Euro-treaties have been rejected before, but this season’s unscheduled irruption of mass discontent into the internal processes of the Union is unprecedented. The repudiation of the eu constitutional treaty in the 2005 French and Dutch referenda had quite a different character to that combination of apathy and disgruntlement which saw Ireland vote down the Nice treaty of 2001, or Denmark the euro in 2000. There were high turnouts in both the Netherlands and France—63 and nearly 70 per cent, respectively. In both countries, relatively marginal forces of the unofficial left played a central role in galvanizing the arguments against the treaty. In both, the poll had a clear class character: a majority of lower-income workers, Labour (PvdA) and Socialist supporters voted No, against their party leaderships. The young were solidly opposed.

Developments within the eu rarely follow a single logic: the multiple interactions between rival state interests, political fortunes, divergent economies and outside forces make it particularly prone to the law of unintended consequences. The outcomes of this summer’s upsets for the future functioning of a 25-state eu and for further enlargement are unlikely to be an exception. Nevertheless, the first reactions to the results from eu leaders have been predictable enough: fewer votes, more marketing. But how to sell their model for Europe remains a problem. Founded in the postwar era of Social and Christian Democracy, the eu has mutated and dilated into a different sort of institution in the age of liberal hegemony. Better than any Eurobarometer poll, the 2005 referendum campaigns have laid bare the continent’s new political landscape. They reveal not only the gulf between electorates and elites, widely remarked, but also the problems of envisioning a politics beyond the neoliberal order.

Yet at first sight, the official case for the constitutional treaty seemed attractive and plausible enough, and had the overwhelming backing of the political and media establishments. Although ‘not perfect’, the treaty, it was argued,footnote¹ would make the eu more democratic, more efficient, more streamlined, more transparent. It would empower the European Parliament, limit the use of the single-state veto to essential decisions, and lay the basis for a common foreign and defence policy. The result would be a stronger Europe, able to exercise a moderating influence on the imperial ambitions of the United States. Without it, Timothy Garton Ash warned readers of Le Monde on the eve of the vote, the American superpower would again be ‘tempted to go it alone’.

In France, the Yes campaign was launched with a glittering display of unanimity at Versailles on 28 February 2005, when Senators and Deputies assembled at a special session of Congress to ratify the treaty. The media, in full battledress, took up the campaign. Serge Halimi has described how, on France Inter, ‘Stéphane Paoli would hand over to Bernard Guetta, who would hand over to Pierre Le Marc, who would hand over to Jean-Marc Sylvestre’, without a single dissenting voice.footnote² In an exemplary mobilization of what Perry Anderson has called the union sucrée,footnote³ the President of the Republic, the leaders of the ump and Socialist Party, editorialists from Figaro and L’Express to Le Monde, Libération and Le Nouvel Observateur, newscasters and talk-show hosts were joined in the tv studios by a galaxy of celebrities, film stars and footballers, all in favour. The Prime Minister of Spain, the President of Poland and the German Chancellor flew in to give Chirac their support. A supposedly neutral government information leaflet mailed to the voters was straightforward pro-treaty propaganda, as were the school brochures sent out by the Education Ministry. The Caisse d’épargne mutual-fund chairman announced that, ‘thanks to Europe’, he would be increasing rates for savers.

When, despite all this, the No vote began to climb ahead in the polls, the tone grew more menacing. Those opposing the treaty were xenophobes, racists, anti-Turkish, anti-Pole, anti-Europe. The pages of the liberal press filled with transatlantic voices urging the importance of a Yes vote to build a ‘European alternative’ to the American superpower. An appeal to ‘Our French Friends’ appeared in Le Monde, signed by Wolf Biermann, Jürgen Habermas, Alexander Kluge, Günter Grass and others, arguing that a No would condemn France to ‘fatal isolation’, with ‘catastrophic consequences’ for the central European countries and for relations with the United States. A Yes vote was a moral duty: ‘We owe it to the millions and millions of victims of our senseless wars and criminal dictatorships.’footnote⁴ Such hysteria notwithstanding, the treaty was rejected on May 29th by 55 to 45 per cent.

In the Netherlands, the mechanisms of hegemony took a more homely form. The press, the party political leaderships, the churches, trade-union leaders, employers’ associations, even the Touring Club called for a Yes. The Dutch parliament, which had initially called for the referendum, endorsed the constitutional treaty by 85 per cent. Again, the official rhetoric took an increasingly apocalyptic turn as defeat loomed. Premier Balkenende raised the spectre of Auschwitz, the economics minister spoke of ‘the lights going out’, the justice minister of balkanization and war. The vote on June 1st went against the treaty by 62 to 38 percent.

In both countries, a key factor in the initial mobilizations for a No vote was the treaty itself. The Dutch campaign was largely animated by the 40,000 militants of the Socialist Party,footnote⁵ whose signature flying-tomato posters attacked both bureaucratism and free-market policies. In the Netherlands, the sp pointed out, those claiming a ‘good knowledge’ of the treaty opposed it by 85 per cent. The French debate, described by Bernard Cassen below, was fuelled by an intensive education campaign which reversed the initially favourable majority. The establishment message—a more democratic, efficient, transparent Europe, better able to offer an alternative to the us—was in jarring contradiction to the text itself.