From: "Dan Minette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I'm sure most of you ran across the news that the French rejected the
> Euro constitution.
>
I'm switching the order of the questions around because the answers to the
first question are highly dependant on the answers to the second.
> Do you think this will torpedo the EU?
Torpedo strongly overstates it. The EU is not going to fall apart
tomorrow, next month, or next year because the French said no to the new
constitution. It is unlikely that there will be significant pullback (such
as the elimination of the Euro or the withdrawl of a number of countries
from the EU. But, at a minimum it will slow the expansion and strengthing
of the EU. Even more likely, IMHO, is that this will represent a turning
point in this process. I'm guessing, to first order, that the EU is about
as strong as it will ever get now. By the time that a new agreement might
be ratified by all countries, the demographics of the shrinking Europe will
probably take over.
One commentator(1) noted that the people who voted for the EU were all older
people with first-hand memories of World War II. I think this is a fairly
strong indicator of which way the wind is blowing.
Pat
(1) John Xenakis and generationaldynamics.com
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