If At First You Don’t Succeed…..

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Well people are already busy positioning themselves in the face of what seems like an increasingly possible ‘no’ vote in France on Sunday. Yesterday it was Giscard D’Estaing, today it is the turn of the current EU president Jean-Claude Juncker. His basic point, if French and Dutch voters don’t say ‘yes’ the first time, then don’t give up, try and try and try again.

“The countries which have said No will have to ask themselves the question again. And if we don’t manage to find the right answer, the treaty will not enter into force,” he said in an interview with the Belgian Le Soir newspaper.

Apart from being very elitist, this view is profoundly un-democratic. If the French vote no, then the only coherent way a new referendum can be held is if the Treaty is renegotiated, not just for France but per se.

I don’t know whether this is being pessimistic or not, but I think if the Treaty is voted down on Sunday, we will be years, rather than weeks and months sorting out the mess, and meantime we will have to watch and wait to see what happens with the Euro.

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About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

4 thoughts on “If At First You Don’t Succeed…..”

  1. I don’t share the vision of a Federal Europe but if that is what the majority of people vote for I will accept it, albeit exercsing my right to criticise.

    Edward is right about Juncker’s comments – it might even generate a few more votes for the NON campaign; what an idiot!

  2. Absolutely, people stepping into their own traps is known. Testing whether it will work on the other leg, too, is new, however. I am glad his term is soon over.

  3. I am sure you have seen the PS deputy from Landes Henri Emmanuelli comments. While I detest socialist clap trap, his slam on Juncker’s idiocy was spot on.

  4. If the French vote no, pretty much sinking the constitution, I hope this serves as a clear message to the politicians in Brussels and each national captiol that more needs to be done to not only make the workings of the EU more transparent to the public (voters) but also that Europeans have reservations about becoming part of a political/economic system they don’t understand that well.

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