So France collectively gave the European Constitution the ‘nay’. 55% of the people is apparently against.
My own big moment to vote is coming up, too. I’ll be one of the Dutch people to cast a vote. Do I know what I’m going to vote this Wednesday? I think I do. For better or for worse, I think I’m going to do the French thing.
My biggest reason to say ‘no’ is the propaganda and the way it is all set up. It just is not convincing. But my reason to say ‘yes’ is that despite that it’s not super it is a changet that will bring some improvement. So I don’t know. But I think that when you are not sure about something and you are not convinced you should not blindly agree to it. Right? *ponders over it some more*
I’ve found the coverage of the issues involved on the likes of BBC World to be very usefull. It pretty much made it a yes vote for me, even though it probably wont matter considering the French vote.
What I noticed that the French have the same emotional issues we seem to have, and most have nothing to do with the actual constitution. This is also the main reason I believe a referendum is a bad idea(tm).
The constitution isn’t perfect. It will never be, as it’s always going to be a political compromise, just as any law, international or not, is. A lot of the emotional ‘no’ voters seem to believe that saying no means they’ll hold out for a better deal. They seem to ignore that fact that this is not an opening offer, it’s the end result of long, hard negotiotions. There’s also the problem that quite a few countries already accepted the constitution.
Well, one thing we can be sure about: we won’t see a referendum again soon
Would you guys see yourselves as “European” or “Dutch” first? Could you ever concieve introducing yourself as “European”? The EU has fascinated me and has had some amazing successes, but I think that the borders between states (although lowered an amazing amount) is still pretty strong. The EU really needs to work on creating a European identity, and really pushing it to the people.
I’m also pretty annoyed that we have _no coverage whatsoever_ of the EU vote over here. *mutters*
I think one of the mistakes the politicians made was calling this treaty a constitution. Had they just put it up as a new treaty containing the same shit in different packaging, things might have gone smoother.
Yup, calling it a constitution was a bad idea in hindsight. Yet if it had all worked then we would have actually had a constitution which is a much bigger step than just a new treaty.
The politicans bet high and they lost…