From what little I know about this whole situation...that's my impression too.
You've got it correct.
Without the rebate for the UK, they would pay 15 times as much as France does. Even with the rebate the UK pays more than France, and still France goes on to accuse Britain of "selfishly refusing to pay the bill for enlargement last year".
What Gaul!
The Dutch voted it down for more or less the opposite reason; they've had a hard time recently with their famed ''tolerant'' culture.
In plain English, this utterly moronic alleged ''constitution'' is starkest idiocy in action. Only legislators (well, wth did you expect?, 7 out of 7 leges have ''approved'' it, w/o any vote of the citizens of the respective nations) and Spaniards (again, wth did you expect?...quaking in their boots after a round of Islamic terrorism that killed several hundred) will vote to enact such a disgraceful and idiotic, AND self-enslaving, document into what passes for ''law'' in the ESSR.
Hell's bells, man, even the old Soviet ''constitution'' was more coherent than this batch of bilge. Don't even think of taking my word for it!
Look up the USSR constitution (which was absolute kwap, not worth the paper on which it was printed, because totalitarians love to show the faux-emulation of generally republican principles), and compare it to this new ESSR nonsensical so-called ''constitution''.
They might well seek a merger partner (or two, or twenty-five) which a.) had better future prospects and b.) in which they would be the surviving corporation.
That over-extended corporation is France. The mega-corp they were attempting to form is the EU.
Actually the French rejected the treaty BECAUSE it did not subsidize France enough, was not socialist enough... no kidding