The New EU Constitution

The EU has unveiled its new Constitution. Most of the larger European nations are generally happy with the new document; the smaller nations are not quite as enthusiastic, mainly because Britain and France still have veto rights over EU foreign policy. All in all it seems like they have at least come up with a decent starting point for further negotiations.

But the whole process is fundamentally flawed and is therefore likely to fail.

Constitutions work best when they are limited in scope. The US Constitution is timeless not because of what it says, but because of what it doesn't say.

The US Constitution allows certain rights to the government and reserves all the others for the people (or the states). It doesn't dictate how we are to achieve the ideals of our nation. It doesn't even dictate the form of our government, beyond the three branches and the concept of checks and balances. What was left unsaid has given the US the flexibility to adapt to a changing world.

The EU Constitution does the opposite. It proposes a philosophy and then details how to implement it. Instead of laying out the basic framework of a government, it goes into detail about the form and the workings that it should have.

Instead of allowing for flexibility in an ever-changing world, the EU Constitution restricts the ability of the government to react. Some actions will require unanimous consent; others will require majority votes. Some "states" have veto rights over the superior government. In other words, the government is already being made more complicated than the average person will want to deal with. A disconnect between the government and the governed is already being formed.

And that's just in foreign affairs. In domestic issues, it's even worse. The EU wants to establish Union wide labor laws and social policies. Instead of making the EU more competitive in the global economy, this vast exercise in social engineering will serve to raise the costs of EU products. In a time when deflation is a real concern, raising of costs is not a good thing.

Many nations have attempted to replicate the flexibility and timelessness of the US Constitution. Most have failed because they, like the EU, have failed to recognize that the US Constitution is great because it limits the rights of government, not the rights of the people.

The EU Constitution will eventually fail through its own inflexibility, unless significant changes are made.

Since that would require giving up the precious socialist experiments, I don't see that happening.