Mr. Ash Jain, Chair
jcjain@northwestern.edu


The EU has a stated goal of creating an “ever closer union,” and proponents of the constitution believe it to be the most significant step towards this end. Its opponents, meanwhile, claim it needlessly entrenches a pan-European macrostate.

The European Constitution (also known as the “Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe”) was signed by all the members of the EU, but requires ratification to take effect. However, this has been impossible to obtain because of the EU’s required unanimity for all decisions.

The treaty was signed in October of 2004, but over the next year was defeated in referendums by the French and Dutch people, thereby making its implementation impossible. The main reasons given for this surprising result were that perhaps the final draft of the constitution was too overreaching, particularly in the unnecessary and unwanted addition of what seemed to be policy issues to the document, and that it may have been too much too soon in terms of integration into the EU one-state ideal. But whatever the reason, the referendum results were most shocking in that they took place in France and Holland, two countries that until then had been staunchly pro-EU and the last places many experts predicted would cause trouble.

The French and Dutch returns caused other countries to postpone their ratification polls, as any result would be fairly pointless without unanimous approval. The future of the EU constitution is now highly uncertain.

There are now a number of options for the EU to consider, ranging from scrapping the entire idea to simply pressing on with the same document, with the goal of convincing French and Dutch voters to reconsider their decision.

http://europa.eu.int/index_en.htm
http://www.eurunion.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
http://www.europarl.eu.int/news/public/default_en.htm