The rejection of the EU constitutional treaty by France and the Netherlands, two of the six founder members, is certainly a landmark event, writes Martin Mansergh.
It highlights the gulf existing between the broad satisfaction in Ireland and newer member states like Latvia with EU membership and its potential as a force for economic and social progress, and the depression, disillusion and loss of control felt by some original members.
Languishing economies with high unemployment, partly blamed on immigration and enlargement, and fear of excessive EU Commission neo-liberalism, had more to do with the rejections than the new treaty text. The full convergence that many advocate of Ireland with a European social model in crisis needs to be approached with some caution. Germany, proceeding by parliamentary ratification, in contrast did not attempt to saddle the enlarged EU with responsibility for political and economic failures that have caused Chancellor Schröder's government to seek an early general election this autumn.
Even though the constitutional treaty emerged from a convention chaired by Giscard d'Estaing, the French people have repudiated it. The Franco-German partnership is split. The French rejection seems to acknowledge that that partnership no longer drives the European Union.
It was long recognised that the process of widening the Union needed to be accompanied by steps to deepen it if the dynamic of progress was to be maintained. With the treaty stalled, it will be more difficult to sustain confidence and coherence. This is not good news for Ireland, as a prosperous EU is vital to our progress.
In conducting analysis, hyperbole should be avoided. There is no justification for describing a 55 per cent No vote in France after an intensely fought campaign and high turnout as "overwhelming", or even a 62 per cent No in the Netherlands by electronic voting as a "landslide". Paris voted two-to-one in favour. There were also clear majorities in Lyons, Nantes and much of Brittany.
To talk of a second vote is premature, before other member-states have had a chance to register their verdict.
Yet a lot of comment misunderstands or misrepresents the democratic process, where unanimity is required. People speak, as if the first negative vote is enough to scupper the whole process and to disenfranchise other opinions. Ironically, those who warned against Franco-German domination are all too eager for the French No to pre-empt the decision for all.
A unanimity requirement implicitly entails a two-round voting procedure. No bullying need be involved. First, everyone's opinion is canvassed. Then, a collective assessment takes place. If only one country or a handful of countries are blocking ratification, they may wish to reconsider their position and perhaps, in the light of certain additional assurances not requiring renegotiation, be willing to revisit their decision.
This happened in the case of Ireland and Denmark, but the same logic applies to larger countries, particularly where the governments and mainstream parties are able and willing to persuade. It helps, of course, if the government has acquired a fresh electoral mandate in the meantime. In Ireland's case that mandate included, from the Fianna Fáil 2002 election manifesto, a further referendum on the Nice Treaty.
There is nothing undemocratic about this. A veto by one or a few states and a minority of the total EU population needs to be confirmed or withdrawn in the full knowledge of where everyone stands, and how expressed public concerns can be met.
Unless the European Council in its wisdom rules otherwise, no one is let off the hook. If the British, even though incoming EU president, decline to hold a referendum at this stage that is their decision, not ours.
John Bruton, EU ambassador in Washington, was right when he ruefully blamed overblown rhetoric for playing into the hands of the Euro-sceptics. Some continental politicians, though relatively few Irish ones, consistently exaggerate the significance and direction of the European project.
The term "constitution" for what is essentially a consolidation of the treaties is a misnomer. Titles like European president or European foreign minister scarcely disguise the fact that they are only mandated delegates of the collective decisions of member states, with whom power still essentially resides.
The EU is a hugely helpful, part-integrated, partly co-operative framework, but with minimal public funding compared to any member state, limited foreign policy co-ordination, and no EU common defence worth talking about. The indictment of the EU as a fledgling superstate, and presaging a militarised Europe, a new imperialism even, is way off the mark, and is the product of the overheated imagination of ideologues and small parties trying to attract support by appealing to anti-European prejudice, fuelled by some imported newspapers.
Ireland has used its European opportunities well. The last thing Ireland should do now is to jump on the anti-EU bandwagon.
Unlike more divided French Socialist counterparts, the Irish Labour Party at its conference last weekend voted clearly and without significant dissent to endorse the EU constitutional treaty, which also has strong trade union backing. In terms of European policy, the alternative to the present Government is not Fine Gael and Labour, which would carry forward broadly the same policy, but a highly improbable Green-Sinn Féin-Socialist Party alliance. If the electorate would not trust them with the State's economic welfare, what would be the logic of accepting their arguments attacking Ireland's EU position which is central to that?
Ireland has its own sovereign decisions to make. We should continue to follow a pro-European course which has given us a degree of progress and choices that would have been almost unimaginable 40 years ago.