Not the answer they expected: French voters say no to the EU constitution.

IT is ironic, as the saying goes, that it should be the French who provoked the latest Euro-crisis by decisively rejecting the European constitution in a referendum. The constitution is essentially a French document, written by former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing in line with France's vision of Europe, and it had the virtually unanimous support of the country's media and political elite. What's more, it offered the French voters their best chance of saving the high-cost welfare state and regulated economy that they apparently thought they were protecting by voting no. It would have imposed similar if slightly less onerous costs and regulations across the continent, gradually evening out the differences between France's 28 percent addition to an employer's labor costs and Britain's modest 9 percent. But this struck the French as an impermissible level of free-market "ultra-liberalism," an evil equivalent to the Communism of the last century, as President Chirac recently reminded them. They accordingly voted against this "Anglo-Saxon" heresy with more enthusiasm and less discernment than Chirac had hoped.

Whatever their level of information, however, French voters clearly believed they were protecting their national interest and character. The referendum result was, among other things, an expression of French patriotism, as until now support for European integration has been. Almost alone in Europe, the French have seen the European Union as an extension of themselves--France writ large and thus able to continue playing a glorious role on the world stage. Once doubts were sown on this score, however erroneously and doubtless temporarily, the French rejected the project.

There is, indeed, an inverse relationship across Europe between national self-confidence and European-mindedness. Euro-skepticism is strongest in Britain, Scandinavia, and Switzerland--and, in its special way, France--where people are proud of their national traditions and institutions. Europhilia is strongest in the countries that are ashamed of their recent past and find it difficult to express a normal patriotism, notably Germany and Italy. And the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltics occupy a curious middle ground. The desire to "join Europe" was initially a near-universal expression of their anti-Soviet sentiment. But the EU's intrusions on their newfound sovereignty have since proved increasingly irksome even to pro-European governments.

Hence it is less surprising than many suppose that Holland is likely to join the Euro-skeptic camp by voting no in its own referendum, taking place as this article goes to press. True, the Dutch are founding members of the EU. But they are also proud of their particular national history, and they are emerging disillusioned and with a renewed sense of national identity from a failed 40-year experiment in multiculturalism and "open door" immigration. Indeed, a Dutch political theorist predicted a convincing victory for the noes on the basis of a model showing that voting no correlates closely with opposition to immigration--and, less closely, with economic pessimism and hostility to the existing government. All three factors, especially the first, are present in Holland.

Has the French vote, then, doomed the Euro-constitution? Legally it must be ratified by all 25 member states. One national refusal is supposed to defeat it. The French example, if it has any wider effect, is likely to stimulate "No" votes in the 14 countries remaining to ratify after Holland--and in particular those countries that are scheduled to hold popular referendums. The "objective" conditions in these countries are hardly conducive to voting yes.

Writing in the London Times, Anatole Kaletsky, a liberal-minded but fiercely independent commentator, suggests that there are two broad underlying explanations for popular rejection of the Euro-constitution. The first, alluded to above, is "the idea of any unified constitution that attempts to impose a single system of government on the whole of Europe and purports to harmonize away the political philosophies, economic preferences, and social traditions developed in different nations over hundreds of years." The second explanation, to which Kaletsky himself adheres, is that European elites and their institutions have imposed economic stagnation on their societies: "Their living standards are falling, their pensions are in danger, their children are jobless, and their national pride is turning into embarrassment and even shame." His prescription for these failures is a stimulative monetary policy in the short term and market economic reforms in the long.

That medicine may or may not be sensible from a purely economic standpoint. But it falls very short of meeting the urgent needs of Europe's politicians. Economic malaise is not incidental to the EU. Inter alia it is the result of institutions such as the European Central Bank and policies such as those advancing a European "social model." There is little sign that European elites are having second thoughts about these policies. And if they were, any reforms they might undertake would hardly produce a booming European economy by November 2006, the deadline for ratifying the constitution.

Even this understates the problem for Europe's elites, namely that both of Kaletsky's explanations are correct. The EU has always been an elite project with little if any democratic support. To a shameful extent, it has been imposed on national electorates by stealth and outright lies--for instance, the assertion that membership would involve no major loss of national sovereignty. This anti-democratic strategy has succeeded only because until 15 years ago voters had been sedated by prosperity and asked to make no sacrifices for "the European idea." Now that the cumulative effects of Europe's economic centralization are being felt, voters have also woken up to the political intrusions on their liberty and independence. Hence the rising tide of Euro-skepticism.

In the face of this, Europe's elites have stuck to their whips. An extraordinary succession of Euro-politicians have announced that the French "No" will not be allowed to obstruct the constitution's coming into effect. The Dutch governing party under Jan Peter Balkenende even stated that it would not accept a Dutch "No" in their advisory referendum unless at least 30 percent of those eligible turned out to vote and the No majority topped 55 percent. That reverses the traditional rule that a major constitutional change requires a two-thirds majority.

That said, Europe's elites have very little idea how to keep the constitution alive. Their immediate response has been to demand that the member states continue the process of ratification while they consider what to do next. But they will probably abandon that tactic if it looks to be producing further No votes. All other options are unpalatable as well. Continuing to run the EU under the existing Nice treaty would be unacceptable to France and Germany since it dilutes their voting strength. Starting an entirely new constitutional process would reopen too many compromises reached with the utmost difficulty. The most likely result is that the EU governments will seek to implement the constitution in installments--passing specific items, such as a full-scale European diplomatic service, under existing rules that require no ratification, referendums, or other democratic constraints. Even that strategy, however, is likely to meet with popular resistance from voters newly sensitized to Euro-authoritarianism.

In the protracted constitutional crisis likely to follow, there are political opportunities for the U.S. Though the Bush administration generally and Secretary of State Rice personally gave occasional support to the constitution now in peril, it would have been a serious setback for U.S. interests. These interests are a prosperous free-trade Europe, hospitable to U.S. trade and investment, and a reliable U.S. ally rather than a "counterweight" in diplomacy and military affairs. These concerns reflect the interests of EU member states such as Britain and the post-Communist democracies in promoting a more flexible and varied European Union--intergovernmental rather than supranational, reliant on tax and regulatory competition rather than on bureaucratic harmonization, and determined to keep NATO as the basis of its foreign and defense policies. Such flexibility would include allowing the French and Germans to form a more economically regulated and politically integrated European "core" in return for accepting the return of many now centralized powers from Brussels to national governments. And that in itself would be a major step toward restoring European democracy.

Not that the U.S. should campaign openly for such a Europe. We should certainly stop endorsing forms of European integration harmful to the U.S. Otherwise our public diplomacy should reiterate that the Euro-constitution is a European matter. At the same time we should make quietly clear to our closer European friends that we will give them support, encouragement, and rewards when they fight for the kind of Europe that is in their and America's interest.

Will we do so? That depends on whether U.S. diplomats are as alert as European voters to the real nature of the politicians' Europe.