Over the last 50 years Europe has been built along paradoxical lines. Every important initiative was taken by governments, in particular by the Franco-German duo, i.e. by those who had the most to lose in terms of powers transferred to Brussels. Meanwhile, it was only on exceptional occasions that the citizens, who spontaneously supported Europe and had the most to gain, were invited to speak their mind on major issues.
That era is now gone. For the last two years citizens and their representatives have forced their way into the European debate.
The first breakthrough came with the European Convention. It was at that Convention that European leaders tasked the elected representatives of all the EU national parliaments to draw up the first treaty for the enlarged Europe. The outcome has exceeded the most optimistic expectations. The Convention proposed moving from an economic and monetary Europe to a political Europe, from a Union of governments to a marriage of the peoples, and from a system of obscure and rather ineffective decision-making to a more transparent and fully democratic system: in short, replacing an ordinary treaty with a Constitution, with rules governing the communal life of 450 million European citizens.
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The organisation of referendums in ten or more countries to ratify a European treaty is an unprecedented and very high-risk undertaking. No European country is really familiar with this very delicate exercise, which, depending on the way it is handled, may pave the way for the most democratic of choices or the most simplistic populism. Some countries (especially the Benelux states) will be trying this experiment for the very first time. Previous consultations of this kind on European issues in countries such as Denmark, Ireland and even France (1992) warn us of the need for circumspection.
The great danger in every country is to confuse the European debate with the struggle for power at national level. The European Parliament elections already tend everywhere to be exploited by political parties, the media and the voters themselves to fuel the national debate between government and opposition. That is a particularly grave danger in France, where the tradition of the Fifth Republic is very likely to turn a referendum into a plebiscite: throughout his term of office Charles de Gaulle, like François Mitterrand in 1992, openly used referendums as a vote of confidence in his personal leadership. In France today, two people out of three spontaneously say they are in favour of further European integration, while last spring more than half our fellow citizens expressed their mistrust of the executive power: if well presented, a referendum on Europe would be won; a plebiscite would be lost.
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It will be no surprise to readers of this column that Jacques Chirac opted for a referendum on the ratification of the European Constitution. For the past two years, not only have I campaigned for the use of that most democratic procedure but I have always predicted that it will be politically impossible to avoid it.
Hitherto, the European Union has been founded on treaties negotiated by diplomats and decided by governments. In contrast, the Constitution was drawn up by elected people’s representatives in order to unite the citizens themselves and not just their leaders. That democratic change requires the explicit assent of citizens. Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac are to be congratulated on the courage they have shown in taking this political risk, which is as great as the issue at stake.
There is indeed quite a risk. A referendum is an extremely delicate matter and depending on how it is used it can be a highly democratic or a highly ambiguous procedure. To tell the truth, only the Swiss and some American states, such as California, have been holding referendums long enough to know how to handle them. That does not mean that ‘yes’ votes always carry the day (in 40% of Swiss referendums, the ‘no’ camp has won), but at least citizens go to the ballot boxes to have their say on the question put to them. None of the 25 EU states has that kind of experience. Referendums are rare if not exceptional events and the electorate seizes the opportunity to express its discontent of the moment, which sometimes bears no direct relation to the question at issue. In France, Gaullist tradition means that referendums openly take on the form of plebiscites: presidents, for instance, use them to ask for a vote of confidence from the people who elected them. In 1969, General de Gaulle found he no longer enjoyed that confidence and took the only step that he could: immediate resignation. In 1992, in view of the first opinion polls, which were highly favourable, François Mitterrand was clearly seeking an opportunity to regain the political authority he had lost at home by putting the popular proposal for a European currency to the vote: of the 49% of Frenchmen and women who voted ‘no’ to the Maastricht Treaty, a good third at least were right-wingers who tended to be in favour of monetary union yet wanted to seize this unexpected chance to get rid of a president they disliked.
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