By John Spain

Those cheese eating surrender monkeys have done it again. Fresh from their hypocritical opposition to the war necessary to remove Saddam Hussein (which did not stop them subsequently trying to get a share of the oil and reconstruction business in Iraq) they have now managed to destabilize Europe.

That was the angry reaction in official circles here last week to the rejection of the new Constitution for Europe by the French in their national referendum.

A few days later the misguided Dutch followed the French example, making a bad situation even worse. That meant that the populations of two of the original six founders of the European Union had voted no.

The constitution for the enlarged 25-nation EU was agreed between the governments this time last year when Ireland held the EU Presidency. This was achieved after Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern had done a punishing shuttle around Europe over several months to get a document that would be acceptable to everyone.

That compromise document was achieved against great odds by Ahern, using all his deal making skills. Silvio Berlusconi had tried and failed during the Italian presidency in the preceding six months.

After that, the experts said it could not be done, but Ahern did the impossible. It was a significant achievement, made all the sweeter by the accession of the 10 new EU member nations from Eastern Europe during the Irish presidency.

The growth of the EU has made the new constitution necessary.

Everyone agrees that the present structures are inadequate.

With 25 member nations, new arrangements for reaching decisions are essential if paralysis is not to follow, with the end of national vetoes, more majority voting, simpler administration and so on.

All of the governments agreeing on the wording of a new constitution was the first step. But the document (around 500 pages) has to be ratified by either the parliaments of the 25 nations or the people of each country voting in a referendum. And that is the second step that could now scupper the whole business.

Because of Ireland’s Trojan work last year in hammering out the compromise version of the constitution that all 25 European leaders could sign up to, the rejection by the French and the Dutch people in their referenda is a particular disappointment for us.

One senior official I know here (who did a lot of work on EU enlargement last year) spent the weekend muttering about Bloody Frogs. Can there be a more irritating nation on earth than the French, he asked, a people so consumed with their own self-importance — their hubris is magnifique! — that they genuinely believe they are intellectually and morally head and shoulders above the rest of mankind.

These delusions of grandeur are most evident in the upper levels of French society, he went on. But they span the entire nation, from the lowly vegetable grower in the country to the professional elite in Paris.

Indeed, that was one of the striking things about the French opposition to the new constitution. Opposition to the constitution spanned the entire nation, encompassing the far right nutters like Le Pen and the broad left, as well as many people in the middle.

For a country that had been the prime mover in the early days of European integration — and it was former President Giscard d’Estaing who drafted this constitution — it was a sad turnaround.

But the truth is that, while the superior French attitude to Europe may be infuriating, there is widespread worry in other countries as well about the way the European Union is developing.

Some other big countries, like Germany and Italy, have already ratified the constitution. However, there is growing opposition in other key countries, like Britain.

So what is turning so many people against the EU? French people in general don’t like it these days because they feel their importance inside the EU is no longer recognized.

Those on the left do not like the free market instincts of the EU and the threat to the cosseted French state sector, the short working week and so on. Those on the right do not like the EU’s rules about migration and equality and other parts of the liberal agenda.

The fact is that although the idea of a new enlarged EU was fine in theory, the reality is proving much harder to swallow. And that is true right across Europe, where even those who were dreaming of an eventual United States of Europe are now facing up to the fact that the differences across Europe are not going to be glossed over easily.

We are seeing this already in Ireland, with the influx of huge numbers of workers from poorer Eastern Europe. Walk through the cheaper shopping streets in Dublin these days and it is hard to hear anyone talking English (it’s what parts of New York must have been like a century ago).

The influx keeps pay low in low paid jobs and adds to congestion and pressure in housing, hospitals and schools. It’s easy to be enthusiastic about multi-culturalism and European integration if you’re further up the ladder.

So the reality of the new enlarged Europe is beginning to sink in, here as well as elsewhere. Ordinary people in the developed western side of Europe are waking up to the fact that there will be a sacrifice involved for them.

And they are translating those fears into opposition to the constitution for this new enlarged Europe. Already the difficulties and enormous costs of absorbing countries like Poland and other Eastern European nations are clear.

Those difficulties are likely to intensify in the next few years when Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey join. Part of the reason the constitution was rejected in Holland, for example, was the fear about absorbing so many Turkish Muslims and the threat that would pose to Holland’s traditional liberalism on issues like drugs, prostitution and homosexuality.

And in Holland, the growing cost of membership was also a factor (the Dutch pay more into the EU per capita than any other member state). That consideration is also a growing concern here, since we are now also one of the so-called rich nations of Europe.

There are also economic considerations within the euro zone that are causing concern to governments as well as ordinary people. Interest rates, for example, are set centrally.

But in some countries with high inflation and low unemployment, higher rates would be better and in other countries where growth is much slower and unemployment is double Ireland’s, lower rates would help.

It was a wide range of such general concerns about the future of Europe that underlay the no vote in France and Holland, a fear that we are being swamped by Eastern Europe and railroaded by politically correct officials in Brussels.

These fears were more important in the rejection than any specifics in the constitution. These fears are just as evident here in Ireland and a vote here would be close and could go either way.

So what’s going to happen now? The political reality is that the crushing defeats in France and Holland, two founding member states traditionally identified with the drive for greater unification, should kill off any prospect of the constitution coming into force in the near future.

Over the weekend, Tony Blair’s government said it was now postponing plans to hold the referendum in Britain, and the Danes are expected to vote against the constitution in their referendum scheduled for November.

In Ireland, our referendum is due to be held this autumn and Ahern is still sticking to that position, although our Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has warned about the dangers of a domino effect following the French rejection, leading to speculation that our vote will also be postponed indefinitely.

To become law, the constitution needs to be ratified by all 25 nations and Ireland, Germany, and France have all called for the ratification of the treaty to continue, despite the French and Dutch rejections.

That raises the prospect of a fierce clash at an EU summit to be held in Brussels in a week or so. And of course the malaise gripping the EU will become Blair’s personal problem next month when Britain takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU. That is unfortunate, since it will eat into the time Blair should be spending on the North in the autumn.

All told, it might seem from an Irish American perspective that what happens in the European Union in the future is too boring to even think about. But that would be a mistake.

Working our way through this mess will be essential if Europe is to remain peaceful and united and is to shoulder some of the global burden now being carried by the U.S. Ireland, once again, will play an important role in finding the solution.