The EU: A Less Perfect Union? ("Give Me Your Huddled Masses, Yearning to Eat Brie")

Peter Robinson: Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Europe's proposed constitution — could anyone have thought of a less perfect union?

Peter Robinson: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today: a brand new constitution for the united states of Europe. In June of this year a European convention produced a document that was the result of more than 18 months of labor, a draft Constitution for the European Union that runs to more than 200 pages. The Constitution of the United States by contrast, runs to just five pages and that's including the Bill of Rights. Why does the European Union need a constitution in the first place? Will this document limit the powers of the union over its member states or limit the powers of the member states, creating a gigantic European super-state? Should the constitution be ratified or is it all a colossal mistake?

Joining us, two guests. Timothy Garton Ash is a fellow at Oxford University and at the Hoover Institution. British historian Paul Johnson is the author of more than 28 books including A History of the American People and Modern Times.

Peter Robinson: The Economist magazine: "The European Constitutional Convention did not even try to write a lasting constitutional settlement. It has written the opposite. In effect, a blueprint for accelerated instability, an intergovernmental conference will now take up the proposal. The governments should take it up for exactly as long as it takes to dump it in the nearest bin." Dump the proposed European Constitution in the nearest bin. Timothy?

Timothy Garton Ash: No, I wouldn't do that. I think it describes this extraordinary creature that the European Union is and it will always be a strange but valuable monster.

Peter Robinson: Take no chances. All right. Why does Europe need a Constitution in the first place? I quote The Economist magazine once again, "When it first began to be argued that the European Union needed a proper constitution, we warmly endorsed the idea. The European Union needed a single text to codify the overlapping and impenetrable treaties that had gone before. More than this, Europe needed a clear statement of what the Union was and what it was intended to be." So you'd agree with that, that Europe needed to codify these and it needed a sort of mission statement? No?

Timothy Garton Ash: Listen, Europe does not need a constitution. States have constitutions. Europe is not a state. So this is not a constitution. It's actually just another treaty, a constitutional treaty. And what it describes is a strange, unprecedented commonwealth of European democracies. And I think Paul will disagree with me but I would say with Churchill, adapting Churchill, that this is the worst possible Europe, apart from all the other Europes we've tried from time to time.

Paul Johnson: I think it's a case of cultural hubris and it's essentially the work of the French. And the French think they know everything. One of the things I've been trying to get into the heads of Frenchmen or any Frenchman, for a very long time now, is that if you want to use history to help you, study the history of how the United States was created because there are so many lessons to be learned from the 1770s and 1780s. And after all, this was the first republican constitution of its kind, subject to a few amendments, it's lasted over 200 years. And under its aegis, it has created the richest, most powerful country in the world. You'd think that the Europeans would want to see how it was done and how this came into existence and incidentally learn a bit about democracy. Not at all. No, we have nothing to learn from those barbarians across the Atlantic. That is virtually what they think. Well it's what they think and they sometimes more or less say it too.

Timothy Garton Ash: On Frenchmen thinking they know everything, there's a wonderful remark of Marshall Petain, one of the few good things he said. He said … of the products of the Grandes Ecoles, he said, "They know everything. The trouble is they don't know anything else…"

Timothy Garton Ash: But the serious point here is that actually although the Constitutional Convention was headed by a Frenchman called Valèry Giscard d'Estaing, this is not a French constitution. What people don't see is that the French are losing the European argument. The French are now an endangered minority in Europe. And this is not becoming a French Europe.

Peter Robinson: Next topic. Does the proposed constitution create a true federal European state?

Quote:

Paul Johnson: I think it's a case of cultural hubris and it's essentially the work of the French. And the French think they know everything. One of the things I've been trying to get into the heads of Frenchmen or any Frenchman, for a very long time now, is that if you want to use history to help you, study the history of how the United States was created because there are so many lessons to be learned from the 1770s and 1780s. And after all, this was the first republican constitution of its kind, subject to a few amendments, it's lasted over 200 years. And under its aegis, it has created the richest, most powerful country in the world. You'd think that the Europeans would want to see how it was done and how this came into existence and incidentally learn a bit about democracy. Not at all. No, we have nothing to learn from those barbarians across the Atlantic. That is virtually what they think. Well it's what they think and they sometimes more or less say it too.

You can always tell a Frenchman… but not much.

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