Re: Labour markets can't be made flexible. Protects the employed to th detriment of the unemployed. People who are -today- employed don't want to compete with the unemployed in their own country. As a result industry migrate and they handpver their jobs to the Romanians and Czechs.
Well... yes, that's all very true --but what has it got to do with the EU Constitution?!? Zilch, I'm afraid. Layoffs, globalization, chronic unemployment, etc. have been plaguing Europe for the past 30 years anyway, and will continue to do so no matter what. The EU Constitution was irrelevantly hyped up as a cure-all for Europe's sluggish economics....
Hence my opinion that the real French malaise ain't about euro-economics but, rather, stems from geopolitics. I believe the Iraq War was/still is the seminal event that send France on its centrifugal orbit, so to speak. It's still intolerable for French authorities that, on such a crucial issue of "War and Peace", EU newcomers (Poland, Romania, the Baltic States,...) so openly, rashly, and eagerly aligned themselves with the US-UK-Israel axis and against France, their EU senior partner. Besides, as I pointed out on another thread, the isolation of France is going from bad to worse as most observers anticipate a landslide victory for Angela Merckel in a couple of months.
Since the EU Constitution was basically about the POLITICAL integration of the European Union, it shouldn't be surprising that it no longer makes sense for the French!!! I mean, France is a Mediterranean country with special relationships with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, Syria, and even Egypt, to an extent. Only 50 years ago, she was still fighting one of the bloodiest wars of decolonization in Algeria.... Yet France is now, if slowly, integrating her sizable Arab/Muslim minorities. Hence there's no point for France to follow US, Israeli, and UK crusaders in their global war against Islam and the Arab world. There's no point for France to support the occupation of Iraq today nor the (impending) assault against Iran tomorrow!
Of course, I'm well aware that the whole issue (of the EU constitution) was NEVER argued along these lines: nobody in France ever called the French to vote against the constitution because France must remain in peace with the Arab/Muslim world, and the whole issue was debated along socio-economic lines --unemployement, the so-called Polish plumber and so forth. I contend, however, that the chief, if unspoken, reason for the French NO is all about geopolitics and Middle East policy.
Gus |
