Home What's New Speeches & Articles Newsletter - Apr 2012 Biography Diary Contact Information Photo Album Parliamentary Highlights Publications Links MEPs' Transparency Visit the Freedom Association website
		MEPs hail French No vote Monday 30th May 2005 East Midlands Conservative MEPs Roger Helmer and Chris Heaton-Harris have today expressed their delight at the result of the key French Referendum in which the population of France voted overwhelmingly by 55% to 45% to reject the proposed EU constitution. A French 'No' means that one of the fundamental aims of the new EU constitution, in bringing the EU closer to its publics has failed while it is also the first time that an EU treaty has not been ratified once all member governments have signed it. While welcoming the French result, the MEPs are now very concerned that Tony Blair and other member-state governments will seek to implement large parts of the Constitution -- foreign policy, the EU Foreign Minister, justice and home affairs, asylum and immigration -- on a piecemeal basis. Although in theory the Constitution would not be ratified, in practice much of it would happen anyway. Speaking from Brussels in wake of the result Mr Heaton-Harris said: "This is an historic turning point for the European project. The French have decisively rejected political union in Europe. We must now use the No vote in France, which kills the Constitution in its present form, to ensure a complete change of direction in the EU" Mr Helmer added emphatically: "France is a founding member of the EU, and has benefited from massive agricultural subsidies. If even France rejects the EU Constitution, it is time to abandon federalism, and to start again with a clean sheet of paper, and build a new, flexible, democratic Europe of nation states. We want a relationship based on free trade and voluntary cooperation -- not a political union governed from Brussels".