WHAT A FRENCH "NON" ON THE EU CONSTITUTION COULD

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BRUSSELS 001556

SIPDIS

NOFORN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/18/2015
TAGS: PREL PGOV FR TU EUN USEU BRUSSELS
SUBJECT: WHAT A FRENCH "NON" ON THE EU CONSTITUTION COULD
MEAN FOR THE EU

REF: A. PARIS 2663


B. PARIS 2604 AND PREVIOUS

C. STATE 69923

D. USEU TODAY 4/20/2005

Classified By: Rick Holtzapple, PolOff, Reasons 1.4 (B/D)

SUMMARY
--------------


1. (C) No one can be sure of all the political consequences
of a French rejection of the EU Constitution, but it would
almost certainly end the document's chances of ever entering
into force. While forty days remain before the vote, Embassy
Paris (refs A and B) has described the challenges facing the
"yes" campaign. Rejection of the treaty by the French (on
May 29) or the Dutch (June 1) -- or both -- will be blow to
Europe's self-confidence and force the Luxembourg and British
Presidencies to spend time on damage control for an issue
they hoped they could ignore. We do not believe it will
throw the EU into crisis, however, or cause paralysis in EU
decision-making. The EU will carry on under the current
treaties. Enlargement may be marginally more complicated for
the EU, but the impact of "enlargement fatigue" on the EU
will not be determined by the fate of the Constitution. Over
time, many, if not all, of the changes to the EU proposed in
the Constitutional Treaty will likely reappear, perhaps with
some modification, in future EU efforts. (Septel provides
more detailed analysis of the specific changes the
Constitution would make to the EU.)


2. (C/NF) In fact, rejection of the Constitution by the
French now may be less politically risky for the EU than
eventual rejection of the document by the British in 2006.
For the U.S., we may face a somewhat distracted and less
confident EU in the near term. A French "no" may also reduce
talk of multipolarity and building the EU as a counterweight
to the U.S. But it would be wrong to interpret the
Constitution's demise as the beginning of the end for the EU.
As the Europeans have shown in the past, regrouping is
likely to ensure continuity on foreign policy
decision-making, with member state governments continuing to
see the EU as the venue for reaching common policies. For
our part, we should note that we do not see the treaty's
fate, one way or the other, as prompting a crisis in Europe,
and we continue to look to a strong and effective EU as a
partner in facing global challenges. END SUMMARY.

NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING FOR SURE, EXCEPT...
--------------


3. (C) EU officials in Brussels, following the same events
reported in Refs A and B, are increasingly of the view that
French voters will reject the EU's proposed Constitution in a
referendum on May 29. What would rejection of the
Constitution mean for the EU? The most honest answer is the
one Italian FM Fini gave the Secretary on April 13 (Ref C):
No one knows for sure.


4. (SBU) Legally, even after a French no, other member states
should continue their ratification procedures. The theory is
that EU leaders will need a full picture of how the
Constitution fared across the EU's membership prior to taking
precise decisions on how to proceed. (At least for now, both
the Dutch and UK Prime Ministers have indicated they would go
ahead with referenda in their countries.) In October 2006,
EU leaders should gather to discuss what to do. Expectations
among Brussels officials, however, are that a French no would
prompt such a summit much earlier, perhaps even in June or
July of this year.


5. (SBU) Rejection of the Constitution will not cause
institutional paralysis. The EU will continue to function on
the basis of the current treaties up through the Nice treaty,
which entered into force in February 2003. These treaties,
complemented by subsequent accession treaties for
enlargement, already spell out all of the necessary technical
requirements (number of votes in the Council, number of seats
in the European Parliament) to allow the EU to function at
25, or even after Bulgaria and Romania join in 2007 or 2008.

...THIS CONSTITUTION WILL BE DEAD
--------------


6. (C) According to most Brussels observers, if France
rejects the Constitution, it will be dead. Some member
states might well cancel their referendum plans, particularly
as it could be hard to generate respectable voter turnout on
what would appear to be a lost cause. Even if other member
states continue with ratification procedures, a French
rejection of the Constitution means it cannot enter into
force. While smaller member states (Denmark, Ireland) have
been asked to vote again after rejecting earlier treaties, it
seems unlikely with France, especially since no one is
offering a workable plan on how to make ratification more
appealing to the French public. Furthermore, our expectation
is that, if all of the EU member states planning referenda
did in fact hold them, France would hardly be the lone
country to have said no. The Dutch could well follow them
just three days later. In short, if the French say no, the
Constitution is dead.

7. (C/NF) So then what? The death of the Constitution will
surely provoke considerable angst-ridden navel gazing within
the EU's political elites and spark endless commentary about
whether the "European project" can carry on. But we already
detect a counter sentiment developing as people come to grips
with the likelihood that the Constitution will not enter into
force. Luxembourg's EU PermRep Martine Schommer recently
told the Ambassador she expected relatively little fall-out
from the Constitution's failure, noting that the EU would
continue to function on the basis of the current treaties.
The EU will still have some major decisions on its agenda for
the rest of 2005: agreeing on its 2007-2013 budgetary
framework, opening accession negotiations with Turkey and
Croatia, ratifying the accession treaty for Romania and
Bulgaria, and continuing to pursue the holy grail: economic
reforms to promote growth. The mechanisms needed for the EU
to pursue these goals are already in place, and are not
dependent on getting the Constitution ratified.


8. (C) The Luxembourg and subsequent UK Presidencies will
need to show political skill in managing this agenda,
however. We believe their overriding objective will be to
downplay as much as possible the political consequences of a
No. The issue would likely be added to the agenda of the
June 16 EU Summit (European Council) in Brussels, where the
other major debate will be on the budget. But we doubt EU
leaders will be able to provide a clear picture of how they
will proceed so soon after the French and Dutch referenda.

ENLARGEMENT FATIGUE? NOT BECAUSE OF CONSTITUTION
-------------- ---


9. (C) Nonetheless, a political "crisis" over the
Constitution could make these issues more difficult to move
forward, largely because for a while at least, European
self-confidence will have taken a knock. After having spent
three years work on developing the Constitution, only to see
it fail to generate much public support, Europeans may
question whether the EU can see ambitious projects through to
fruition. It is ironic that such doubts would arise just a
year after the successful conclusion of the EU's largest-ever
enlargement of ten new members and just a few years after the
creation of a single currency, but such questions will be
heard.


10. (C) One area where many suggest these political
uncertainties could have the greatest impact is on the EU's
further enlargement. The rejection of the Constitution
should not have any direct impact on the accession of Romania
or Bulgaria. Accession negotiations with Turkey, the Balkan
states, and such potential candidates as Ukraine could be
somewhat more complicated, however. The technical reason is
that, without the Constitution's new formulas for Council
voting and European Parliament seats, these issues will now
need to be specifically negotiated with each new candidate.
The political reason is that skepticism about Turkish
membership is one factor "no" campaigners are capitalizing
on, and a second referendum in France (perhaps in 2015)
eventually looms on Ankara's candidacy as a result of the
French decision on February 28 to change its own constitutionand require that
accession to the EU by countries that begin
negotiations after June 1, 2005, must be approved by public
referendum. On balance, however, a French "no" on the
Constitution is unlikely to have any direct short-term impact
on Turkish accession talks due to begin with the EU on
October 3.

MULTI-SPEED EUROPE? ALREADY EXISTS, AND WE'LL SEE MORE
-------------- --------------


11. (C) Other commentators have also speculated that
frustration over the Constitution's failure could also prompt
subsets of EU member states to press ahead with common
projects, using the existing "enhanced cooperation"
mechanisms in the current treaties to pursue projects even if
some member states refuse to join in. This is a more likely
outcome of a British no than a French one, since the French
are seen as prime advocates of resort to "enhanced
cooperation." But it could still happen, perhaps in areas
such as tax harmonization, police cooperation, or combination
of diplomatic representation abroad. One area in which it
could not legally happen is in military and defense, where
the current treaties explicitly prohibit resort to "enhanced
cooperation." (NOTE: This does not mean small sets of EU
states cannot undertake military projects together; it just
means they either have to be approved by all 25, or the
project cannot have an EU label or receive support from EU
institutions. END NOTE.) Such a development would make the
EU even more complicated than today. But "variable geometry"
already exists in the EU (the euro, the Schengen common
border area, and ESDP all include less than all 25 members),
and this does not have to cause huge political problems for
the EU.

EUROPEAN PROJECTS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST GET RELABELLED
-------------- --------------


12. (C) While the EU Constitution as such would be dead after
a French no, we would stress that this does not mean the
specific provisions included in the text will necessarily
remain so. As we have reported, several items that are
enshrined in the document, do not need changes to the current
treaties to be realized. Thus, the European Defense Agency,
efforts to improve EU defense capabilities, invocation of
"solidarity" in the case of terrorist attack, and moves away
from unanimity requirements on asylum and immigration matters
are all already underway even in advance of the Constitution.


13. (C) Other provisions of the Constitution (creation of an
EU Foreign Minister with a combined EU foreign service, a
longer-term President of the European Council, expanded
legislative powers for the EP, or further moves away from
unanimous decision-making by member states) would all be much
more difficult to achieve without treaty revision. But that
does not mean these or other ideas would disappear. European
Political Cooperation sputtered and eventually fizzled out
during the 1970's, but was reborn as CFSP in the early
1990's; European Defense Cooperation was rejected -- by the
French parliament, no less -- in the 1950's, but reemerged
forty years later in the shape of ESDP.


14. (C) The Constitution exercise has already seen this
dynamic at work: Part II of the Constitution is the EU's
Charter of Fundamental Rights that was negotiated in 1999,
but which member states could not agree to make a legally
binding document at the time. After spending five years as a
"political" document, it was simply incorporated verbatim
into the Constitution. As these examples demonstrate, the
lag times can be considerable, but memories of those building
Europe are long. Member state negotiators should store their
briefing papers on different aspects of the Constitution in
the archives, not shred them.


15. (C) It is difficult to predict which provisions of the
Constitution would be resurrected when, or precisely how the
EU would choose to pursue them. Some EU officials suggest
some measures, such as creation of an EU Foreign Minister or
combined foreign service could be possible without treaty
changes, or only minor ones. Member states could also agree
to a much reduced treaty revision exercise in a couple of
years to implement some of the institutional provisions
(simplification of the legislative procedure, or a new
formula for voting). Most governments would then try to
ratify this new treaty via parliamentary procedures rather
than the more unpredictable referendum. This could pose
political problems, but governments might argue that they had
listened to voters who objected to the massive and
complicated Constitution, and responded by taking a
minimalist approach that therefore was not substantive enough
to require another referendum. A politically lower-profile
strategy would be to write some of these changes into the
next Accession Treaty that comes along (for example, with
Croatia around 2009). We'd pencil in such a
"mini-intergovernmental conference" for late 2006 or early

2007.

A FRENCH "NON" IS BETTER FOR THE EU THAN A BRITISH "NO"
-------------- --------------


16. (C/NF) This cable has focused on the consequences of
possible French rejection of the Constitution for the EU as a
whole. Of course, even if the French say yes, there is a
real risk of one or more other member states rejecting the
text. Before poll numbers in France took a dive, most
experts would have predicted 24 ratifications and one
(British) rejection. But other countries such as the
Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland and even
Ireland, might have difficulty ratifying the document,
especially after the dispirited conduct of the French
campaign. The legal and technical implications of a no from
any of these would be the same as those discussed above. But
the politics would be very different. While we believe a
lone French no will be enough to kill the proposed
Constitution, that would not be the case for a lone rejection
by almost any other member state. In that case, we could
envision a real political crisis for the EU as it considers
how to work around or work over the lone hold-out. In the
most extreme scenario, the rest of the EU could consider how
to leave behind the reluctant member, probably keeping them
within the common market, but excluding them from much else.
This would launch a bigger crisis in the EU than a French
rejection.

AND FOR THE U.S.? NO GLOATING, PLEASE
--------------


17. (C/NF) As President Chirac's comments during his April 14
television appearance (ref B) and Luxembourg PM Juncker's
reported comments to French radio on April 19 (ref D)
highlight, as the "yes" campaign gets desperate, some will be
tempted to "play the American card", claiming that what
Washington really wants is for the Constitution to fail and
the EU be weakened. We may indeed face a somewhat distracted
and less confident EU in the near term. But it would be
wrong to interpret the Constitution's demise as the beginning
of the end for the EU. A French "no" may reduce talk of
multipolarity and building the EU as a counterweight to the
U.S. But as the Europeans have shown in the past, regrouping
is likely to ensure continuity on foreign policy
decision-making, with member state governments continuing to
see the EU as the venue for reaching common policies.
Conversely, French approval would not mean changes were
coming soon, with the British referendum awaiting in 2006,
and any implementation only beginning in 2007 at the
earliest. Rejection of the document will slow down adoption
of these ideas, but it is unlikely to reverse the overall
trend of European integration. And so, for our part, we
should simply note that the U.S. does do not see the treaty's
fate, one way or the other, as prompting a crisis in Europe,
and we should continue to stress how we look to a strong and
effective EU as a partner in facing global challenges.

SCHNABEL
.