The recent no votes about the EU constitution from France and now the Dutch have touched off a new round of debates about the fate of a unified Europe (as if you didn’t know). Here are some thoughts from the TLS about a couple of recent books and their relation to the debate.
As befits a literate nation, the battle of the European Constitution in France was fought out not only on the airwaves, in angry street-corner meetings, and in vast rallies, but also in books and pamphlets whose profusion will have impressed every visitor to a French bookshop over recent weeks. These three works are just a small sample, but they can tell us something about the state of mind of the French intellectual-political class, and also, perhaps, about why France voted Non! and what this resounding negative may signify for the future of European politics.