Dutch pile on misery for EU leaders

PARIS - The European Union's agony sharpened after the Netherlands followed France in rejecting a constitution aimed at revamping Europe for the 21st century.
Ignoring calls by all parties to support the charter, Dutch voters dismissed it by a majority of 62.2 per cent, according to exit polls. Turnout in yesterday's vote was high, also around 62 per cent.

The referendum is not legally binding, but the Government vowed to respect the result.

"It is a clear outcome," Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said. "Of course I am very disappointed, [but] the Government will accept the vote ... The voters have given a clear signal."

Grappling with a deepening crisis, the heads of the main EU institutions jointly appealed for calm and reflection ahead of an EU summit on June 16-17.

And, defying eurosceptics who say the constitution should be scrapped, they urged other member states to pursue the ratification procedure.

"The result of democratic ballot in the Netherlands comes at the end of a rich and intense debate and deserves a profound analysis, to which we must now dedicate the necessary time," said the statement, issued by European Parliament head Josep Borrell, Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU's president-in-office.

But, they said: "We remain convinced that the constitution makes the European Union more democratic, more effective and stronger, and that all member states must be allowed to express themselves on the project."

Despite their rearguard action, pressure is now growing on the EU to declare the constitution dead or at least suspended.

The blueprint has to be ratified in every country to take effect. Thus the resounding rejection by two countries that helped found the EU in 1958 and steered it through decades of "ever-closer union" means the document is mortally wounded.

But to issue a death certificate without having a substitute scheme will only aggravate one of the worst crises in recent European history.

If the constitution is shelved, decisions will be carried out on the lines of the prevailing treaties, which means that countries as tiny as Malta, which has 400,000 people, could torpedo projects conceived for an EU population of 450 million.

The Dutch vote makes it a lot easier for Prime Minister Tony Blair to call off Britain's planned referendum, thus saving the country from a bitter internal feud. Even the most pro-EU lobby, the Britain in Europe group, admitted yesterday that the staging of the referendum was "extremely unlikely".

In the Netherlands, analysts said the vote was less a slap at the country's politicians than worries that the ever-bigger EU threatened the Dutch way of life.

Meanwhile, the constitution crisis is starting to have economic fallout. The euro slumped to an eight-month low against the US dollar yesterday, changing hands at US$1.22 and bringing the decline since the French referendum to more than 2 per cent.