The European crisis

It cannot be claimed that the draft European Constitution has not been debated in an information-rich environment. The deliberations of the Convention which drew it up were published on the Internet. The Treaty was translated in all the languages of the EU and distributed widely.

The essential but missing ingredient was that few (to put it mildly) EU governments and political parties took the trouble of involving their people in a debate about its strengths and weaknesses. We are neither amazed nor amused by this.

Europhiles might be ready to lambast the French for their Non. But let us be frank and admit that the debate in France about the Constitution and the future of the EU rose to heights of intensity reached nowhere else.

The big problem in Europe is this: the EU is a worthwhile project and we would be worse off without it. But nobody defends it. Governments blame it when they have to introduce unpopular measures and claim all credit to themselves when policies succeed because of the EU!

The jargon of the Eurosceptic media has unbelievably dominated the way many speak. References to the alleged 'Brussels bureaucracy', which is smaller than Malta's public service, is accepted uncritically.

The notion of federation, a decentralised system of political governance that guarantees a strong measure of autonomy to its component states, has been redefined as centralising the state. It matters very little that the most decentralised political systems in the world are federations.

Just take a glance at Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia, Brazil, India and more. They are all federations.

Federalism in its most modern form has been much developed in the Anglo-Saxon world. John Stuart Mill praised it as a system of government. So did other European thinkers, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.

And yet the Australian-owned British tabloids have become the worst usurpers of the use of the word. The European Movement is not afraid of federalism.

It means that the nation-states of Europe can come together while maintaining a strong measure of autonomy, just as the independent Swiss cantons have done, or the Flemish and French communities in Belgium.

The crisis provoked by the rejection of the Constitution must be used as an opportunity for further reflection and to address the problems with presenting the European project. The way is forward, not backward.