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France, Europe's Constitution and the Swiss Example

Angelique van Engelen - 5/19/2005

If the French vote NO to the European Constitution at the end of this month, the crisis that's likely to ensue will likely invoke novel ideas on democracy and populations' influence over decisionmaking at the supranational level. The Swiss system yields some ideas for viable options.

Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen if a founder nation like France disapproves of the EU constitution, but among the options that are most likely is a rewrite of the document, another round of voting, or approval of parts of the constitution by the remaining EU member countries. Recent polls in France have shown that the Yes camp is gaining some ground and that it's a dead heat now between No and Yes.

Some French critics of the constitution say that even though it is in essence democratic, it should contain more possibilities to hold multiple referendums and for the population to 'edit' its clauses. Some countries, by dint of their legislative system, don't even allow for a direct referendum on the constitution. There are also countries that do allow for direct voting on the issue, but that will not allow for a population-inspired referendum ever. Yet it is not all that difficult to create legislation for greater direct population control and make this part of the constitution, proponents argue.

It remains to be seen if anything along these lines will happen, but it would not be a first in Europe. A country with a system that boasts it has closer ties with its population through a greater role of referendums includes Switzerland, which has amended its constitution this way some 50 times since 1847.

If the Swiss example has shown anything, it is that it is possible to hold a number of direct referendums without complicating public life all that much. People are also believed to be quite enthusiastic about politics. The Swiss form of direct democracy is not so much through additional institutional features but rather integral parts of the government structure itself, says Paul Taggart of the Sussex University Institute in Brighton in the UK, in a study he wrote for the European Archive Institute in 2003. "The Swiss case illustrates that populist forms of democracy can yield a system which stresses decentralization and the extensive use of referendums to overcome a highly fragmented and segmented population", he says.

Aside from the Swiss example, there is not that much input elsewhere that might put the French voters at ease. The Swiss intellectual Andreas Gross, who was very involved recently in monitoring elections in Azerbeijan, is a known proponent of his home country's system.

The No camp in France says that inclusion of more options for amendments of the Constitution would definitely give people the idea of safety, rather than the feeling that they would be hostages of a Brussels directed circus on top of their own national government's whims. A feeling that is very much alive in the rest of Europe too. The French deliberations on this point make other European citizens think twice before casting their votes, even though there is so far hardly any chance of another country being as negative as the French are.



If the constitution as written is approved, every country will have ratified the system under which they have local bureaucrats, bureaucrats in their national capitals and bureaucrats in Brussels to deal with.

But there is also the argument that if you allowed for more referendums, you invoke greater headaches even, simply because many charters demand unanimity or would need alteration that would be beyond approval from some parts of the population, or would be disadvantageous for other parts of the national electorate or other European countries.

The constitution itself might not allow for direct editing as it is constructed at the moment, but European citizens can quite easily launch popular legislative proposals pertaining any other issue. Which is pretty much the same. European Commission Vice-President Margot Wallstrom recently underlined this, speaking to students, when she said that the EU charter basically extends democracy by allowing campaigners to take the lead in pressuring Brussels to make laws. The constitution in that sense provides more direct power to the people. If a person manages to collect one million signatures in a significant number of EU countries, they can ask the commission to propose a new law or policy.