'No' has many meanings.

Byline: The Register-Guard

"Non" means "no," but when French voters rejected a constitution for the European Union Sunday they meant many things. Dutch voters are likely to echo France's message in a referendum today. Taken together, the many meanings add up to a sense that the EU project has moved too fast.

French voters said no to President Jacques Chirac, now in his 10th year in office and suffering political exhaustion. They voted against 10 percent unemployment and slow economic growth.

They expressed fears that unrestricted trade would force French farmers out of business, or that the free movement of labor would underprice French tradespeople. They turned down a constitution perceived as instituting American-style free-market capitalism at the expense of the social safety net.

They reacted against Muslim immigration and the dilution of French culture and language.

All these messages came from the voters of the country that is the birthplace of the EU. France sought an integrated Europe after the Second World War as a means of tying Germany to its western neighbors, and as a means of creating a counterweight to American power.

With the end of the Cold War, however, the EU quickly expanded eastward. Its 25 members now include many countries that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described as "new Europe," nations whose Cold War experience causes them to look to the United States, not France, for leadership. On the horizon is the admission of such countries as Ukraine, a low-cost agricultural producer, and Turkey, already Europe's leading source of low-wage labor.

The rejection of the EU constitution removes none of the economic, political and cultural threats perceived by French voters. The constitution was drafted to replace an improvised series of treaties and agreements among EU members. These treaties and agreements will remain in place. The EU will eventually have to try again, next time submitting a constitution that is less complicated (the document rejected Sunday is 119 pages long) and that includes greater federalism in the form of respect for the sovereignty of member states.

Yet federalism is one of the EU's biggest problems, making European governance and administration cumbersome. For instance, every EU member has the right to veto decisions. The right of veto made sense when the EU had six members, all with highly developed economies. In an organization of 25 members - large and small, rich and poor - the veto is a recipe for gridlock. The veto gives Malta as much power as France. But it was the French, not the Maltese, who stalled the EU reform effort.

If Dutch voters, as expected, also reject the EU constitution, it will be for many of the same reasons. People in the Netherlands and in France think of themselves as Dutch or French first, and Europeans second - and they're nervous about defining Europe too broadly. Nations that have emerged over the course of centuries will not rush to submerge themselves in a larger entity. If Americans faced a referendum on a similar question, they'd probably vote the same way.