell the end of the project, since by the EU's own rules all 27 member states must ratify the Constitution before it can come into force, and it has now been rejected by two of the six founder members of the EU – also, incidentally, two out of the only four countries that were allowed a referendum on the matter.

Let us now look at how the politicians of Europe are planning to respect the will of the people:

"The substance of the Constitution is preserved. That is a fact."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel

"Thankfully they haven't changed the substance – 90 per cent of it is still there."
Bertie Ahern, Ireland's Taoiseach. Referring to the High Representative for Europe, which replaced the controversial post of EU Foreign Minister that the original Constitution would have created, Ahern went on to say: "It's the original job, but they just put on this long title."

"Substantially equivalent."
The verdict of the all-party Commons European Scrutiny Committee on the two documents

"All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but they will be hidden and disguised in some way... [We can get Europeans] to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly."
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President of the Constitutional Convention, the body which drew up the proposed Constitution

"What you cannot do is have a situation where you get a rejection of the treaty and bring it back with a few amendments and say, 'Have another go.' You cannot do that."
Tony Blair, who despite this sentiment hung on in office until June 2007 with the sole purpose of ratifying son-of-Constitution on Britain's behalf before he went

"If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'."
Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, speaking before the results were known

"They must go on voting until they get it right."
Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission

"Let's be clear about this. The rejection of the constitution was a mistake that will have to be corrected."
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President of the Constitutional Convention, the body which drew up the proposed Constitution

"It is not France that has said no. It is 55 percent of the French people – 45 percent of the French people said yes... People have the right to change their opinion. The people might consider they made a mistake."
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing again

"If we had chosen to have a parliamentary vote last year the constitution would have been easily adopted. It is the method that has provoked the rejection."
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing once again

"The European constitution isn't dead; ratification must continue."
Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission, now Prime Minister of Italy

"[The no votes were] a demand for more Europe, not less."
Romano Prodi again

"The constitution is not dead."
Wolfgang Schüssel, Chancellor of Austria and the EU's current president

"Europe needs the constitution… We are willing to make whatever contribution is necessary to bring the constitution into force."
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

"I would consider it a historic failure if we did not have the substance of the European constitution in place in time for the next European elections [in 2009]."
Angela Merkel again

"We will reverse the situation... you will see that the cause is not yet lost."
Jean Asselborn, Foreign Minister of Luxembourg

"[The French and Dutch no votes are] not an end, rather an interruption."
Joschka Fischer, German Foreign Minister

"France did not say no to Europe."
Dominique de Villepin, Prime Minister of France

"I believe neither the French nor the Dutch really rejected the constitutional treaty."
Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg

"I still believe that ratification of the constitutional treaty... is in the best interests of our country. However I am aware that the best path to ratification would be a speedy procedure in parliament."
Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka

"Neither the constitutional text nor the ideas contained in it are dead. There's no doubt that sooner or later the EU will have a foreign minister and a diplomatic service. What is of crucial importance now is that we keep on working as we did before."
Javier Solana, Secretary-General of the Council of the EU – and EU Foreign Minister in the event that the Constitution comes into force

Given all the above, it's hard to know what former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi means when he complains that Euro-sceptic views have been listened to "almost exclusively" in the two years since the French and Dutch votes. No wonder the EU's famous "democratic deficit" is often described as "not a bug, but a feature".

"This, indeed, is how the EU was designed. Its founding fathers understood from the first that their audacious plan to merge the ancient nations of Europe into a single polity would never succeed if each successive transfer of power had to be referred back to the voters for approval. So they cunningly devised a structure where supreme power was in the hands of appointed functionaries, immune to public opinion.

"In swatting aside two referendum results, the EU is being true to its foundational principles. Born out of a reaction against the Second World War, and the plebiscitary democracy that had preceded it, the EU is based on the notion that "populism" (or "democracy", as you and I call it) is a dangerous thing. To complain that the EU is undemocratic is like attacking a cow for being bovine, or a butterfly for being flighty. In disregarding public opinion, the EU is doing what it has been programmed to do."
Daniel Hannan MEP

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